Academic Policies

Accommodation for missed deadlines and/or exams

Occasionally illness or other personal issues make it impossible to meet assignment deadlines. In all cases where accommodation is being sought for work totaling 10% or more of the final grade, students should go to their Faculty Academic Counseling, and not to the instructor, to provide written documentation in support of their request from where it will be determined if accommodation is warranted and to acquire the appropriate paper work. Providing such documentation is accepted by Academic Counselling and the course instructor, every reasonable effort will be made to accommodate your situation.

Please view Western’s Policy on Accommodation for Medical Illness:
http://www.uwo.ca/univsec/pdf/academic_policies/appeals/accommodation_medical.pdf

Accessibility at Western

Please contact the course instructor if you require material in an alternate format or if you require any other arrangements to make this course more accessible to you.

Western’s commitment to Accessibility, visit:https://accessibility.uwo.ca/

Student Development Services http://www.sdc.uwo.ca/ssd/ has staff members who specialize in assisting students with various disabilities to adjust to the university environment. These disabilities include, but are not limited to, vision, hearing and mobility impairments, learning disabilities, chronic illnesses, chronic pain, and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorders.  Students who require special accommodations for disabilities should make a formal request through Student Development Services as early in the semester as possible.

Western’s Statement on Health and Wellness

As part of a successful graduate student experience at Western, we encourage students to make their health and wellness a priority. Western provides several on campus health-related services to help you achieve optimum health and engage in healthy living while pursuing your graduate degree.  For example, to support physical activity, all students, as part of their registration, receive membership in Western’s Campus Recreation Centre. Numerous cultural events are offered throughout the year. Please check out the Faculty of Music web page http://www.music.uwo.ca/, and our own McIntosh Gallery http://www.mcintoshgallery.ca/.  Information regarding health- and wellness-related services available to students may be found at http://www.health.uwo.ca/

Students seeking help regarding mental health concerns are advised to speak to someone they feel comfortable confiding in, such as their faculty supervisor, their program director (graduate chair), or other relevant administrators in their unit.

Plagiarism and Scholastic Offences

Students must write their essays and assignments in their own words.  Whenever students take an idea or a passage from another author, they must acknowledge their debt both by using quotation marks where appropriate and by proper referencing such as footnotes or citations. Plagiarism is a major academic offense.

Scholastic offences are taken seriously and students are directed to read the appropriate policy, specifically, the definition of what constitutes a Scholastic Offence, at the following website: http://www.uwo.ca/univsec/pdf/academic_policies/appeals/scholastic_discipline_grad.pdf

Written work:
All required papers may be subject to submission for textual similarity review to the commercial plagiarism detection software under license to the University. All papers submitted for such checking will be included as source documents in the reference database for the purpose of detecting plagiarism of papers subsequently submitted to the system. Use of the service is subject to the licensing agreement currently in place between The University of Western Ontario and Turnitin.com (http://www.turnitin.com).

Evidence of suspected plagiarism will be reported to the Department Chair, who will give the student an opportunity to respond to the allegation. Where a determination of plagiarism has been made, the Chair shall assess appropriate penalties up to and including a zero on the assignment and failure in the course. The case will be reported to the Dean, who may assess additional penalties.