Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: To the associate deans of the faculty of Arts & Science,

I am a fourth year chemistry student and prospective graduate, who has made a mistake. It was my understanding, after speaking with a secretary at the Arts & Science student services in Dunning hall on February 26th, that the drop date and the date to audit courses was not the same and that I had until the exam period to act. My course instructor and I (Dr. P. Andrew Evans for CHEM 422) had agreed prior to the drop deadline that it would be best for me to audit the course and return to it in graduate school. Since I thought I had more time to complete the academic change form, I did not contact my instructor on the day of the deadline and since I did not think I would be penalized I did not complete summative assignments ¿¿ electing to work on my senior thesis instead. I did, however, attend most of the lectures after our discussion and have a complete set of course notes because I really do find organic chemistry genuinely interesting. I have already fulfilled the chemistry criteria for my degree and this course is not a requirement for my graduation. In addition, I have tried to maintain a trend of positive growth in my GPA so that I might get accepted into a graduate program and pursue my dream of scientific research. However, with this stain on my transcript I doubt this will ever be possible. Therefore, I hope that you could change my status in the course to reflect my attitude towards it (from IP to AUD). While I can offer no evidence to prove that I was misinformed at the desk, I have asked the course instructor to send me a brief email as proof that we had decided it would be best for me to audit the course before February 26th. I have attached his email to this appeal. If you wish to contact him directly, his email address is: andrew.evans@chem.queensu.ca.

Sincerely,
Goldwin Stewart