Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Dear Associate Dean,

I request a petition to exceed the 6.0-unit limit for taking courses at another institution. Due to unforeseen health issues, I was unable to complete five courses between Fall 2023 and Winter 2024. To stay on track for graduation, I seek approval to take 12-15 units of Economics courses elsewhere this Summer.

Extenuating Circumstances

In December 2023, I developed chronic dry eye syndrome, requiring prolonged treatment at Galen Eye Center from February to May 2024. My condition severely impacted my academics, leading to a late drop of five courses.
I had intended to request an exemption to the 6.0-unit limit at the time, but due to an administrative oversight, it was not forwarded. I now submit this separate petition to address that issue.

Academic and Career Justifications for Taking Additional Economics Courses

I am seeking permission to take 15 units of Economics courses at another institution this summer because Queen's University imposes strict cross-faculty enrollment limits. As a Faculty of Arts and Science student, I am only allowed to take two courses outside of my faculty. Since I have already enrolled in GLPH 271 (Faculty of Health Sciences), I only have 3 points left. Also, you need to apply to take classes in commerce, so the ECON classes under the faculty of Arts and Sciences are the optimal solution for me. After checking the summer schedule, I found out that there are only two courses in ECON, one ECON111 and one ECON223, but I have already taken ECON110 in my first year, so I can't take 111, so I can only choose ECON223, and I have already enrolled for it. So, I would like to apply to take 15 ECON credits off campus in the SUMMER TERM, and if you can pass me taking 12 ECON credits off campus and force me to take a COMM course on campus in the summer, that would be acceptable. I will take six SUMMER courses(off-school plus in-school) through both methods.

Here's why. First of all, you're wondering why I chose to take an ECON course instead of taking another course on campus as an elective; it has to do with my graduate school applications and my future career plans! First, when I got into the statistics department in the summer of 2024 and had already decided to apply for petitions to deal with the five classes I couldn't complete, I started planning my future because I was already in the statistics department. I found three career paths on the internet that were very promising and related to statistics; the first was business-related, like BA, actuarial finance and insurance, and the second was coding and programming, like DA, DS, software engineering, and so on. The third one is biomedical, but I haven't taken a course in biology, so that area does not fit me. There were only two ways in front of me, business-related or programming-related, and it so happened that I took econ110, cisc101 and cisc121 in my first year and took some cs courses later on, although I didn't finish them. At the time, since my cs foundation was stronger than econ, I planned to go DA, DS in the future. So, I took CISC251 in the fall semester and CISC351 in the winter semester, and I was planning to get my DA certificate (CISC451 in my senior year) without taking any econ courses.

I'm sure you, Associate Dean, are wondering why I didn't take econ courses in the fall and winter semesters, and I'll focus on explaining that to you. First of all, I stated earlier that I planned to move towards DA, DS, dropping out of the business pathway of my choice as well as the fact that I was still undergoing treatment in the fall semester of 2024, so I was only able to choose four courses at that time for my health and recurrence of the disease so at that time I decided CISC 251 as my elective in addition to the required three courses. However, in the winter time, because of my excellent performance in CISC 251 in the fall (with an A+ grade), I felt that it was right for me to move towards this aspect of DA, so instead of choosing business and economics-related courses I chose the three required courses, CISC 351 as well as the other two electives, and if the normal course of events continues, I won't be applying to PETITION. I will be in the SUMMER time to choose other electives to fulfill my degree requirements. However, as I delved deeper into CISC 351, the concepts and data analysis areas suddenly became more complicated. I suddenly felt so overwhelmed that my first assignment and quiz grades were inferior! So much so that a while ago, I was thinking about whether I was suited for DA or DS because the code in this class was very different from what I had learned before; it was mainly about data, and that part became a lot more complicated, as well as the various concepts and models I was struggling with. So, I realized I might be a good fit for DA because CISC 251 covered superficial things. I had a foundation, so I started to rethink my future plans and graduate school applications. I redirected my attention to business and economics-related areas, and I think I'm more interested in being a business analyst and actuarial. While thinking about this, I noticed that the winter drop and add program deadlines had already passed. So, I decided to write this petition to apply to take ECON courses off campus in the summer; I will explain why it had to be this summer later. So, this process of exploring one's interests and the specification and development of one's future is gradual and cannot be decided on at the beginning. It is one of the valuable experiences that college gives us to find out what we really like and want to do in the future, and that's very important because human beings are constantly learning and exploring. This is why I need to take the econ courses.

Sincerely, Buyun Wang