Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: To whom this may concern,

I am writing this letter to ask that the petition deadline of my request for a course to be added to my transcript more than 15 days after my graduation be waived. I am making this requestion because there were multiple times that the problem of the course GEOL 300 not showing up on my record was addressed prior to my graduation. To support my reasoning in waving the petition deadline I will provide a concise and dated timeline of the correspondence I have had over three years.

On November 27, 2021, I received and email from Dr. Chris Spencer explaining that our interest in taking GEOE/L 300 was accepted and that we had been sorted into our cohorts. I was put into cohort/group 1 and would be taking the course from 12-20 of August 2022. On April 28, 2022, Larke Zarichny sent an email on behalf of Dr. Spencer and Dr. Jen Day providing action items and their deadlines for participating students to accomplish. This is the second indication that I will be participating in the course. A reminder email of the action items deadlines was sent May 11, 2022, by Larke. On May 12, 2022, I paid a $100.00 deposit to the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science Online store for field school. On July 4, 2022, I paid the remanding $350.00 of the field school deposit to the same online store. This further confirms that it was known by faculty that I was participating in the course.

The first instance of knowing that GEOE/L 300 was not in SOLUS was on August 3, 2022, when Dr. Spencer emailed me asking if I could confirm that I plan on attending field school and what cohort I am apart of because there are “inconsistencies in records” and that “I was not registered on SOLUS”. On August 7, 2022, I replied with “Yes, I am planning on attending the first cohort (August 12-20th). Then participated in the course during my allotted time and completed all tasks and assignments. In January 2023 I noticed that I did not receive a grade for GEOE/L 300 were my classmates and group members had. A few days later I had a discussion with Dr. Day in Miller Hall outside the Undergrad Lounge where she admitted that they were aware the course was not on my SOLUS and that they were working on solving the issue. On December 12, 2023, approximately six months before my graduation, I emailed Rebecca Dew (the undergraduate assistant for the geology department) saying that while looking at my transcript for grad school applications I noticed that GEOE/L 300 was still not on my SOLUS. I informed her that I had talked to Dr. Day almost a year before and nothing was solved and that I was hoping to get some insight and help on the situation. Rebecca responded on December 13, 2023, asking if I did the course in August 2022 or August 2023. I replied with “August 2022”. After that I heard nothing from the department and started the process of applying for graduation. I was approved for graduation with no issues and therefore assumed that everything had been resolved considering it is a core course for the EGEO-P-BSH as stated in the program requirements found on the Queens University website.

In present day my application to register as a Geoscientist-in-Training (GIT) was rejected by the Professional Geoscientists Ontario (PGO) because I was missing a course. The course was GEOE/L 300. On August 28, 2022, I called the Undergraduate Assistant for help regarding this ongoing situation and she directed me back to Rebecca Dew. I am disappointed with the Queen’s Faculty for not supporting or helping me when I asked for it and it is more than unfortunate that my career is suffering the consequences because fo Queen’s inadequate support. With the time stamps and documentation, I have provided I hope you can see that efforts were made to solve this situation well before I graduated and therefore deserve to have the petition deadline waived and the course added to my records.

Thank you for your consideration,

Brealey Carragher