Last Updated: [5/2/20]

Scalar Education, LLC (d/b/a Summer STEM Institute) (“SSI,” “we,” “our,” or “us”) is committed to protecting the privacy of the online visitors to our website, the lecturers, teaching staff, and mentors who use our Service (“Mentors”), and the individuals who sign up as students for the Service (“Students”) (collectively, “you,” or “your”).  This Privacy Policy (this “Privacy Policy”) applies to our websites and online experiences that link to this Privacy Policy (collectively, our “Service”), and it describes how we collect, use and disclose your personal information when you visit our Service or otherwise engage with us.  By accessing or using our Service, you signify that you have read, understood, and agree to our collection, storage, use, and disclosure of your personal information as described in this Privacy Policy and our Terms of Service.

‍Please note that Students and Mentors may be required to use a third-party service, such Zoom Video Communications, Inc., to communicate and attend lectures.  Note that if you use a third-party service, you are subject to and agree to the third party’s respective Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

1.             OUR COLLECTION OF PERSONAL INFORMATION
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We collect personal information you provide to us in a variety of ways.  For example, you may provide us your personal information when you place an order, register for an account, make an online purchase, post a review, send us messages, subscribe to our mailing lists, newsletters or other forms of marketing communications, participate in a survey, contest or sweepstakes, redeem a promotion, or use some other feature of our Service.  Sometimes we collect personal information automatically when you interact with our services and sometimes we collect the personal information directly from you.  At times, we may collect personal information about you from other sources and third parties, even before our first direct interaction.  The type of personal information we collect may vary depending on your account type as a student or mentor, as explained further below.

Information You Provide:

We collect the following information you provide in connection with our Service:

•     Contact, Application and Account Information.  We collect any communications between you and us and any other information you provide to us. We also collect information about your use of our Service, such as your orders, classes, and similar activity. We also collect the following information depending on your account:
         •     For Student accounts, we collect personal information such as your name, email address, country, race, password, telephone number, gender, zip code, date of birth,  address, school transcripts and related documents, subjects of interest, and personal essays when you submit an application, create an account, sign up for a newsletter, request a transaction or make a purchase, redeem or participate in a promotion, or otherwise communicate with us.  If you apply for financial aid, we collect additional information, such as written statements and financial statements from your parents.  When submitting financial statements, please remove and/or redact any and all sensitive personal information, including financial account numbers and Social Security Numbers.
         •     For Mentor accounts, we collect personal information such as your name, email address, password, telephone number, gender, zip code, address, and employment history when you apply to be a Mentor on the Service and otherwise use the Service.
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•     Payment and Transaction Information. For Student accounts, we collect information such as date and time of your transaction, amount purchased, order details, whether you used a particular coupon or deal, and payment information, such as a credit/debit card, when you make a purchase on our Service.

•     Comments, Chat and Opinions. When you contact us directly (e.g., by email, phone, mail or by completing an online form or participating in online chat), we may record your comments and opinions.  We may also record comments and opinions you express when responding to surveys, entering a sweepstakes or taking part in a promotion.  We use this information to respond to your question or comment, to evaluate and improve our products and services and to inform our marketing and advertising activities.

We use this information to operate, maintain, and provide to you the features and functionality of the services, as well as to communicate directly with you, such as to send you email messages.   We may also send you service-related emails or messages (e.g., user account verification, change or updates to features of the services, technical and security notices) and communications from or about SSI.

Information Automatically Collected When You Use Our Service:

Like most digital platforms, we collect certain personal information automatically when you visit and use our Service, including:

•     Information You May Post or Submit on the Service.   We may collect information about how you use and interact with our Service and Mentors on the Service, including any materials, student work and other content you post to the Service or share with Mentors, such as homework assignments, research proposals, research papers, questions and comments posted, presentations, and journal deliverables (“Student Content”).

•     Usage and Device Information. To provide a personalized and high-quality experience for our users, we, and our third-party partners, may use various technologies that automatically record certain technical information from your browser or device when you visit our website, read our e-mails, use our Service, or otherwise engage with us.  This information is typically collected through a variety of tracking technologies, including cookies, web beacons, embedded scripts, location-identifying technologies, file information, and similar technology (collectively, “Tracking Technologies”).  We, and our third-party partners, use these Tracking Technologies to automatically collect usage and device information, such as:
         •     Your IP address, browser type, Internet service provider, platform type, device type, operating system, date and time stamp, a unique ID that allows us to uniquely identify your browser, mobile device or your account, and other such information.
         •     We also collect information about the way you use our Service, for example, the site from which you came and the site to which you are going when you leave our website, the pages you visit, the links you click, how frequently you access the Services, whether you open e-mails or click the links contained in e-mails, whether you access the Services from multiple devices, and other actions you take on the Services.
         •     When you access our Service from a mobile device, we may collect unique identification numbers associated with your device (including, for example, a UDID, Unique ID for Advertisers (“IDFA”), Google AdID, or Windows Advertising ID), mobile carrier, device type, model and manufacturer, mobile device operating system brand and model, phone number and, depending on your mobile device settings, your geographical location data, including GPS coordinates (e.g., latitude and/or longitude) or similar information regarding the location of your mobile device, or we may be able to approximate a device’s location by analyzing other information, like an IP address.

