Millersville University, Faculty Senate
Attachment F
Faculty Senate Minutes
April 17, 2001

University Class Attendance Policy (Current)

See attached pages from the Governance Manual and from Health Services

University Class Attendance Policy (Proposed) The University supports departmental and faculty class attendance policies. Instructors will provide a copy of their class attendance policy in writing to all students in their classes at the start of the semester.
Attendance policies should follow these guidelines:

It is the student's responsibility to attend all classes. Students are responsible for completing all course assignments, even if a class is missed, at the discretion of the instructor.
Students should notify their instructor(s) in case of an unavoidable absence. A student who will miss class due to participation in an official University activity must notify the instructor well in advance of the activity.
Instructors should consider making allowances for absence from class for such reasons as personal illness, death or critical illness in the immediate family, participation in a university-sponsored activity, jury duty, or military duties. Each instructor will evaluate a student's reason for missing class and determine whether the absence is justified.

Since students will be responsible for complying with an instructor's attendance policy and completing missed assignments, and instructors will determine, whether an absence is justified, it is unnecessary for the Registrar's Office to be involved in the process of evaluating a student's reasons for missing class and providing documentation of excused absences. The Health Center may continue to provide medical excuses to students when appropriate. However, it will be up to each faculty member to determine the acceptability of any medical excuse.

According to the class attendance policies published in the catalogs of the other SSHE schools, none of them require students to obtain excused absences from the Registrar's Office. All of them allow individual instructors to establish their own attendance policies for their classes. However, most of them itemize the reasons for which faculty should consider making allowances for absence from class, including personal illness, death or critical illness in the immediate family, participation in a university-sponsored activity, jury duty, or military duties. Most of the schools also required faculty to provide their attendance policy in writing to students at the start of classes.

The current attendance policy also mentions that an instructor's grading policy must be distributed to students at the start of the semester. This policy is separately stated elsewhere in the governance manual and hence does not have to be included here.

Current Policy Section 3: Undergraduate Academic Policies
Class Attendance/Grading Policy

Students are expected to attend all of their classes and must accept full responsibility for a decision not to attend a class unless official authorization to miss has been received by the instructor teaching the course.

1. Authorized absences are those granted because of:

a.student illness b.death in the family c.participation in outside-of-the-classroom educational activities d. participation in University-sponsored activities or programs e.religious holidays

2. Officially authorized absences can only be obtained from the Registrars Office. Other than in the case of illness or death in the family, no authorization to miss class will be given to a student after he/she has already missed the class.

3. Arrangements to make up a missed class must be made before the fact rather than after.

4. Each instructor will establish his/her own grading policy based on classroom participation, homework, unannounced quizzes, etc., a written copy of said policy to be distributed at the beginning of the course.

5. Responsibility for materials presented in, assignments made for, and tests/quizzes given in regularly scheduled classes lies solely with the student. However, a student may make up missed work at the discretion of the instructor. If a student misses class for an officially authorized reason, then he/she is entitled to make up the missed work but only at the convenience of the instructor.

6. Any student who has not contacted his/her professor by the end of the second class meeting (for classes meeting two or three times per week) or previous to the beginning of the second class meeting (for classes meeting only once a week) may be removed from a class roll by the instructor.

7. The registrar's office must be informed of this action no later than the third class meeting.



Health Services Policy
 Medical Excuses

1. The faculty is the final authority in determining whether a medical excuse will be accepted as valid.

2. The Health Services can only determine whether a student is or appears to be ill or has been seen by our staff. We do not excuse students from class, tests, or other academic activities.

3. Excuses from private physicians/practitioners should be taken directly to faculty members for validation.

4. The Health Services cannot give excuses for past illnesses not evaluated by our staff. Students who have been ill and have not been seen by Health Services or a private practitioner must go directly to their faculty member with a verbal explanation.

5. In the event that an involved medical problem arises, the Health Services is willing to discuss such problems with a faculty member as long as written permission is obtained from the student and medical confidentiality is observed.


 
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