Academic Affairs

University of Illinois at Chicago

Doctor of Pharmacy Program

Student Travel Guidelines

2011

Eligibility

1. For students to be eligible for special accommodations for travel to off-campus professional and/or association meetings, they must be in good academic standing, as defined by a grade point average (GPA) ≥2.0 in core curriculum courses.

Priority

2. Priority for off-campus meetings should be given to the following students: those giving presentations, national competition participants, chapter delegates, chapter executive board members, those serving on committees, and those nominated/running for a national or regional office.

3. Because Legislative Day is scheduled during a school day, faculty members are requested to make reasonable accommodations for students desiring to attend. Legislative Day affords students the opportunity to present pharmacy positions to legislative and constitutional officers and hear from them on critical issues, some of which may directly impact the College.

Process

4. A student representative delegated by each respective organization, will be responsible for compiling a list of students attending meetings and faculty member(s) responsible for reviewing the written reflection (see number 5 below). The organization’s faculty advisor will be responsible for reviewing this list and approving individual student attendance and participation at the professional meeting.

5. The list of students, approved by the organization’s faculty advisor, must then be submitted to the Associate Dean, Office of Student Affairs (OSA) for GPA verification no later than 2 weeks from the start of the semester in which the meeting is convened. Accommodations to the previous statement may be considered for the following situations: students presenting posters, or students participating in competitions. Once verified through OSA, the list must be disseminated to the course coordinators and the College Advancement Office. Failure to comply will result in a lack of the aforementioned accommodations.  The student organizational representative, acting as a liaison between the organization and the faculty will organize, though not necessarily execute, the dissemination of the approved list of students to course coordinators.

6. Students are expected to make travel plans that minimize absence from classes. In the event that class(es) must be missed, the students will work with the course coordinator(s) in an effort to make reasonable make-up arrangements. Although course coordinators will work with the students to accommodate them, these arrangements are at the discretion of the course coordinator and there is no guarantee that a satisfactory solution will be reached, particularly if students fail to make arrangements in advance as described above.

7. Students are expected to submit electronically a written reflection describing their involvement and experiences at the professional meeting to either the organization’s faculty advisor or the students’ personal faculty advisor as indicated on the compiled list (see number 2 above).
8. For students requesting accommodations for attendance at more than 1 meeting during a given semester, the student, together with the organizational faculty advisor, the student’s personal faculty advisor, or both should justify that the absence/meeting participation is in the student’s best interests.

Implementation

9. These guidelines for student attendance at off-campus meetings will be incorporated into the course syllabi for all courses in the professional curriculum.