Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: To Whom It May Concern:

My name is Vivian Ren, and I am currently a fourth year Biomedical Computing student. I am appealing to add CISC 271 after the add/drop deadline for the Winter 2017 term. Due to problems with filling pre-requisites, as had I swapped majors from Biochemistry to Biomedical Computing during my third year, I require a fifth year to complete my current plan. CISC 271 was one such course that required me to take pre-requisites I could not fill normally here at Queen's due to scheduling problems. It is also a course that is required for me to take CISC 330 and CISC 471 next year. All of these courses are required in my degree plan and, as such, are needed for me to graduate.

Originally, I planned to take Athabasca University's MATH 270 and MATH 271 courses during the Summer of 2015 as a transfer credit for MATH 110 here at Queen's, as required of the CISC 271 pre-requisites. However, after I finished MATH 270 in June 2015, MATH 271 had closed for registration as it went under revision. As it wasn't yet necessary for me to take CISC 271 during the 2015/2016 school year, I decided that I would take MATH 271 when next available.

However, checking on Athabasca's course availability, combined with correspondence to Athabasca's course advisers throughout the 2015 to 2016 years resulted in inaccurate information as to when the course would be available. At first, I was given an immediate answer by the course coordinator that MATH 271 will not be open most likely until November 2015. After November, however, the course availability on the site changed to Spring 2016. After that, it changed to Fall 2016 and by the first week of September, the course still was not available. At this point, I desperately required the course for CISC 271 for the Winter term, and an email sent to their academic advisers told me that the course would be up in January 2017. As of January 25th (the date when this letter was written), Athabasca University's course availability for MATH 271 appears to have been updated and the new course opening is expected to be Summer 2017. I had to look for an alternative else I had to take yet another year for my Bachelor's degree.

Asking for an exception for CISC 271 based on my circumstances, of course, got me nowhere. It was then that I found Thompson Rivers University's MATH 2121 course, with the aid of one of the Arts and Sciences academic advisors, which could be used as a transfer credit for MATH 112. Combined with CISC 102, of which I had previously taken, this could be used instead of MATH 110 as the pre-requisite for CISC 271. I was able to complete and pass this course last semester, writing the exam on the 17th of December. However, final grades did not show up on my account until the 10th of January. This did not allow for enough time for the official transcript to be mailed and processed by the add/drop deadline, January 20th. The credit showed up on my SOLUS account on January 23rd.

I have talked to both Dr. David Lamb, the Computing Undergraduate Chair, and Professor Randy Ellis, who is in charge of CISC 271, about the course and I have their permission to add the course past the add/drop deadline. I have also been going to the class since the beginning of the term, so I do not need to catch up on any material. There was a test today in the course that I completed, with the knowledge of Professor Ellis, so I am also not behind in that matter.

Thank you very much for your time, and I hope to hear back from you in the near future regarding this appeal.

Vivian Ren