We may collect analytics data, or use third-party analytics tools such as Google Analytics, to help us measure traffic and usage trends for the Services and to understand more about our users by monitoring aggregate metrics such as total number of visitors, traffic, usage, and demographic patterns on our website.  You can learn more about Google’s practices at http://www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners and view its currently available opt-out options at https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.

We may also work with third-party partners to employ technologies, including the application of statistical modeling tools, which permit us to recognize and contact you across multiple devices.

Do Not Track Signals.  Although we do our best to honor the privacy preferences of our users, we are unable to respond to Do Not Track signals set by your browser at this time.

If you would prefer not to accept cookies, most browsers will allow you to (i) change your browser settings to notify you when you receive a cookie, which lets you choose whether or not to accept it; (ii)  disable existing cookies; or (iii) set your browser to automatically reject cookies.

Please note that not accepting cookies may negatively impact your experience using the Service, as some features and services on our Service may not work properly.  Depending on your mobile device and operating system, you may not be able to delete or block all cookies and you may not be able to block non-cookie technologies and these browser settings that block cookies may have no effect on such techniques.  You may also set your e-mail options to prevent the automatic downloading of images that may contain technologies that would allow us to know whether you have accessed our e-mail and performed certain functions with it.  We and our third-party partners may also use cookies and tracking technologies for advertising purposes.  For more information about tracking technologies, please see “Third-Party Tracking and Online Advertising” below.

Information from Other Sources and Third Parties

We also obtain personal information from other sources, which we often combine with personal information we collect either automatically or directly from you.  We receive the same categories of personal information as described above from the following sources and third parties:

•     Social Networks Through Your Interactions. When you interact with our services through various social media networks, such as when you “Like” us on Facebook or when you follow us or share our content on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Instagram or other social networks, we may receive some information about you that you permit the social network to share with third parties.  The data we receive is dependent upon your privacy settings with the social network.  You should always review and, if necessary, adjust your privacy settings on third-party websites and social media networks.

•     Information Provided by Others. From time to time, we may receive information about you from third parties and other users.  For example, we may obtain information from our marketing partners or from third parties to enhance or supplement our existing user information.  We may also collect information about you that is publicly available.  We may combine this information with the information we collect from you directly.

2.          OUR USE OF PERSONAL INFORMATION

We use your information and Student Content for purposes described in this Privacy Policy or as otherwise disclosed to you on our Service or in connection with our Service.  For example, we use your information to:

•     To fulfill your requests and provide the Service to you.  For example, we may use your information to complete your order or other online request or transactions, or respond to your customer service requests or feedback.  We may also use your information to personalize your experience with us.

•     For marketing purposes.  We may send you communications about new features, updates, products and special offers.  We may also use your information to serve you ads about products and special offers about our products or other products or services we think you might find interesting.  We may also use individual and aggregate information about you to inform our marketing and advertising campaigns.  For more information on your choices about marketing communications, see “Your Choices and Control Over Your Information” and “Third-Party Tracking and Online Advertising” below.

•     To communicate with you.  For example, we may communicate with you about your account activities, such as by providing you transaction confirmations and alerts.  If you register with us, we may enroll you in our email newsletter or other periodic electronic communications and also send you promotional communications.  We may communicate with you by email, postal mail, telephone, text message, or other means.  For more information on how to adjust your communications preferences, see “Your Choices and Control Over Your Information” below.

•     To monitor, improve and develop our products and services.  We may use your information to understand our visitors and users and tailor our product offerings accordingly.  From time to time, we analyze statistics and trends to make our Service better and to develop new services or features. SSI may also use information and Student Content for its internal purposes, including but not limited to improving curriculum for future years of SSI, doing performance reviews of various SSI staff including Mentors and other teaching staff, and developing ways to improve any of SSI’s core services.

