Information Regarding Your Students
Add/Drop Period, Registration, Withdrawals from Class, and Late Papers
Georgetown Law permits students to add and drop courses from their schedules through the first week of classes each semester. Be sure to update your class list after the Add/Drop period and again during the following month. Georgetown Law employs a computer registration system that we believe is the most equitable method of allocating class seats. If you would like to expand your class size to accommodate more students from the waitlist, please contact your Law Center liaison before or during the Add/Drop period, and before discussing this with students. Please note that individual students cannot be guaranteed seats in a class. Students are offered newly added seats based upon their standing on the waitlist. Please refer all student registration questions or requests to the Office of the Registrar.
Unless you opt out of the default rule, students may withdraw from a semester-long course up to and including the last day of classes, as published in the Student Handbook of Academic Policies. Under the withdrawal rule, which the faculty adopted in April 2015, the deadline for when students can withdraw from a course is not linked to whether students have submitted work for grading. The default rule allows students in semester-long courses to withdraw up to and including the last day of classes for the semester with an advisor’s approval. The last day of classes is December 3, 2016 for Fall courses, and April 29, 2017 for Spring courses. Faculty may opt out of this policy and require a student to obtain their permission to withdraw. Please be sure to remove any warnings regarding the old “work submitted for grading” withdrawal deadline unless you plan to opt out of the new rules. The deadline to withdraw from a mini-course is the last day of class for the course (e.g., if you are teaching a bookend course that ends on September 27, the last day a student may withdraw is September 27). If you already require professor permission to enroll, or teach a practicum, externship or clinic, your existing rules apply (typically requiring additional signatures and/or compelling circumstances). Students need permission from an academic advisor to withdraw from a course. Please tell students who wish to enroll in or withdraw from your course to visit the Registrar’s webpage, which provides instructions.
After the last day of classes, students are expected to complete all course requirements. Students who fail to complete course requirements may receive an “Administrative Fail” (AF) for the course. Note that any paper that is handed in late in your class, either after the original deadline or after any extension you grant, will be penalized according to your own penalty system. Absent an extension approved by the Associate Dean, a student who submits a paper after the maximum faculty-approved extension deadline (as published on the Registrar’s webpage) will receive an AF in the seminar. If you assign a final paper, please clearly outline how late papers will be treated in your syllabus.
Office Hours/Contact with Students
For Adjunct Faculty: Georgetown Law encourages adjunct faculty members to confer with students outside of class to the extent possible. As a meeting place, we suggest one of the Adjunct Faculty offices. The Faculty Lounge in 520 McDonough Hall also may be available in the evening. The study group rooms in the Williams Law Library or the Wolff Reading Room also provide excellent meeting rooms. To reserve one of these spaces, please see more information here.
For Visiting Faculty: Georgetown Law encourages faculty members to confer with students outside of class to the extent possible. Please post your office hours outside the door to your office and include this information in your syllabus.
Students Auditing Courses
It is Georgetown Law’s policy that enrolled degree students may audit additional classes, with the permission of the professor. Faculty members should withhold permission to audit when the classroom is full or where the presence of auditors would be detrimental to the classroom experience of enrolled students. Auditors receive no transcript notation of their attendance in class; their attendance is simply for their own interest and education. Note: Degree-seeking auditors are not permitted to sit for exams or submit papers. In the case of clinical fellows, faculty should contact their Law Center liaison to discuss the administration of these requests. From time to time, you may get requests from co-workers or colleagues who would like to sit in on your course. While we have no objection to an occasional guest in your class, those who attend a class regularly must be enrolled (on a seat-available basis) and pay the usual per-credit fee.