ALUMNI RELATIONS OFFICE PRIVACY STATEMENT
At Central European University (address: Quellenstraße 51, Vienna 1100, Austria) and Közép-európai Egyetem (address: Nádor u. 9., Budapest 1051, Hungary) (jointly as “CEU” or the “University”) we place great emphasis on the protection of your personal information and the compliance with the EU General Data Protection Regulation* (GDPR). This Privacy Statement relates to the collection, use, transfer and retention of your personal data throughout your engagement with the Alumni Relations Office (ARO). Please see below for more information on the alumni activities covered by this Statement.
*Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC.
Who are we and what we do
CEU’s Alumni Relations Office helps maintain the mutually beneficial lifelong relationship between alumni and CEU. To achieve this, we administer a range of services and benefits, organize events and engage alumni in the life of CEU through volunteering as well as fundraising to support CEU’s students, academic units, campus development and the most urgent needs of the University.
In order to do this, we have a database that contains personal data collected by CEU during the course of our relationship with students and alumni. The vast majority of the information we hold is obtained directly from you. We always aim to keep your details up to date, and we will conduct projects to check the contact details we have for you are correct, and, where appropriate, update them. As a result, some of the data may also have been obtained from publicly available sources. We may also use information from publicly available sources to carry out research to assess your inclination and capacity to support CEU financially or by volunteering your time. More information on these activities is below and you will always have the right to opt out.
We value our relationship with you and we use your personal data to ensure we contact you in the most appropriate way, improve our services and to ensure we work efficiently and effectively.
The Alumni Relations Office is part of CEU, and CEU is the Data Controller. CEU’s data protection policy is available here: https://www.ceu.edu/privacy
Identity and contact details of the Data Controller
1. Közép-európai Egyetem ("KEE")
Nador u. 9., Budapest 1051, Hungary
2. Central European University ("CEU GmbH")
Quellenstraße 51, Vienna 1100, Austria
Contact details of the Data Protection Officer
Email: privacy@ceu.edu
What is the purpose of processing your data?
Your data is used by us for a number of purposes in support of CEU institutional mission, including student and alumni programming, services, volunteer engagement and fundraising. More specifically, we use your data to:
- provide alumni services and benefits, including access to CEU facilities and online services, Library access and email for life (for details check: https://alumni.ceu.edu/benefits-services)
- assist with data collection and analysis of alumni career trajectories and demographic statistics for CEU institutional purposes, including strategic and academic planning, as well as accreditation
- develop and support alumni communication channels and feedback platforms and initiatives, including newsletters (e.g. alumni E-News), special updates, social media coverage and surveys
- provide information about volunteering and fundraising opportunities
- invite you to alumni and other relevant University events
- keep internal records, including the management of any feedback, complaints and other meaningful interactions
- perform administrative processes (e.g. processing your alumni service requests, donations you have made or registration for an alumni event).
What is our legal basis for processing your data?
As part of our work we process and store personal information relating to CEU alumni and currently enrolled students and we therefore adhere to the applicable data protection rules. We take our responsibilities under these rules seriously and ensure the personal information we obtain is held, used, transferred and processed in accordance with the applicable data privacy rules. The Alumni Relations Office processes the information outlined in this Privacy Statement in pursuit of our legitimate interests in:
- Communicating with alumni and currently enrolled students;
- Providing benefits and services to alumni;
- Furthering the University’s educational charitable mission (which includes fundraising and securing the support of volunteers);
- Enabling the University to achieve its strategic and operational goals.
We may pursue these legitimate interests by contacting you by telephone, email, post or social media. Information about how you can manage the ways that we contact you, including how to opt out from some or all contact from the Alumni Relations office, is outlined in the ‘Your rights’ section below.
Whilst the Alumni Relations Office relies on legitimate interest as the legal basis for processing where this is not overridden by the interests and rights or freedoms of the data subjects concerned it recognizes that it is not the only lawful ground for processing data. As such, where appropriate the Alumni Relations Office will sometimes process your data on an alternative legal basis – for example, based on your explicit consent given us to do so.
What kind of personal data do we collect?
