Class Attendance, Absences, and Regulations

Compliance with federal financial aid regulations requires faculty to keep attendance records for the purpose of determining the last date of attendance. When a student is absent for two consecutive class meetings, the faculty member will contact his or her dean. The dean will investigate to determine the appropriate action needed.

Any student who is enrolled in a course but has never engaged in academic activity by the end of the drop/add period for that specific section will be automatically dropped from the course.

A college or department or faculty member may, with approval from the Vice President for Academic Affairs, choose to implement an attendance policy which is stated in the course syllabus.

Student absences for university-sanctioned events are generally considered excused absences because they are supportive of the university program.  The exceptions to this policy are clinicals and student teaching internships.  When absences are excused, instructors must allow students to make up any work that has been missed.

Students are responsible for notifying their instructors, in advance, about absences from class due to participation in university-sanctioned events.  It is expected that faculty members will be notified as soon as reasonably possible about these absences.  In the case of last-minute notification of an absence due to a university-sanctioned event, a sincere effort will be made to excuse the absence, but excusal of the absence is not guaranteed.

Collaborative assignments impacting other classmates’ completion of course work pose a special challenge for this excused absence policy.  If an instructor and student cannot agree about whether a student’s absence to participate in a university-sanctioned event is to be excused, the instructor’s college dean will confer with the university official directing the university-sanctioned event to reach a decision.  It is possible in such cases that a student absence will not be excused even if it is caused by a university-sanctioned event.

Students wishing to appeal an instructor’s denial of an excused absence to participate in a university-sanctioned event are to contact the dean of the college offering the course.

Piedmont University does not permit children to accompany students to classes.  Children are also not permitted to remain unattended while on campus.