•     To protect the security and integrity of our business, comply with legal requirements and obligations, or as otherwise permitted by law.  We may use information to protect our company, our affiliates, our customers, our franchisees and our websites.  We may also use information in order to comply with laws, regulations, court orders, or other legal obligations or to assist in an investigation to protect and defend our rights and property, or the rights or safety of third parties, to enforce our Terms of Service, this Privacy Policy, or agreements with third parties, to detect and prevent fraud or for crime-prevention purposes, or for any other reason permitted by law.

3.          OUR DISCLOSURE OF INFORMATION

We may share your personal information in the instances described below.

•     Student Content and Information Shared with Mentors.  For Students, when you connect and communicate with Mentors on the Service, we share some personal information about you, such as your name, age, and information relating to your submitted application and interest survey responses, such as your prior subjects of interest, academic record, past honors and any Student Content that you produce. You may be able to control the visibility of some of your information and actions in your Settings (see “Your Choices and Control Over Your Information” below).

•    Student Content and Information Shared with Other Students. Over the course of the summer, there will be many opportunities for social events such as online card games, chess tournaments, and trivia nights. Furthermore, there will be periodic group activities such as contests including science bowls, hackathons, and pitch competitions where Students will have the opportunity to work with one another and also submit to a competition with submissions being shared with other members of the SSI community. Students will frequently have opportunities to chat with one another and join video calls with one another. By participating in these events, Students may share certain information and Student Content included in submissions with Students and others on the Service. Please note that Students control the information and Student Content that they communicate and share with others in these submissions and activities.

•    Mentor Information Shared with Students.  For Mentors, when you connect and communicate with Students on the Service, we share some personal information about you, such as your name, background, contact information, and subject matter expertise.

•    Select Marketing and Strategic Business Partners. We may share limited data with our preferred marketing and strategic business partners so that they can provide you with information and marketing messages about products or services that may interest you.  These parties may use your information in accordance with their own privacy policies.

•     Promotional Partners.  We may share limited information with third parties with whom we partner to provide contests and sweepstakes, or other joint promotional activities.  These partners will usually be clearly identified in the contest rules or promotional materials.

•     Online Advertising Partners.  We also share personal information with advertising networks or permit these partners to collect information from you directly on our websites to facilitate online advertising, such as search engines and social network advertising providers to serve targeted ads to you or to groups of other users who share similar traits, such as likely commercial interests and demographics, on third-party platforms.  For more information, including how to opt out of interest-based advertising, please see “Third-Party Tracking and Online Advertising” below.

•    The Public. When you provide feedback or post user content on our services (e.g., if you post a product review on our website or comment on our social media sites), your information (e.g., your first name and comments) may be displayed on our websites or on our social media pages.  When you engage with us on social media, we may tag your social media account or the social media account of others (e.g., to give photo credit to another user).

•   Third Parties at Your Request.  For example, you may have the option to share your activities on the Service with your friends through email, text, or on various social media sites.

•   Service Providers.  We share personal information with third-party vendors, consultants and other service providers who perform functions or services on our behalf and under our instructions to make our services available to you.  For example, this may include vendors and providers who engage in marketing or advertising activities or provide mailing or email services, tax and accounting services, auditing and compliance, fraud prevention, infrastructure provisioning, analytics services, IT services, product fulfillment, and web hosting.

·      Business Transaction or Reorganization. We may take part in or be involved with a corporate business transaction, such as a merger, acquisition, joint venture, or financing or sale of company assets.  We may disclose personal information to a third-party during negotiation of, in connection with or as an asset in such a corporate business transaction.  Personal information may also be disclosed in the event of insolvency, bankruptcy, or receivership.

• Legal Obligations and Rights.  We may disclose personal information to third parties, such as legal advisors and law enforcement:
        • in connection with the establishment, exercise, or defense of legal claims;
        • to comply with laws or to respond to lawful requests and legal process;
        • to protect the rights and property of SSI, our agents, customers, and others, including to enforce our agreements, policies, and Terms of Service;
        • to detect, suppress, or prevent fraud;
        • to reduce credit risk and collect debts owed to us;
        • to protect the health and safety of us, our customers, or any person; or
        • as otherwise required by applicable law.

• With Your Consent or At Your Direction. In addition to the sharing described in this Privacy Policy, we may share information about you with third parties whenever you consent to or direct such sharing.

We may also share information with others in an aggregated or otherwise anonymized form that does not reasonably identify you directly as an individual.

4.          YOUR CHOICES AND CONTROL OVER YOUR INFORMATION

Profile and data sharing settings.  You may update your profile information, such as your user name and profile photo, and may change some of your data sharing preferences by emailing us at admin@summersteminstitute.org.

