From: Vice Provost for Undergraduate Affairs Kelly Long
Sent: Thursday, November 19, 2020
To: Faculty, Deans, Department Heads, Directors
Subject: Academic Policies and Appeals – Fall 2020

On behalf of Kelly Long, Vice Provost for Undergraduate Affairs, and the Undergraduate Teaching Continuity and Recovery Team

Post Fall Break Academic Matters           

As you’re moving to online instruction, consider that students with accommodations, international students, and students who have returned home to other states may have additional needs in an online environment. See Keep Teaching: Accommodations & Accessibility for recommendations. Top tips include:

• Plan for asynchronous delivery;
• Avoid requiring the use of proctoring software for students whose accommodations make it problematic for them to use a proctoring platform, and be flexible with alternative approaches;
• Upload recorded lectures to Echo360 or Microsoft Stream for automatic captions (instead of directly to Canvas).

Academic Policies and Appeals 

As a reminder, fall academic policies concerning grading and course withdrawals have reverted to the standard course withdrawal schedule (course withdrawal deadline October 19, 2020), and academic probation policies are again those that were in place in Fall 2019 link.  S/U grading will not be used beyond instances where it was pre-arranged. For your reference, an overview of Academic Standards Policies can be found on this link.   

Course Withdrawal Appeal  

Students can appeal registration deadlines such as late add, drops, or withdrawals, change of grading or audit, and repeat/delete. For instance, a student can appeal to withdraw from a course after the Oct. 19, 2020, deadline this semester.  

CSU Online will process appeals for their own courses and students should work directly with CSU Online to appeal any concerns for CSU Online courses link.

Retroactive Withdrawal  

Students can submit a retroactive withdrawal appeal if they seek to be withdrawn from the University for a past semester due to extenuating circumstances such as debilitating health conditions. Retroactive withdrawals require objective documentation, usually from a professional, of these extenuating circumstances. The deadlines for submission for retroactive withdrawal appeals can be found here. 

Dismissal Appeal  

Undergraduate students who are dismissed at the end of the semester due to academic standing can submit an appeal beginning Nov. 23. The deadline to submit an appeal is Dec. 30, at 12 p.m. (noon/ MST), so we recommend that students submit the appeal before their grades are finalized. The Committee on Scholastic Standards meets on Jan. 6 to make appeal decisions.