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How are policies being established?

When a new policy or a change has been requested of the Office of Compliance & Ethics:

  1. The office will first make a copy of the current policy in Teams, to serve as a history and a comparison.
  2. The office will then look at all current policies and highlight changes in the law or what a policy owner has brought up. The current policy will then be compared with BYU policy to see if there is any information that needs to be added and could be used at BYUH. If, there are some procedures that could be used at BYUH, then it can be written into the draft.
  3. A first draft is then created and approved by the policy owner and the chief compliance officer.
  4. The draft policy is sent to the vice president. The vice president can also voice their opinion at any point, with suggestions or questions.

What is the approval process?

Once, a draft has been written out it will need to go through the approval process. The approval process involves various interest parties to ensure that all policies are substantially legal and follow state and federal regulations.

  1. Compliance will consult with Human Resources and BYU Office of the General Counsel (OGC) to determine those policies which are substantially legal and regulatory in nature. Together they will identify the needed content, changes, and updates. All questions and concerns are address before approval is given. If, there are any then the policy will be sent back to the chief compliance to be reviewed.
  2. Once the policy team, Human Resources and OGC are aligned, the sponsor will present the proposed policy to the President’s Council for conceptual approval. The President’s Council may
    1. approve the policy in concept;
    2. approve the policy in concept with changes;
    3. reject changes to the draft;
    4. reject the policy.
  3. Once approved by the President’s Council, the Office of Compliance & Ethics will send the draft policy to the BYU Office of the General Counsel, for final review. The BYU Office of the General Counsel will
    1. approve the policy draft as being substantially legally sufficient
    2. or communicate that a legal hold has been placed on the policy to allow for a more in-depth review.
  4. Once the policy is reviewed by the BYU Office of the General Counsel (and the President’s Council if further discussion occurred), Compliance is responsible for:
    1. posting the policy to the university’s policy website
    2. eliminating former policies
    3. implementing a periodic and regular review of the policy,
    4. archiving documentation.

Documentation

All of the policies are then documented at policies.byuh.edu and is available for students and faculty to review. Each policy is categorized under departments, but can also be found by searching the name. Any previous versions of the policy are documented with the Office of Compliance & Ethics.

All policies will also provide the policy owner, policy sponsor, approval date, modified date, review and next review date.

Faculty Voice

The development of academic policy uses collaborative means, such as counseling together and working toward consensus, in its development. The identity of the associated development, recommending, endorsing, and approving bodies are categorized for various approval protocols. The entire process is outlined in the Academic Governance policy, Table 1. Any member of the councils involved in the process can ensure that other relevant stakeholders (e.g. faculty members, other employees, students) are involved in policy deliberations as relevant.

Student Voice

We involve students in policy development. First, we employ students in the Office of Compliance & Ethics who are responsible for the research and development phases. Their input is vital in the process as well as giving them real-world experience. We also maintain an outreach plan to involve students from all parts of campus. This outreach plan provides an education and recourse page on the compliance website to allow students to send in any concerns relating to compliance or policy.