How to control your communications preferences. You can stop receiving promotional email communications from us by clicking on the “unsubscribe link” provided in such communications.  We make every effort to promptly process all unsubscribe requests.  You may not opt out of service-related communications (e.g., account verification, transactional communications, changes/updates to features of the Service, technical and security notices).

Modifying or deleting your information.  If you have any questions about modifying your information, or if you want to remove your name or comments from our Service or publicly displayed content, you can contact us directly at admin@summersteminstitute.org.  We may not be able to modify your information in all circumstances.

5.          THIRD-PARTY TRACKING AND ONLINE ADVERTISING

We participate in interest-based advertising and use third-party advertising companies to serve you targeted advertisements based on your online browsing history and your interests.  We permit third-party online advertising networks, social media companies, and other third-party services to collect information about your use of our Service over time so that they may play or display ads on our Service, on other websites, apps, or services you may use, and on other devices you may use.  Typically, though not always, the information used for interest-based advertising is collected through cookies or similar tracking technologies.  We may share a common account identifier (such as an email address or user ID) or hashed data with our third-party advertising partners to help identify you across devices.  We and our third-party partners use this information to make the advertisements you see online more relevant to your interests, as well as to provide advertising-related services such as reporting, attribution, analytics, and market research.

To learn more about interest-based advertising and how you may be able to opt out of some of this advertising, you may wish to visit the Network Advertising Initiative’s online resources, at http://www.networkadvertising.org/choices, and/or the DAA’s resources at www.aboutads.info/choices.  Please note that some advertising opt outs may not be effective unless your browser is set to accept cookies.  Furthermore, if you use a different device, change browsers, or delete the opt-out cookies, you may need to perform the opt-out task again.

Google Analytics and Advertising.  We use Google Analytics to recognize you and link the devices you use when you visit our site or Service on your browser, log in to your account on our Service, or otherwise engage with us.  We share a unique identifier, like a user ID or hashed email address, with Google to facilitate the service.  Google Analytics allows us to better understand how our users interact with our Service and to tailor our advertisements and content to you.  For information on how Google Analytics collects and processes data, as well as how you can control information sent to Google, review Google's site “How Google uses data when you use our partners’ sites or apps” located at www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners/ .  You can learn about Google Analytics’ currently available opt outs, including the Google Analytics Browser Ad-On here https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout/.

We may also utilize certain forms of display advertising and other advanced features through Google Analytics, such as Remarketing with Google Analytics, Google Display Network Impression Reporting, the DoubleClick Campaign Manager Integration, and Google Analytics Demographics and Interest Reporting.  These features enable us to use first-party cookies (such as the Google Analytics cookie) and third-party cookies (such as the DoubleClick advertising cookie) or other third-party cookies together to inform, optimize, and display ads based on your past visits to the Service.  You may control your advertising preferences or opt out of certain Google advertising products by visiting the Google Ads Preferences Manager, currently available at https://google.com/ads/preferences, or by visiting NAI’s online resources at http://www.networkadvertising.org/choices.

6.          CHILDREN'S PRIVACY

Our websites and online services are not directed to, and we do not intend to, or knowingly, collect or solicit personal information from children under the age of 13.  If you are under the age of 13, please do not use our websites or online services or otherwise provide us with any personal information either directly or by other means.  If a child under the age of 13 has provided personal information to us, we encourage the child’s parent or guardian to contact us at admin@summersteminstitute.org to request that we remove the personal information from our systems.  If we learn that any personal information we collect has been provided by a child under the age of 13, we will promptly delete that personal information.

7.          THIRD-PARTY WEBSITES

Our websites and online services may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications.  Except where we post, link to or expressly adopt or refer to this Privacy Policy, this Privacy Policy does not apply to, and we are not responsible for, any personal information practices of third-party websites and online services or the practices of other third parties.  To learn about the personal information practices of third parties, please visit their respective privacy notices.

8.          YOUR CALIFORNIA PRIVACY RIGHTS

If you are a California resident, California Civil Code Section 1798.83 permits you to request information regarding the disclosure of personal information to third parties for their direct marketing purposes during the immediately preceding calendar year.  You may make one request each year by emailing us at admin@summersteminstitute.org.

9.          HOW TO CONTACT US

If you have any questions or requests in connection with this Privacy Policy or other privacy-related matters, please send an email to admin@summersteminstitute.org.

10.       UPDATES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY

We will update this Privacy Policy from time to time.  When we make changes to this Privacy Policy, we will change the "Last Updated" date at the beginning of this Privacy Policy.  If we make material changes to this Privacy Policy, we will notify you by email to your registered email address, by prominent posting on this website or our online services, or through other appropriate communication channels.  All changes shall be effective from the date of publication unless otherwise provided.