Services

Georgia Southern University students get real world experience at hundreds of off-campus sites with which the University has established clinical affiliations. The University enters into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with each site, using forms prescribed by the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia. Once an MOU is in place, students may begin their applied learning experiences for academic credit.

There are four types of MOU:

• MOU with a member hospital of the Georgia Hospital Association. [Requires the following forms: (1) Authorization for Release of Records and Information, (2) Student Applied Learning Experience Agreement, and (3) Faculty Supervision Applied Learning Agreement]
• MOU for clinical training at health care facilities other than GHA member hospitals
• MOU for clinical education experience (schools)
• MOU for applied educational experience (non-profit agencies, government agencies, etc.)

How to establish an MOU

Faculty may request that the University establish an MOU with a new site or an inactive site, or renew MOU with a soon-to-expire site, by submitting a request to the Legal Affairs Helpdesk using the MOU request form provided.

Please give the Office of Legal Affairs sufficient time to process the request before a student’s internship is to start. We recommend a minimum of thirty days, because on occasion the facility will have issues with the language of the MOU that takes time to work out. In addition, many if not most facilities are now requiring students to undergo criminal background investigations and/or health screens.

Please let us know if you have any questions about the process.

The Office of Legal Affairs assists University departments with many types of University contracts. Pursuant to Section 112 of the Faculty Handbook, faculty members should not enter into contracts to which the University will be a party without seeking legal review of the contract.

Because Georgia Southern University is an instrumentality of the State of Georgia, it is restricted from entering into certain types of contracts (or contracts with certain types of clauses) under various provisions of Georgia’s Constitution and statutes. The contract review process helps the University avoid legal problems arising out of these restrictions. It also helps the University and its contractors better understand their contractual duties. Further information is available.

The Office of Legal Affairs also drafts contracts and assists departments and administrators with contract negotiations as needed.

Persons who sign contracts obliging the University to perform some duty should be certain that they have authority to do so. Otherwise, they may expose themselves needlessly to personal liability in the event there are problems with the contract in the future.

Please also remember that the Procurement card may not normally be used for services involving written agreements without prior review by Procurement & Contract Services. This is to protect departments against agreements containing clauses to which the University can not agree and protect our employees from possible personal liability exposure.

Procurement and Contract Services handles most contracts for the purchase of goods or services, contracts for consultant services, and contracts for lodging accommodations. If you are in doubt about whom to contact with a contract question, please don’t hesitate to contact us via the Legal Affairs Helpdesk.

The Office of Legal Affairs regularly fields questions regarding specific uses of intellectual property and their relationship to copyright protections. Georgia Southern University faculty and staff are encouraged to seek clarification from the Office of Legal Affairs whenever there is doubt concerning the use of copyrighted materials.

As a general rule, all state employees should be careful about receiving gifts from vendors, or others who might benefit from an employee’s decision. For more detail concerning this, please contact the Office of Legal Affairs, or consult Board of Regents Policy Manual, Section 802.14.

Georgia Southern University is a publicly funded institution, and the public – that is, the taxpayers of the State of Georgia – is very interested in how we use public resources. The University is public in other ways, too. The press and members of the public enjoy access to many types of University records and documents through the Georgia Open Records Act. Those who are employed at public institutions such as Georgia Southern are charged with the duty to behave ethically in their professional lives, but that isn’t all. We are also charged with the duty to avoid even the appearance of impropriety, so that the public will not lose confidence in our stewardship of its resources.

Georgia’s General Assembly has embodied these principles in the Code of Ethics for Government Services, codified at Section 45-10-1 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated.

The Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 (HEOA) requires institutions to disclose information to the general public, current students, current employees, prospective students, prospective employees, families of current or prospective students, or prospective student athletes and their parents, high school counselors, and coaches. This information includes general institutional information, financial aid information, health and safety information, intercollegiate information, etc., and as noted below.

The Office of Legal Affairs serves as the point of contact for select international employees for whom the University will be obtaining work authorization. Please note that the Office of Legal Affairs cannot provide legal representation or services to any employee, including international employees who are going through the process of obtaining visas and green cards for themselves or their families. Numerous attorneys do offer such services, and international employees may wish to avail themselves of the services of an outside practitioner.