CEU’s Alumni Relations Office maintains a record of all former students of the University and, as such, we hold education records in perpetuity. Graduation information is published each year in graduation books and is therefore considered to be in the public domain. Before we include your personal data in graduation books, we will ask for your explicit consent. If we become aware that your personal data has changed we will update our records to reflect this. The personal data we store and process, the majority of which is given to us by our alumni and supporters but some of which we may obtain from other sources, may include:
- name, title, gender and date of birth;
- contact details including postal address, email address, phone number and links to social media accounts;
- information about your time at the University and other academic institutions;
- your occupation and professional activities;
- your interests;
- family and spouse/partner details and your relationships to other alumni, supporters and friends;
- records of donations, where applicable;
- records of communications sent to you by Alumni Relations Office or received from you;
- volunteering by you on behalf of the University;
- information on your engagement in University meetings, events, groups or networks;
- information about your use of CEU resources or facilities (for example the Library).
Who receives your information?
We work closely with other units at CEU to provide alumni with a coordinated approach, especially in the area of volunteering. Other CEU units, including the Career Services Office and the Student Recruitment Office have access to our database and may process your data in relation to their activities. Any transmission of data to or from other units is managed through agreed processes which comply with relevant data protection legislation. Each unit has its own data protection statement and procedures.
In order to provide the tasks, services and communication detailed above, we may need to pass your information to our third-party service providers or volunteers (for example to send you mailings, surveys or to record attendance at events). However, with all external entities with whom data is shared, we share only those data needed to perform the specific service and require a contract and/or confidentiality and non-disclosure agreement to be signed before any data transfer—requiring them to keep your information secure and not to use it for their own purposes. We will not sell or rent your information to third parties.
Specific third parties we work with include:
- Microsoft Office 365: Based in the US (with datacenters in Europe).
- Raiser’s Edge and related Blackbaud providers (Online Express, Blackbaud Merchant Services): Based in the US and UK, this group of providers serves as a contact management platform. ARO uses the platform for keeping an updating employer and alumni records, in a shared manner with other CEU offices.
- Constant Contact: Based in the US, Constant Contact enables CEU and ARO to create professional communication messages, and provide us with data on opens and clicks from our newsletters.
- SurveyMonkey: Based in US with offices in Ireland and Luxembourg, this is an online survey development cloud-based software as a service company, allowing ARO to collect, analyze and represent data from multiple respondents.
We do not share personal data of alumni with other third parties under any circumstances.
How long will your information be held?
We consider being a member of the alumni community as a lifelong relationship. Generally, CEU will look to retain alumni personal data until the individual asks us to remove it from our records. We will routinely remind you of your right to have us remove your personal data.
If you decide that you no longer wish to receive communication from CEU please be aware that we still need to retain a minimal amount of personal data so that we can keep a record that you have asked us not to contact you.
What are your rights?
You have a right to:
- access your personal information,
- object to the processing of your personal information,
- rectify,
- erase and
- restrict processing your personal information.
If you wish to exercise any of these rights, please email privacy@ceu.edu. CEU will make every effort to fulfill your request to the extent allowed by law and will respond in writing within 30 days of receiving your request.
Should you wish to request help from the relevant national authority, their details are as follows:
Austrian Data Protection Authority
Barichgasse 40-42, Vienna 1030, Austria
Phone: +43 1 52152-0
Email: dsb@dsb.gv.at
National Authority for Data Protection and Freedom of Information
Szilágyi Erzsébet fasor 22/c, Budapest 1125
Security of your information
We are committed to holding your data securely and treating it with sensitivity. All data are held securely and in accordance with the relevant data privacy laws and our internal policies. We do not sell to or trade your data with any other organizations. For further details please see CEU’s Data Protection Policy.
Although most of the information we store and process stays within Hungary, some information may be transferred to countries outside the European Economic Area (EEA). This may occur if, for example, one of our trusted partners’ servers are located in a country outside the EEA. Where these countries do not have similar data protection laws to the European Union, we will take steps to make sure they provide an adequate level of protection in accordance with EU data protection law.
Future changes
If our information policies or practices change at some time in the future, we will post the changes on our website among our Official Documents (https://documents.ceu.edu/).
Last updated on: March 23, 2023