• Undergraduate Student Petition (for course substitution and exception requests)
• Double Major Petition
• Academic Plan review
• Student Athlete Plan review
• Satisfactory Academic Progress (SAP) / Financial Aid Appeal
• Max Unit/Quarter Limit Appeal*
• Readmission Petition*
• Other Petitions/forms not listed above
  
  

The Undergraduate Student Petition may be used for course substitution and exception requests. 

Submit your completed petition via the COMM UG Petition Form. The department's Faculty Advisor will review it and you will be notified of the result via the VAC.

Be sure to completely review: 

• The University's Double Major Petition Instructions and Required Forms
• The COMM Department's Double Major webpage

Develop your very own Academic Planning Worksheet! (Link to copy a Google sheet). Here you can outline the courses you plan to take to complete the major and other requirements.

If you would like one of the COMM UG Advisors to review your plan, you can submit it via the COMM UG Petition Form. 

Appealing a Grade in a Communication (COMM) Course

This document draws from policies and procedures outlined in Academic Senate Manual Regulation 502, “Grade Appeals”.

The purpose of this Grade Appeal Policy is to establish a clear, fair, and uniform process by which students may contest a grade in a Communication course.

Before proceeding with a grade appeal, it is important for students to note:

• The evaluation of student performance is based upon the professional judgment of instructors. This includes assessing performance on exams and the quality and rigor of written work, media production, and other projects and assignments. It may also include the student’s level of engagement and contributions to the learning environment outside of these formal assessments, for example, participation in class discussions or in online forums. Instructors are in the best position to judge their students' academic performance, and therefore have sole authority to determine grades in their courses.

• Instructors are not required to use "rubrics" or similar assessment models in courses. In the Department of Communication, as in most departments in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, most forms of student work require qualitative assessment rather than more simplistic quantitative (correct/incorrect) assessment; and as noted above, instructors are in the best position to conduct qualitative assessments.
  
  
• Not all instructors use the Gradebook function on Canvas. Even if some assignment grades are recorded on Canvas, this does not mean that Canvas is a reliable predictor of your final grade. What this means: the Canvas Gradebook function sometimes automatically computes grade projections, even if the instructor has not set it up to reflect the specific grade breakdown/weighting for that class. Sometimes, students wrongly assume those projections are correct when they are not. For this reason, if your grade appeal is based entirely on your expectation for a particular grade because of Canvas Gradebook records, it will not satisfy the requirements for a grade appeal and cannot be escalated to the Department Chair or other offices.
  
  

If you believe your instructor made a mistake when grading an exam, paper, project, or assigning a final grade, please follow the following process:

Step 1: Write to your instructor (and/or TA, if applicable) 

Appeal Deadline: Per Academic Senate Policy, “Request to resolve the grievance with the instructor within the first month of the following regular academic quarter after the grade was assigned.”

In your email, explain why you feel you deserve a higher grade. Reasons may include:

• You believe a clerical or computational mistake was made
• You believe your grade was not consistent with how other students in your section were graded

You must provide specific evidence in writing to support your claim such as graded exams, assignments, or other materials. Simply saying “I think I deserve a better grade” is not sufficient.

Do not ask your professor if you can make up work or redo any assignments to change your final grade. This is not allowed, per Academic Senate Policy.

Please note that grade appeals are typically not reviewed during breaks between fall, winter, and spring quarters, including during the summer. Appeals related to summer courses will be considered at the beginning of fall quarter. (Exceptions are only made for graduating seniors whose transcripts are being finalized, and thus need an expedited timeline.)

Most grade appeals are resolved in Step 1. (This does not mean that most grade appeals are successful. Most often, it means that the instructor explains the assessment in greater detail, so that the student better understands the grade they were given.)

Step 2: Escalate Your Complaint to the Department Chair

Grade appeals may be escalated to the Department Chair (and, as noted in Step 3 and Step 4 below, escalated further to additional offices) only in specific and limited circumstances listed below. 

Please note that the Chair's role in this process is to mediate a resolution between instructor and student. The Chair does not "re-grade" assignments. Outside of the limited circumstances described below, instructors cannot be overruled in their assessment of a given assignment or final grade.

Acceptable grounds for a grade appeal to the Department Chair are:

• The instructor has not responded to a student’s grade appeal request by the end of the first week of the following academic quarter (for appeals submitted during breaks) or within one week of receiving the appeal (for appeals submitted during the first month of the following quarter). (For graduating seniors whose grade complaint is related to their final quarter of coursework, appeals will be expedited.)
  
  
• The instructor did not explain their grading policy, or the student believes the grading policy was not adhered to (and this was not previously resolved with the instructor).
  
  
• The student believes they received a grade derived from nonacademic criteria, such as discrimination based on a protected category as defined by the UC San Diego Nondiscrimination Policy. (In these cases, the Department Chair will forward the report to the Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination [OPHD], as required by PPM 200-23. The grade appeal in such complaints cannot be resolved until the OPHD investigation is complete and findings have been finalized by OPHD.)

If your attempts to resolve the issue with the instructor have been unsuccessful, and you believe one of the circumstances described above applies to you -- and you can provide evidence to support your claim -- you may proceed with a formal Grade Appeal to the Department Chair (link to appeal form). You must be logged in to @ucsd account to access form.

The Chair will attempt to mediate the case with the instructor and the student, and will provide a written response to the student's appeal. (Again, the Chair’s role is to mediate, not to “re-grade” assignments.)

If you have any questions, please email the Communication Department Advising Office at commugrad@ucsd.edu.

Step 3: Nonacademic Criteria Appeals Only – Submit a Written Appeal to Your College Provost 

If the issue is still not resolved to the student's satisfaction, the student may submit a written appeal to their College Provost. The Provost will work to mediate the situation with the student, the instructor, and the Department Chair within one month. The student will receive a written response from the Provost regarding the outcome of the appeal.

Note that acceptable reasons for escalation to the College Provost are identical to those listed above in Step 2. 

Step 4: Nonacademic Criteria Appeals Only – Submit a Written Consideration of Appeal by the Educational Policy Committee

If the issue is still not resolved to the student's satisfaction, the student may submit a written statement to the Educational Policy Committee. This process is outlined in the Academic Senate Manual Regulation 502.

Note that acceptable reasons for escalation to the College Provost are identical to those listed above in Step 2.