Faculty Senate passes revised attendance policy for fall 2016

BY MARIAM HASSANEIN
@MARIAM_14

The University Senate last week finalized AUC’s attendance policy following a number of often heated debates and readjustments that came about as a result of complaints from faculty and students in the past year-and-a-half.

In previous semesters, faculty and students had said that the policy was confusing and left several of its clauses open to interpretation.

But on March 8, the Senate expressed its confidence in the new policy, with several members saying the new wording in the revised document was clear and easy to understand.

The newly revised attendance policy, which passed by a vote of 88 percent, still allows a maximum of six days of absences as before.

However, “students’ grades may suffer if their absence from any class session cause them to miss any direct assessment activities, unless otherwise approved by the instructor.”

To this regard, students who miss more than six classes risk “a reduced grade for the course including the grade of F” solely on the basis of inadequate attendance as outlined in the syllabus of the course, or announced and published by academic programs.

The new policy also addresses a concern raised by athletes and cultural activities members who had previously said they were marked absent for representing AUC and Egypt abroad.

The revised policy now holds that “faculty will accept excuses for absences that are the consequence of participation in formal AUC activities or formally representing Egypt in national or international sporting and/or cultural and academic activities and events”.

However, the onus will be on students to present certified documents to an officer delegated by the Vice President for Enrollment Management and Student Life in case of missing any classes for extracurricular activities or international sports events.

In cases of family and medical emergencies students must obtain accredited documents by medical officials or AUC’s clinic director. Instructors should offer makeups only for students with such cases and must accept their documents.

Students who miss more than six classes due to any of the aforementioned excuses have the option to drop their courses after the designated deadline and before the deadline for withdrawal from the university.

Associate Provost and Director of the Core Curriculum John Swanson said: “We have been working on the attendance policy for about three years and this is the best solution we reached so far”.

Student Union Academic Representation Chair Salma Tarek said that the student and academic affair committees had been meeting weekly since the summer to draft a policy that meets the demands of both students and faculty.

Maki Habib, Chair of the Academic Affairs Committee said that there were various obstacles regarding the new policy because every faculty had a different opinion.

“We tried to make the policy as flexible as it gets for the whole AUC community,” said Habib.

AUC’s new attendance policy is to be applied starting next semester.