Grade appeal for retired professor

[jerseyjay]

If I understand correctly, a student failed a class because they didn't turn in the work, and then claimed that they had turned in the work late. The professor says they didn't turn in the work. It seems to me in this case it is up to the student to provide evidence they turned in the work. If this meant doing the work in class or in the professor's office, etc., then it would mean being exact about when they did this. (Although it would be strange for a professor to forget this so recently.) I am not sure what there is to involve the professor.

If the student wants to turn in the work late (i.e., now or in the future), I think you have two options. You can ask the original professor whether they would accept the late work and if they want to grade it. (One recently retired professor in my department is still grading final exams from last semester that were taken late.) Or you can make an executive decision and decide whether to accept the work and grade it (or find another faculty member to grade it if you don't feel competent). It would be a courtesy to inform the original professor in this case. 

Since this is last semester, I doubt the retired professor is unreachable. Presumably, they left contact information because there are always odds and ends that need to be taken care of. Since we are only a few semesters past last semester, I doubt this would be too burdensome. If there are many such requests, they are from too long ago, or the professor is no longer capable of doing this, that's a different story. I also think it would not be out of the realm of reality to deal with this yourself without involving the professor, although it might be courteous to inform them while noting that you are not asking them to do anything if they don't want to.

I doubt that this would been seen as damaging the professor's legacy, unless there is some implication that the professor did something wrong, which there doesn't seem to be.

[Caracal]

Hmm, is this an email thread where the student and professor were discussing extensions or is just a back and forth about the grade that took place after the class? If it's the latter, it makes sense that it would be confusing, those sorts of discussions are always a mess.

It's the latter, so, yeah, it's a mess. The professor mentions that an extension was granted without naming the date, but it's basically the student freaking out and the professor trying to gently explain what happened.

Can that be clarified? Because if it's a piece of physical work, it's also possible that the retiring/moving?

Not a physical artwork, but one of the missing assignments is some sort of in-class or timed essay. It seems that the student missed class that day and was granted some kind of extension to turn in the work via email (I think).

I don't want to involve the professor, but if I end up overturning the grade, I also don't want them to feel invalidated or as if this is some sort of comment on their legacy. It's not. They were a wonderful professor and colleague.

Yeah, I guess I would say that if the student has an email submitted before grades were in with the submitted assignment attached, you might need more from the professor. He really should have that-who deletes emails from their sent folder to their professor between semesters-and you're not going to overturn a grade on appeal without proof of some sort of mistake.

Given what you say about the professor, It seems rather unlikely that the student has a valid complaint. If a student sends me  email after grades are in that he did turn in some assignment-the first thing I'm going to do is go check my email and see if they are right and if the submission is there, I go look at the other conversations with the student to see if he turned it within the timeframe I gave them. If I'm not sure, I probably would just grade the thing and do a grade change. I don't want to have some grade appeal where I'm not completely sure I'm in the right.

On the other hand...its been a rough few semesters-and its always possible this guy just misplaced the student assignment and he's got some student writing him two days after he submitted his last grades and he just didn't have the bandwidth to manage it. I'd say if the student does have evidence of submission, just ask apologetically for all the email correspondence and promise that after that can take it from there. I'd like to think that if I'm retired, I don't have my ego wrapped up in this...

[mleok]

The burden of proof would be on the student to demonstrate that they turned in the assignment. If they present this, I would look at the assignment to see if it was sufficient quality that it would have improved their grade, oftentimes, the assignment is a sufficient mess that it wouldn't have helped, which would make the issue moot.