Grade Grievance Statement

Grade Grievance Statement
To the Associate Chair of Undergraduate Studies of the Chemistry Department and to Whom It May Concern:
I was part of the CHEM 455 Class (Special Topics in Biochemistry - Nucleic Acids) taught by professor Kristin Koutmou in Fall 2017, and I’m writing today to submit my statement for a grade grievance. I would like to present this grievance because I believe the evaluation process of my grades and the class assessment did not represent my work, circumstances and conditions I have been through, and didn’t respect the syllabus which is the contract between the teacher and students during the semester. I really thought very hard about submitting this grievance, and I consulted my both advisors in the academic center,

In this segment, I suffered from multiple issues. I didn’t know anyone in the class, so the partner was randomly chosen within the class. The first presentation in the class was supposed to be given after five weeks of the start of the semester, which theoretically provides every group with five weeks to prepare for the presentation. I started to plan for this presentation four weeks ahead, and I developed a four-week plan; however, I had enormous difficulties bringing my partner to the table with me. Therefore, I was keeping the professor updated on this tough and desperate situation. In fact, my partner was always not ready for each meeting to discuss our presenting topic. I did the vast majority of the research for the group project, which includes reading and understanding eight review paper about our topic. I had to lose the time while the meeting to explain the presentation paper that he was supposed to prepare ahead. I meet the professor that has a specialty in the topic that we are presenting to answer all the questions and I shared all the notes and the information with my partner. I also share with him a 15-page summary article that I wrote about the topic that we are presenting. In addition, my partner didn’t follow the four weeks plan we put, and he wasn’t ready even three days before the presentation, which I considered according to the plan a day of a very final review for practicing presenting. Due to this reason and due to this presentation being a considerable portion of my grade, I took a risky decision to miss a class before the presentation (11/27/2017), and I will talk about that class in the participation section. Although the professor said that his grade and work would not affect my grade, however, it did affect which I was expecting despite what the professor stated. I accepted the fact that the presentation in whole and as one piece did not look good. That’s why I took the