Press Release Archives

Policies and Procedures

Early College Start students are required to follow all SACC policies and procedures with regard to conduct and academic standards and to abide by SACC’s Student Rights and Responsibilities as found in the Student Handbook. Some policies and procedures that may affect you are:

Information disclosure
You are covered under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), which prohibits SACC from disclosing information to anyone, including parents, without your written consent.

Required attendance
You are required to abide by SouthArk’s Attendance Policy, as outlined in SouthArk’s Student Handbook. Failure to abide by this policy could result in your being dropped from a class with a grade of “F” or “WE.”

Withdrawing from class
You may withdraw from a SACC class after the semester has started, but you must do so with permission from your high school counselor. Withdrawing from a class could result in a class schedule change for you on your high school campus. Following approval from your high school guidance counselor, you must also officially withdraw from SouthArk following the guidelines in the Student Handbook. Students who fail to officially withdraw will receive a failing or incomplete grade in the course on their college transcript.

Class Attendance Policy
Students are expected to attend all classes in which they are enrolled. If a student is absent from a class session, it is the student’s responsibility to make arrangements to complete or make up any work missed. No makeup work for missed classes will be allowed without the approval of the instructor. Students who enroll late must assume all responsibility for work missed. Classes not attended as a result of late enrollment may be counted as excessive absences. Students not attending the entire class period may be counted absent for that period.

An instructor may drop students with a grade of “F” or “WE” if students have been absent for an excessive number of days. Warning letters will be sent to the students advising them of the consequences of non-attendance and urging them to contact their instructors immediately. Excessive absences are defined as follows:

Scheduled Absences
Scheduled absences are those that occur because of college-related activities or as a result of summons to jury duty or military duty. Classes missed as the result of scheduled absences will not be counted as excessive absences. Makeup work for scheduled absences will be at the discretion of the instructor.

Withdrawal for Excessive Absences
Instructors initiate a withdrawal for excessive absences by notifying the appropriate Division Chair that a student has excessive absences in a class. The Division Chair notifies that student of the consequences of not attending class and urges him/her to contact his/her instructor immediately. If the student does not contact his/her instructor within one week, the instructor may notify the Registrar that the student is to be withdrawn from the class because of excessive absences and is to be assigned a grade of “WE” in accordance with South Arkansas Community College’s attendance policy. The instructor may not readmit students who have been dropped from class because of excessive absences to class.

Academic Honesty Policy
Students enrolled at South Arkansas Community College are expected at all times to uphold standards of honesty. Students are expected to perform honestly and to work in every way possible to eliminate academic dishonesty. Academic dishonesty includes cheating and plagiarism, which are defined as follows:

Cheating is an attempt to deceive the instructor in his/her effort to evaluate fairly an academic exercise. Cheating includes copying another student’s homework, class work, or required project (in whole or in part) and/or presenting another’s work as the student’s own. Cheating also includes giving, receiving, offering and/or soliciting information on a quiz, test or examination.

Plagiarism is the copying of any published work such as books, magazines, audiovisual programs, electronic media, and films or copying the theme or manuscript of another student. It is plagiarism when one uses direct quotations without proper credit or when one uses the ideas of another without giving proper credit. When three or more consecutive words are borrowed, the borrowing should be recognized by the use of quotation marks and proper parenthetical and bibliographic notations.

If upon investigation the instructor determines that the student is guilty of cheating or plagiarism, the following penalties will apply:

The student will receive a penalty of no less than a zero on the work in question.
The instructor will submit a written report of the incident to the VPAA/SS.
The VPAA/SS will determine whether further disciplinary action will be taken.

Changing a Schedule/ Dropping and Adding Courses
Courses may be added until the last day of late registration as shown in the academic calendar. Students cannot add courses after the sixth day of the semester. Courses that are dropped on or before the eleventh class day are not recorded on the student’s permanent record. After the eleventh day, students who drop from class will receive a grade of “W” unless previously administratively withdrawn because of excessive absences. The last day to drop a class is during the week preceding final exams. The specific date for each term is published in the academic calendar.

To add a course in person, the student must: