Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: Dr. Jenn Stephenson
Associate Dean (Academic)
Faculty of Arts and Science
Queen's University

Re: Letter of Academic Appeal

Dear Dean Stephenson,

A. REQUEST

I am appealing to change my final letter grade in PHYS 117 (Full year, 2019-2020) to a Pass (P). If it is not possible to change my letter grade to a P, then I would like to drop the course from my transcript completely.

B. EXPLANATION OF EXTENUATING CIRCUMSTANCES

I now understand that the deadline to convert a passing course mark to a P letter grade was 20 May 2020. I realise that this deadline was communicated by email in April. However, due to the closure of campus in March due to the Covid-19 pandemic, I had to return to my home in Quebec. The upheaval and disruption to my routine caused by the need to move, plus the importance of focusing on my studies, meant that I missed this important communication. I was aware that there would be an option to take a P letter grade after the final grades were posted but I was not expecting the deadline to be as early as 20 May.

In the case of my PHYS 117 course, I was unsure whether I would want to take a P letter grade until I saw my final mark. However, I did not see my final grade in the course until 25 May. Thus, the date that I saw my final grade in PHYS 117 was 5 days after the deadline to request a P grade. The reason why I did not see my final mark until that date was because I was looking for my final marks for all courses in the SOLUS Student Centre, under the Grades section of the Other Academics tab. I had received an email from the Faculty on 6 January 2020 with instructions to check for my grades on SOLUS in this manner. As far as I am aware, my final grades were not posted in this location on SOLUS until 25 May.

I also realize now that an email was sent on 2 May providing instructions on how to view final grades early on SOLUS. However, when I followed the link given in that email, I only saw the following error message: You are not authorized to access this page. Thus, I was not able to view my final marks via this alternate method before the 20 May deadline to request a P letter grade. I realize that if I were having difficulties in accessing my grades that I should have contacted the Faculty for assistance. But as I am new to the university system, I was unsure how I could request such assistance remotely. After returning home in March, I felt cut off from my usual support network at the university and it took me some weeks to adapt to the new routine.

The closure of campus due to Covid-19 also had a significant impact on the weighting of the assignments and tests given over the course of the year in PHYS 117. This course is my first time studying this particular subject (I did not study Physics in high school). I found the material difficult to keep up with, and this was reflected in the lower marks I received in the Fall term. At the beginning of the Winter term I had planned to put extra effort into my PHYS 117 studies to ensure that my overall grade for the course would improve. My lab and quiz marks for the Winter term were significantly improved compared to the Fall term, in fact, and I was more confident that I would do well on the final exam. However, with the closure of campus in March, the final exam for PHYS 117 was replaced by a quiz worth only 10 of my overall grade. This meant that the grades from the Fall term were retroactively given a more weight in the final grade calculation. In my case, this meant I lost the opportunity to raise my overall mark in PHYS 117 with a good performance in the final exam. I realize that this changed approach to the grading of PHYS 117 is nobody's fault, but I wanted to explain why I wish to request a Pass grade for this course in particular.