Faculty Intellectual Property Satement

On Tuesday, May 27, 2025, Provost Colin Potts issued a statement on faculty intellectual property rights and the expectations of those rights. Below is the content of that email.

Downloadable pdf version of document Intellectual Property and Course Content Guidelines Email

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Dear Faculty Colleagues,

At Missouri S&T, we value the intellectual contributions of our faculty, whether in research or
teaching. As an academic institution, it is essential that we uphold and respect the intellectual
property (IP) rights of our faculty. The educational materials faculty members develop—whether
housed in Canvas or created elsewhere—are their intellectual property, just as their research
outputs are.

To ensure clarity and consistency across campus, I am formally codifying the following expectations
for Missouri S&T:

  1. Ownership of Educational Materials: Course materials created by a faculty member,
    including those developed within Canvas or any other platform, remain the intellectual
    property of that faculty member.
  2. Access and Use of Course Content: No individual should be added to a Canvas course or have
    content copied from a course without the explicit consent of the faculty member who owns
    the material. In exceptional cases, a department chair may grant such approval.
  3. Roles and FERPA Compliance: For registrar courses, only individuals specified by the department
    should be added to a course in the role of “Instructor”, to protect students’ FERPA rights. Peer
    reviewers and support personnel should be added with the Canvas role of “Observer”. Instructional
    designers assisting with the course should be added with the Canvas role of “Designer”.
  4. IP Agreements for Online Course Development: Before the university commits time or resources
    to developing an online version of a course, the involved instructor(s) must first sign an IP agreement
    with the university.

These principles are foundational to maintaining academic integrity, protecting the rights of our
faculty, and ensuring appropriate stewardship of university resources.
Thank you for your attention to this matter and for helping to uphold these standards. I appreciate
your commitment to these shared values.

Colin

Colin Potts, Ph.D.
Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs
Professor, Computer Science
colin.potts@mst.edu, (573) 341-4138
102 Parker Hall, 300 W. 13th Street, Rolla, MO 65409
https://provost.mst.edu
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