Writing a petition to substitute a major class requirement. Feedback please!

Hi guys! Im experiencing difficulties with classes at my community college. Due to budget cuts 3 of the 6 classes I need to graduate are not being offered currently. So i wrote a letter petitioning to substitute one class with my Network + prep course. I really would appreciate feedback on it before submitting it to the school. Thanks!!

Dear [name],
My name is [name] and I am currently pursuing an Associate of Science degree in Electronics at [name] College. I have been attending [name] College since the summer of 2010 pursuing my goal and am currently only 6 classes away from attaining my degree. Recently I have come to a point where I am experiencing some difficulty with my remaining classes. It seems that three of the classes I need to meet the requirements for the degree are not currently being offered. One of these courses is Elec 266 Network Management for Technicians. According to the 2012-2013 course catalogue this class teaches students the advanced hardware and software aspects of setting up a computer network.

I am currently enrolled in the Saturday class Elec 265 Computer Networking for N+ certification with Instructor [name]. According to the 2012-2013 course catalogue this course teaches students the hardware and software aspects of setting up a computer network. Additionally the CompTIA Network + certification is an industry recognized certification that qualifies recipients as Network Professionals.

As the Electronics 266 class is not being offered currently I would like to petition to substitute Electronics 265 for my major requirement. This would not only help me achieve my goal of finishing my coursework by the Fall semester of 2013 but would be an excellent substitution for the Electronics 266 class. Thank you for your time and understanding in this matter.

Sincerely,
[Me]

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Comments

draught

The petition sounds like a good a idea in theory, but my question is why are you writing a petition instead of going to your school councilor, and department chair in person about this? From my experience a councilor would be able to help you come up with some type of solution. Email your department chair what you wrote but also ask him in the email what can be done to help you. You should see both your councilor and the department chair about this not just write a letter.

powerfool

I don't know about your particular community college, but the local one here probably wouldn't go for it. They just like to keep pushing people through the turnstyles, and if they get to keep doing that with someone for an extra semester or two they will be all the happier. From my perspective, community colleges have created a symbiotic relationship with low income individuals where they offer low cost courses and the students actually end up making a few thousand dollars in federal grants each semester, above and beyond tuition. These folks, in their minds, have no incentive to graduate (the obvious incentive would be getting a good paying job and not being dependent on assistance, but they appear to be conditioned that it is their only way of life).

Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of hard working people that are in school, the community colleges aren't intentionally catering to them.

This was my experience with community college and is why I got out of there after one full semester and one summer semester. Once I was at a proper university, I didn't have these issues. As a matter of fact, I remember sitting with my counselor before my last semester and she noticed that I didn't have my foreign language requirement. I figured it was handled because I took it in high school (and middle school). Anyhow, she just popped open my transcripts, electronically, and saw and took care of it right there.

I did have one issue in university with getting one course scheduled. It was my finance course. My degree wasn't officially offered as an evening option, but all of the courses were offered in the evenings, at least on occasion. Finance was one of these courses... it was supposed to be offered once a year in the evenings, but it hadn't been available for the past year and a half. I noticed that there was an agreement between the undergrad and graduate business schools where someone that intends to pursue a graduate degree immediately following undergrad may take five of the equivalent graduate level courses during undergrad and get credit for both degrees. My [undergrad] counselor thought that would be fine, so I scheduled a meeting with the dean of the grad school; he chastised me for even considering that this would be feasible... he said that these students had to apply and be admitted to the school beforehand and even said that I wasn't a real student anyways since I was going to school in the evenings (even though I always had a full-time course load) and even though the grad school had plenty of evening courses. I was pretty upset about it and almost left the school over it. They ended up find a new instructor and got the finance course on the schedule after I talked to my counselor again. The funny thing was, the class was super full (about 30 students when my classes had normally been only about 15 students), and there were only two of us that were "evening students," the rest were normal full-time day students that wanted to take the course in the evenings because day-time students pay a flat fee each semester between 12 and 18 credit hours, so they wanted to load up in a semester and get an evening course in.

I would say go for it... and maybe schedule a meeting with a counselor and hand deliver it then. If you don't get any traction, I would try to mail it, then. The recommendation may be to have you take a course at another school, but since the courses really cover the same material, I would hope they could be reasonable.

Best wishes.

KeithC

Using my experience with my local community college trying to perform any benefit is just a waste of time. It'll cause more frustration if nothing comes out of the ordeal.

I only wanted to mention that mine did have a system to award classes for certifications. I believe they called it "credit for prior learning". I had to meet a few times with an I think the title was "assessment councilor". All they did was read from a list that was provided by some other department on what certifications matched which classes. It was good insight in how inflexible at least my community college is. For example I had to take the 70-297 (windows 2003 exam) because they wouldn't accept the 70-298 as credit for a Microsoft server 2003 class.

It was such a waste for me since after one year I just transferred to WGU. The straw that broke the camels back was in my last semester which sounded neat "TCP protocols", but we only build a domain of server 2008 and then towards the end the "professor" wanted us to work with linux. We only had one test *cough* "final exam" that we were handed the week before as a dry run. Not surprisingly no comment cards were handed out. . .

the_Grinch

I had an issue like this at my college when I was attending. There were a few courses where they were only offered during certain quarters and three people signed up thus they were cancelled. I was able to go to my adviser and she in turn pulled in the Director. He looked, said "he can take whatever he needs to graduate" and that was that. Anyone who cares about a student's education is going to work with you. Of course, your biggest issue is going to be confirming that the credit hours match up. If one course is three credits and the other is a non-credit course, you might have issues. But definitely email your adviser that letter and keep following up. I find in the academic arena, the more you bother them the more apt they are to help you and get you off their back

Dragonranger

Hey guys thanks for the replies. In a quick answer to some of your questions. I have previously met with a counselor in regards to to at least 1 of these classes before. Her advice to me after I explained to her that a 1 unit course I needed had not been offered in a year was to "wait for it to come back around." That was Spring semester last year. So at this point one course hasnt been offered in two years. I pretty much only take the classes I need and keep a sharp eye out for them since I would like to graduate asap.
Also there is an entire page dedicated to petition forms on my schools website. So this letter will be attached to a form and submitted to a counselor.
My A+ Instructor on campus told me last semester that due to budget cuts many of these classes are not coming back and encouraged me to petition to substitute anything I could.
Its been a bit rough. When I started doing my Electronics major coursework in 2011 there were lots of classes available. Currently there are only 5 courses available. I have already completed 3 of them and am enrolled in a 4th.

boredgamelad

I had something like this happen to me at my community college. I needed to take a course that was offered at the same time as another required course, and I knew it wouldn't be offered again until the following year. It was my last course needed to graduate.

I sent an e-mail to the chair of the CSIT department explaining my situation and he said I could substitute any one of like 3-4 different classes and that he would approve it. I chose the class that fit with my schedule, got the form signed by the department chair, and the substitution was made without a problem. My school had a system in place for such substitutions, though.