Additional information about W date, Incompletes, and Accommodations
Encouragement/communication with students: Please communicate these plans to students in your classes multiple times over the remainder of the semester. Also encourage them to talk to advisors before making a choice—there are still a number of professional organizations and graduate programs (e.g., law, medical, education) that may not accept S/U grades for students pursuing degrees or work in those fields.
All UHD degree programs must accept grades of S/U for this period, except in cases where independent accrediting agencies for a given discipline specifically prohibit S/U grades.
Use of W grades: Students must make their own choice for a “W”—the drop date has been extended for students until the last class day (May 7).
Use of Incompletes: The current policy describes the incomplete option as being limited to students who “have completed a significant portion of the course requirements and a documented emergency prevents the student from completing the remaining course requirements”— for spring 2021 semesters, however, we encourage you to feel free to employ the incomplete under a broader set of circumstances and timelines as you deem appropriate. All recommendations for incompletes remain within the purview of each faculty member. Any incomplete still requires a documented agreement of work to be completed, a due date for completion of work, and a consultation with the department chair. Students will seek your wisdom, of course—incompletes might under the right conditions offer an opportunity for a student to complete the learning objectives for a class that they might otherwise feel compelled to drop because of COVID-related difficulties.
S/U for Incompletes: Students with an incomplete for any semester where the S/U option was available may still choose an S/U grade. We encourage faculty to use the same process in the sense that faculty would share the potential letter grade and the student would notify faculty of their request for an S/U before the deadline for completion of the incomplete (which should have been agreed upon by both faculty and student when the incomplete is given).
COVID Accommodations: We will continue to offer short-term academic accommodations through the Office of Disability Services—if a student reports COVID diagnosis, exposure, or other strain related to COVID, please ask them to submit a request as a “new student” at our
ODS website. Please note that, as with other accommodations, COVID-related ones are technically not retroactive. However, students do not always realize the impact until after the fact—in those cases, ODS will connect with faculty to determine what might still be possible and we ask that faculty consider flexibility where appropriate for their courses.
