Shepherd students have significant rights on campus. One of the rights students have the privilege of using is the ability to appeal a final course grade.
According to the student handbook, there are three reasons that constitute good cause for a final grade appeal: “discrimination,” an “arbitrary” grading system held by the professor, and “error on the part of the professor while calculating, recording, or reporting a final grade.”
If a student believes that he or she has an appeals case, there are a series of steps listed in the student handbook that must be taken.
First, the student must schedule a face-to-face conference with the professor who issued the grade being appealed. According to the student handbook, this conference is time-sensitive and must take place “within the first 10 class days of the regular semester immediately following the semester that the disputed grade was assigned.”
If the student and professor cannot come to a mutual agreement concerning the student’s grade, the second step is to meet with the department chair. Just like the student-faculty conference, there is also a strict time limit in which a student can file his or her claim to the department chair.
“The appeal to the department chair must be in writing and filed within five class days of the instructor-student conference or within the first 15 class days of the semester that the grade is eligible for appeal,” according to the handbook.
In the case that the department chair cannot resolve the grade, the appeal will be sent to the dean of the school in which the department is housed where it will undergo a similar process as the preceding two steps.
A course grade appeal that effectively passes through all prior three steps will be brought before the Academic Appeals Committee for a formal hearing. The committee will come to a consensus regarding the student’s grade and issue a change in grade or denial of change based on the evidence presented.
Still think you have sufficient evidence for a case?
Students have the right to appeal their course grade a final time to the president of the university. According to the student handbook, the president’s decision on the course grade “will be regarded as final.”
Though students have the right to appeal their course grades, the majority of appeals rarely make it past the first few steps.
Dow Benedict, dean of the school of arts and humanities, said that most appeals “are the result of a misunderstanding or a simple error and are easily explained and/or corrected… That is why so few grade appeals end up crossing the threshold of the school deans.”
Both Benedict and Ann Legreid, dean of the school of business and social sciences, stated that they encounter between one and two grade appeals per academic year.
Kathleen Reid, chair of the department of economics, reported even lower numbers than Benedict and Legreid, stating, “I have been chair since 1990 and have never had a grade appeal come to me.”
Benedict, Legreid and Reid all agreed that the majority of appeals cases are resolved on the departmental level.
Due to the extensive process of a grade appeal, students have varying opinions as to whether they, personally, would consider appealing a grade.
Tiffany Locke, a senior sociology major, stated that she “would not waste the time” appealing if she “still had a passing grade.”
However, Lindsay Shade, a senior education major, disagreed, offering the questions, “Why not try? What’s there to lose?
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