Attendance and Extensions

Attendance and Extensions for Students with Accommodations

If a student has a chronic documented medical/mental health condition with unpredictable or cyclical acute episodes, modification to the attendance policy and/or extensions on out of class assignments may be appropriate as an accommodation.

This accommodation does not allow a student to skip class or receive extensions when it is unwarranted; instead, it is a process that is designed to meet the medical or disability needs of the individual while still allowing the essential requirements of the course to be met.

Attendance/extension accommodations need to be established whenever possible in advance with the Learning and Accessibility Services Office. The Learning and Accessibility Services Office will notify faculty members that the student has a chronic medical condition that may impact attendance/work completion. Attendance/extension accommodations are not required to be given retroactively but may be considered on a case by case basis.

Once notification is sent, students must at their own initiation:

• communicate with the professor in a timely fashion when an absence occurs or when an extension is being requested,
• discuss the situation if absences/extensions become excessive,
• discuss how the student will make up work missed while absent.

Generally, when a modification to the attendance policy is requested as an accommodation, we are asking professors to adjust the attendance policy for the individual to allow 2 to 3 absences over the allowed absences stated in the faculty member’s attendance policy, however this may vary.