Georgia Southern University utilizes the services of Kramer Partners, LLC. of Decatur, Georgia.

Have you changed your address?

All non-U.S. citizens living in the United States are required by regulation (8 CFR 265) to notify USCIS of any change in their address within 10 days of the change by filing Form AR-11 with the USCIS address listed on the Form AR-11. Notifying the USCIS of any address change is a condition of a non-U.S. citizens’ stay in the United States. Failure to comply could result in removal from the United States. Form AR-11 may be found online.

Honoraria

International faculty members who are employed at Georgia Southern pursuant to H1B work authorization are authorized to work only for Georgia Southern. The H1B does not authorize any other employment. Under USCIS rules, accepting honoraria from entities other than Georgia Southern for speaking engagements constitutes other employment. Accordingly, the Office of Legal Affairs recommends that international faculty members on H1B work authorization do not accept honoraria.

Open Records

The Executive Counsel for Legal Affairs serves as the University’s Custodian of Records for purposes of the Georgia Open Records Act. If you are requesting access to University records pursuant to the Georgia Open Records Act, please contact the Office of Legal Affairs. For your convenience, you may e-mail your requests to us at records@georgiasouthern.edu.

The Georgia Open Records Act requires persons requesting access to documents to compensate the University for the reasonable and necessary cost of compiling, accessing, assembling, or copying records in response to a request.

If your office or department receives a request for access to records under the Georgia Open Records Act, please contact our Legal Affairs Helpdesk right away. Because response times allowed under the Act are short, it is important to begin work on Georgia Open Record Act requests as quickly as possible.

Subpoenas

If your office receives a Subpoena or discovery request, please contact our Legal Affairs Helpdesk right away.

A subpoena is an order of a court requiring a person to appear in court or at some other location at a particular time, and in many cases, directs the person upon whom it has been served to bring certain documents or items with him or her.

Most of the time when a subpoena is served on the University or one of its employees, it is because a party to some litigation needs to have access to documents in the University’s possession. In the majority of such cases, it is possible for the Office of Legal Affairs to interact with the court or attorney who issued the subpoena to prevent the need for the employee to attend court in person.

If a subpoena is served upon your office or department, or upon you in your capacity as a Georgia Southern employee, please contact the Office of Legal Affairs so that we can help make a response that is legally sufficient, and with the minimum of inconvenience.

Subpoenas and discovery requests, like other aspects of the litigation process, are deadline-driven. It is extremely important not to miss litigation deadlines, as courts can and do issue severe sanctions for tardy responses. Subpoenas especially are sometimes issued on short notice, and our response must be quickly made.

Discovery Requests

Another way litigants may attempt to gain access to records is through the use of discovery. Discovery is simply a set of legal procedures that allow parties to litigation to investigate the facts of a dispute prior to taking it to trial. Discovery requests take several forms, and are identified with titles similar to these:

• Request for Production of Documents
• Notice to Produce
• Notice of Deposition

Other, similar titles may appear, but in any case, the document should contain the name of the case (“Plaintiff v. Defendant”), the name of the court in which the case is being litigated, and a case number. As is the case with a subpoena, not every discovery document the University receives is valid, and the Office of Legal Affairs needs to analyze each one to determine the proper response.

At the request of the President, the Office of Legal Affairs represents the University in negotiations for the purchase or lease of real property. All such transactions are subject to the approval of the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia, and are carried out by Assistant Attorneys General of the State of Georgia. Georgia Southern University has no in-house authority to enter into real estate purchase and sale or lease agreements. The Office of Legal Affairs acts as a liaison with the Board of Regents’ Office of Facilities and the Georgia Department of Law in such transactions.

Georgia Southern University enjoys a cooperative relationship with Georgia Southern University Housing Foundation, Inc. This separately incorporated organization has assisted the University with the purchase, construction or remodel of ten projects on the Georgia Southern Campus.  Please contact our Helpdesk if you have any further questions.