Academic Divisions

I have a student that had something happen during the semester and I want to let him/her finish the class a few weeks late.  What are my options?

You as a faculty member have a couple of options; however, some grade must be assigned to the student at the end of the semester.

(1) You can award an Incomplete.  The catalog states that an “I – Incomplete No credit; used for verifiable unavoidable reasons. Since the “incomplete” extends enrollment in the course, requirements for satisfactory completion will be established through student/faculty consultation. Courses for which the grade of “I” (incomplete) have been awarded must be completed by the end of the subsequent semester or another grade (A, B, C, D, F) must be awarded by the instructor based upon course work which has been completed. In the case of “I” grades earned at the end of the spring semester, students will have through the end of subsequent fall semester to complete the requirements.”  In order to award a grade of “I” – you must complete an Incomplete Grade Form and have that signed by your Dean.  The steps involved with awarding an “I” are located on the form.

(2) You can award a grade, make arrangements with the student to complete the course work, and then submit a Grade Change Form after the work has been completed.  Faculty have up to one year to submit grade change requests.  More information can be found in the Faculty/Staff handbook located on the Intranet.

When and how do I submit my final grades?

The academic calendar for faculty lists semester breaks, registration dates, when grades are due each semester, etc.

The instructions for submitting final grades are available on our Academic Division web page.

A reminder from Annette Williams, Dean of Student Services, will also be emailed to you a couple of weeks before grades are due.

I submitted my final grades in SIS and the screen shows they are approved.  Is this correct?  Do I receive any type of verification?

Yes, once you have entered all of your grades, clicked the dropdown box and choose Approved, and then hit SAVE.  Your grades will be finalized in SIS.  You should see a column listing “Grade Input” and another column listing “Official Grade”   Review these to be sure they are correct for each student.

In terms of verification, the VCCS requires the College to do a “grade playback” where faculty are asked to verify that the grades that were entered into SIS were indeed the grades that you awarded.  A reminder to check your grades will be emailed to you from Annette Williams.  Please verify they are correct, and if so you do not need to do anything.

For instructions on entering grades in SIS, click here.

I have a date box beside the grade field to fill out on my grade roster in SIS.  What date do I put in this box?

Any faculty who enters an “F” or a “U” because a student never attended or stopped attending will need to also note a date of last attendance (the date can be approximated—for example, last assignment completed—if the faculty member does not take attendance).  If the student attended throughout the semester but earned the F anyway, the faculty member will enter the special date of “12/31/9999” in the date of last attendance field.  This special date is mentioned in the grade roster memo that is distributed by email to faculty prior to the end of the semester.