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Office of Student Academic Services

Grade Appeal

Please note: Faculty have the right to assign a grade to a student that they see fit after the course has concluded due to their professional judgement of the course content.

If a student submits a Grade Appeal to the Committee on Academic Policy and Standards (CAPS), (Senate Committee level), any decision made by the CAPS Committee is a mere recommendation to the Professor to reconsider the already given grade. But, by no means, does the decision of the Committee override the Professor’s professional judgement of the given grade, if the professor has given the grade based upon an assessment of the students’ academic performance, including the assignment of the outlined grading policy (syllabus, materials listed, examinations, finals, midterms, etc.) that pertain to the course subject matter.

Procedure

The following procedure has been established when a student wishes to appeal an earned grade:

The student must discuss the grade with the instructor/professor. The instructor/professor must provide the student with a clear explanation of how the assigned grade was determined (academic performance, assignments, grading policy, syllabus, materials listed, examinations, finals, midterms, etc.), AND consider the student’s arguments in support of a different grade.

If there has been no satisfactory resolution on the instructor/professor level, then the student must discuss their grade on the department level. The student must discuss the issue with the Department Chair [or, where applicable, the chair’s designee (hereinafter collectively referred to as “chair”)], who, after having deliberation on the department level, may make a non-binding recommendation to the professor.

  1. It is of each individual department’s purview how [it] carries out the revision of the disputed grade (this may be done by the Department Chair’s revision of the appeal, a department ad-hoc committee of the appeal, etc.). The CAPS Committee is not permitted to instruct departments on how to conduct the appeal of the departmental level.

If there has been no satisfactory resolution on the department level, then the student may file a Grade Appeal to the Committee on Academic Policy and Standards (CAPS). This may only be done when the student is alleging that the assigned grade is inconsistent with the instructor’s stated grading calculation in regard to policy/rubric/syllabus or is inconsistent with the grading calculation of other students in the class; the instructor’s professional judgment may not be appealed.

  1. Only after speaking with the first two levels of the appealing process (Professor/Instructor, and Department Chair) will the CAPS Committee consider a formal appeal of an earned grade. The committee’s role in the appeal is one of mediation or recommendation; it is not in the CAPS Committee’s jurisdiction to change an instructor’s assigned grade.
  2. The Grade Appeal to the CAPS Committee must be submitted within 30 days of the posted earned graded.

Guidelines

To assure that the CAPS Committee conforms to the principles of due process, and follows best practices of CUNY guidelines, the following Grade Appeal Petitioning procedures apply:

The student must submit a completed Grade Appeal petition signed by each individual party (Professor/Instructor, and Department Chair) to show that they have met with each party and an informal resolution resulted in dissatisfaction.

The student must submit all of the following relevant documentation to show that they have met the course requirements, including but not limited to:

  • course syllabus/grading rubric
  • all documented grades (graded test, midterms, finals, homeworkm papers, projects, etc.)
  • a list of all other grades that the student knows they received in the course (ex; blackboard graded assignments)
  • Any other documentation that would support the student's claim for an extenuating circumstance as to why the given grade does not reflect the grade the student believes they should receiveThe student must submit a typed personal statement explaining the extenuating circumstance as to why they are filing a grade appeal for the course

The CAPS Committee/ Office of Student Academic Services (OSAS) will reach out to the instructor/professor/department to acquire all of the grades the student received for the course throughout the semester, as well as the grading rubric, and any other relevant information the instructor/professor used to calculate the grade.

The CAPS Committee will review both the student’s appeal and the instructor’s calculation of the assigned grade at their scheduled committee meeting date.

If the CAPS Committee finds the grade calculation to be consistent with the grading policy/rubric/syllabus in the course,

  1. The student’s appeal is denied.
  2. The student will be notified of the decision via the OSAS Secure Portal system.

If the CAPS Committee finds the grading calculation to be incorrect [either resulting in a higher or lower letter grade], when using the grading policy/rubric/syllabus

  1. The CAPS Committee will make a non-binding recommendation to the instructor/professor and Department Chair informing them of their findings. Please note: The CAPS Committee does not have the authority to change the assigned grade. The CAPS Committee may only make recommendations of their findings as per CUNY guidelines, (May 2021).
  2. The student will be notified of the decision via OSAS Secure Portal System.