USU State Authorization Compliance

International Students

Utah State University works to provide global access to its online programs. While we carefully track issues related to international authorization and licensure, it is the student’s responsibility to understand current circumstances or special requirements of whether the online program selected will be recognized in the country of residence. International students considering an academic program that leads to a professional license should first confirm with the appropriate professional licensing board in their country of residence whether a USU degree is recognized when seeking licensure or certification.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) has established regulations that prohibit U.S. persons (including the Utah State University) from providing services - including remote educational services - to individuals in certain sanctioned countries without a general or specific license. The list of OFAC sanctioned countries currently includes: Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria and the Ukraine-Crimea Region. Canvas intentionally restricts access in these places in order to comply with requirements related to embargoed countries and regions issued by the U.S. Department of Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control. For more information, please see Canvas's Which countries are restricted from using Canvas? resource.

Students who plan to be located in a sanctioned country should contact the Office of Global Engagment as soon as possible.

Physical Presence Triggers

SARA defines the following as "physical presence" triggers within SARA states.

• Establishes a physical location for students to receive synchronous or asynchronous instruction.
• Requires students to physically meet in a location for instructional purposes more than twice per full term (quarter or semester) course for a total of more than six hours.
• Establishes an administrative office.
• Provides information to students for the purpose of enrolling students, or provides student support services, from a physical site operated by or on behalf of the institution in the state.
• Offers a “short course” that requires more than 20 contact hours.
• Provides office space to instructional or non-instructional staff.
• Maintains a mailing address or phone exchange in a state.

The following activities do NOT trigger "physical presence" within SARA states.

• Offering courses to individuals via distance education in ways that do not require students to gather physically in groups, excepting the special provisions in Section 6(1);
• Advertising to students whether through print, billboard, direct mail, internet, radio, television or other medium;
• Offering distance education courses on a military base if enrollment in such courses is limited to federal employees and family members;
• Maintaining a server, router or similar electronic service device housed in a facility that otherwise would not constitute physical presence (the presence of a server or similar pass-through switching device does not by itself constitute the offering of a course or program in that state).
• Having faculty, adjunct faculty, mentors, tutors, or other academic personnel residing in a member state (the presence of instructional faculty in a state, when those faculty teach entirely via distance-education and never meet their students in person, does not establish physical presence for purposes of this agreement).
• Holding proctored exams on behalf of the institution in the host state.
• Having contractual arrangements in the home or host state.
• Offering educational field experiences for students, including an educational field trip arranged for a group of students that are normally in residence at an institution in another state.
• Operating limited supervised field experiences (or internship). For purposes of this agreement, interstate supervised field experiences originating from campus-based programs in a member state are considered to be distance education and not to establish physical presence if they place fewer than ten students from each program in a member state who are physically present simultaneously at a single facility or site in a host state, and do not involve any multi-year contract between a sending institution and a field site.

Currently, physical presence triggers in non-SARA states include: