Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: To whom it may concern,

I would like to request a review of my instructor’s decision to give me a grade of 0 on a recent major assignment worth 10% of my final grade. The assignment in question is “Applied Physiology Assignment 1” in the course PHGY 215 taught by Dr. Chris Ward.
On the day of deadline of the assignment I made a clerical error and uploaded a copy of the assignment questions void of any of my work instead of the completed assignment document with all of my completed work. This is an out of the ordinary event in my academic history. I am a 4.3 GPA student and am generally very meticulous in the proper submission of my term work. I acknowledge the importance of proper submission.
Upon receiving my grade of zero from Dr. Ward I reached out immediately to apologize for this error in submission and request a regrade of the appropriate document which I attached along with timestamps, as evidence that I had not worked on the document since before the deadline.
The response that I received from Dr. Ward was that it was too far past the deadline to reconsider my grade. Considering I had responded within hours of receiving the feedback that I had submitted incorrectly, I believe that my request was made within a reasonable window for reconsideration.
I followed up to highlight that this is not a pattern in my academic conduct and requested consideration for even partial credit or an opportunity to earn extra credit by completing additional course work. I have not received a response from Dr. Ward since this email was sent a week ago. While I understand that he likely has a large workload and may not have had time to respond to my second email yet, I don’t want to miss the opportunity to request a formal appeal.
This assignment is worth 10% of my final grade in this course. As I told Dr. Ward, this course means a lot to me and a loss of 10% will not only hurt my final grade drastically, it also may impact my overall GPA in my degree. I have been working extremely hard to maintain a competitive GPA for applications to financial awards as well as for future applications beyond my undergrad to either med school or to other master’s programs. I believe Dr. Wards decision to maintain a zero in this assignment due to one clerical error is unreasonable and not a reflection of how similar mistakes would be received in future jobs or other circumstances, especially considering this is not a pattern. I believe that my assignment should still be considered and that my work should be graded, even if there is some deduction for the submission error, or alternatively that there should be an opportunity granted to attain this 10% another way.
Before deciding to make this appeal, I reached out to a professor I know personally from another Ontario University to ask her opinion on the matter. Her perspective was that Dr. Wards decision was unfair. It is under her strong advisement that I am making this appeal.

Thank you so much for your time and consideration.
-Ariana Barr (Student ID: 20472672)