Academic units are charged with educating students in a discipline. The faculty is charged with the responsibility of keeping up to date in their disciplines and relating current information to their students. To ensure this goal, they must network with colleagues both within and outside the University. Research grants, conferences, and e-mail provide pathways to keep in touch. The department maintains student records, report, student progress, and maintains basic financial recordkeeping in accord with federal, state, and University policy.
Record management provides the guidelines for maintenance of student, staff, and financial records.
Record schedules set up by the records office advise that records may be discarded and which must be retained. Records that must be retained fall in categories such as student records, personnel records, and records that reflect the University's mission of teaching, research, and service. The latter are records that should be transferred to University Archives when they are no longer in active use by an academic unit. The University is under constant scrutiny by internal and external judges. University Archives is considered to be both a natural and a neutral source of information sought by reporters, historians, biographers, lawyers, Minnesota citizens, former students, genealogists, and public historians.