English 2327 Due Dates and Deadlines

Fall 2011 

 

 

Online Orientation:  Orientation Quiz must be emailed to andreac@austincc.edu by 6:00 p.m. on Tuesday, August 30.  Students who miss this deadline will be automatically withdrawn from class by the instructor.

 

 

Prerequisite Proof:  Your instructor must receive your proof of having completed the course prerequisite by Monday, September 19.  Students who miss this deadline will be automatically withdrawn from class, and you will not be eligible to receive a refund.  No prerequisite proofs will be accepted via fax.    Please scan and email your prerequisite proof to andreac@austincc.edu or mail a copy to the following address:

            Professor Andrea Clark

            Austin Community College

            1555 Cypress Creek Rd.

            Cedar Park, TX  78613

If you send your prerequisite proof via regular mail rather than email, please email me when you mail it so that I can make certain I that I receive it.  ACC has a very large faculty and staff and many, many mailboxes in the mail room at each campus.  I sometimes find items in my mailbox that were addressed to other employees, so I suspect that sometimes my own mail is inadvertently placed in the wrong mailbox.  Therefore, I want to make certain I receive all your prerequisite proofs..

 

 

Reading Assignments and Course Calendar

 

Deadlines for completing the two exams in the course are given in the table below; please note that these deadlines will be strictly enforced.  There are no deadlines for completing the reading assignments,

but I have provided a recommended schedule for their completion.  It would be wise to complete each reading assignment in about one week to give yourself plenty of time to review for and take the exams. 

It would also be smart not to put off taking the exams until the last possible minute on the testing deadline.  Every semester I get calls from students who do this, and disaster strikes in their lives at the most

inopportune time imaginable.  Their cars break down, they lost their jobs, their elderly relatives pass away, their children become seriously ill, their pets have to be rushed to the emergency vet hospital,

and their spouses unexpectedly file for divorce.  I do not doubt that these misfortunes invariably occur on precisely the day I set as the deadline for taking an exam.  However, I do not give students extensions because I have given them plenty of time in which to complete the exam BEFORE the final deadline.  Don’t take a risk and put off taking the tests until the last possible moment.  You never know but what a catastrophe will strike you at precisely that time!

 

Tuesday, August 30

Online orientation deadline

August 22--September 2

Reading Assignment 1  

September 3--14

Reading Assignment 2 

September 15-26

Reading Assignment 3 

Monday, September 19

Course prerequisite proof deadline

Friday, September 23

Essay questions for midterm exam will be posted on Blackboard assignments link, just below reading assignments.

September 27—October 2

Review for objective part of midterm exam and work on answers to essay part of midterm exam.

Monday, October 3

Deadline for taking objective part of midterm exam in one of the ACC Testing Centers. You do not need a permit to take it.

Exams may NOT be taken in Fredericksburg or San Marcos testing centers; they may be taken in the testing center of any other ACC campus.*

Wednesday, October 5

Deadline for emailing the essay part of midterm exam to andreac@austincc.edu by 11:00 p.m.  I will not accept your essays via fax; you must email them.

Any student who does not meet the deadline for completing both parts of the mid-term exam will be withdrawn from the class.

October 6--17

Reading Assignment 4

October 18--29

Reading Assignment 5

October 30—November 11

Reading Assignment 6

Friday, November 11

Essay questions for final exam will be posted on Blackboard assignments link, just below reading assignments.

November 12--29

Review for objective part of final exam and work on answers to essay part of final exam.

Tuesday, November 29

Deadline for taking objective part of final exam in one of the ACC Testing Centers. You do not need a permit to take it.

Exams may NOT be taken in Fredericksburg or San Marcos testing centers; they may be taken in the testing center of any other ACC campus.*

All ACC campuses will be closed for the Thanksgiving holidays Thursday, November 24 - Sunday, November 27.  You may not take exams on these four days.

Thursday, December 1

Deadline for emailing answers to essay part of final exam to andreac@austincc.edu by 11:00 p.m. I will not accept your essays via fax; you must email them.

Any student who does not meet the deadline for completing both parts of the final exam will earn a final grade of “F” in the class.

 

*I do not put my exam in the Fredericksburg or San Marcos testing centers because these campuses are so far out that they do not have ACC intercampus mail delivery.  Employees at these campuses

must go to the U.S. Post Office in these towns and send exams to us via regular mail.  This is a hassle for the employees, and it can take weeks for us to receive the exams.  Once I actually received a

student’s exam from one of these testing centers after the semester was over.  The student was unable to drive to my campus before I had to turn in my grades, so I had to give her an “incomplete” in the course and turn her grade in the next semester.  I will never allow this to happen to one of my students again!

           

Some students may ask why the deadlines come so early.  I am setting the deadlines early in order to give myself plenty of time to grade your tests.  All the classes I teach require a great deal of grading time at the end of the semester, and I want to have plenty of time to do justice to your papers and post your grades on ACConline by the last day of the semester.  It can take as long as a full week for me to receive tests from some testing centers.  Sometimes the testing centers even misfile or misplace tests, and when I have to track these down, it takes even longer. 

 

The testing center will give you a receipt that shows your score on each objective test you take there.  Make certain you keep this receipt!  On a few occasions, I have had to ask students to fax me that receipt as evidence of their test scores when the testing centers misplaced their tests and were unable to find them by the end of the semester.  

  

 

ACC Testing Centers’ Policies, Locations, and Hours

 

All ACC students except those registered with the Office of Students with Disabilities must take the midterm and final exams in the testing centers of any ACC campus except Fredericksburg and San Marcos.  I do not send exams or allow anyone except OSD students to test at any other locations.  For hours and locations of all ACC testing centers, please click this link:  ACC Academic Testing Center Website.  Although their hours are posted their web site, I highly recommend that you telephone the center at which you intend to take the test early on the day you wish to take it to verify that its posted hours are correct.  Testing centers sometimes have to modify their hours due to emergencies. 

 

 

Testing Arrangements for OSD Students

 

OSD students must also complete their exams by these same deadlines.  If you are registered with the ACC Office of Students with Disabilities, please contact the OSD office at the campus where you wish to take the objective part of these exams before the end of the second week of the semester to schedule the mid-term and final exams for this course and to find out who will administer them. You must email me the name and phone number of that person and the campus at which he or she works two weeks before the testing deadline so that I can send him or her your test.  If you know the email address of that person, please address a CC copy of the same message you send me to that person so I will have his or her email address.  You may fax your accommodations letter to me at 512-223-2046 or ask your OSD counselor to send it to me at CYP via campus mail.  I cannot send the OSD Office your exams if you have not sent me your accommodations letter.

 

 

All students except OSD students must take the objective part of both exams in an ACC Testing Center.  I will not send exams or allow anyone except OSD students to test anywhere else.  In the past, I have attempted to accommodate students by sending tests to other colleges and U.S. military bases.  They did not always get students’ tests to me on time, and in some cases I never received them at all, so I will not consider doing this again.