To the staff of International College of Health Sciences:

We the students of International College of Health Sciences are petitioning the imposition of not being offered the grade replacement practice for our Capstone semester.

The grade replacement practice may not be a school policy; however it has been an established tradition for every last one of our classes since the onset of our enrollment here at ICHS.

It was explained to us that the grade replacement ritual of substituting a lower midterm grade with the final exam grade was based on the understanding that a higher final grade was a demonstration that the information was learned and that progress, and growing has taken place.  

While we have endured many obstacles with ICHS, seen and unforeseen, we are still optimistic that something good will come from this. We do know that Capstone wasn’t initially a course that was graded but with our cohort its now graded. Being in the medical field we can almost assure you that “rapport” is a word that we are all familiar with. Upon enrolling at ICHS we didn’t feel as though we were making a mistake. We felt as though it would be a great choice for all of the working people and those single mothers/fathers and those who just felt online learning would be right for them. The staff was very informative and welcoming and we thought we built “rapport” with the faculty over the courses. With things changing in the blink of an eye we feel as though there is no “rapport” with the faculty. The only person we the students can actually count on is Danielle Chamberlain. You have students that are scared to answer truthfully on mandatory surveys (which isn’t ok )for fear of being retaliated against. This should be a time when any student should be able to talk/speak to his/her professor, dean or vice president with confidence and without fear. The students should be able to have “rapport with faculty when there is non. How can we teach this in clinicals when it’s not implemented with your students?  What about the core values outlined by ICHS? We thought this was a school for the students. The students who put in countless hours each week to study. The students who put their families last to put their ICHS studies first, the students who quit their job(s) to focus on their ICHS work, the students who have to work 2 jobs to try to keep up with their monthly payments. Please understand that this wasn’t written to be negative but in order to start at a common ground, we have to be upfront and truthful. Some students were able to manage to score the 74.5 to complete the Capstone course, then others fell short. We are not asking for any handouts, we aren’t asking for any extra credit assignments. We are simply asking you to consider re-implementing the grade replacement practice as it was throughout the other courses as well as to allow students who had difficulties during the last exam through no fault of their own to have a fair chance of completing the Capstone course and to allow the ones who would like to re-take exam 1/2 to have a chance to do that.