Letters of recommendation

Letters of recommendation for undergraduate students

I am happy to write letters of recommendation to my MMS 200 advisees and to other students I have extensively mentored or supervised. Due to the distance and online nature of courses at UPOU and the sheer volume of students that I teach, it is only occasionally that I get to know a student well enough that I can write a letter of recommendation for scholarship, employment, or other purposes.  I would suggest that if you have another person in mind who has directly supervised and is more familiar with you and your work, please approach them.  If you have completed or are in the process of taking MMS 200a/200b, consider approaching your MMS 200 adviser for a recommendation letter.  

If you still wish to ask me for a letter of recommendation, please first read the following articles:

• How to Score a Reference from your Online Professor

• How to Land a Reference From an Online Instructor

• How Do I Get a Letter of Recommendation When I Attend an Online University?

If you wish to proceed with requesting a letter of recommendation from me, I would like to request that you do the following:

• Please make sure that you have been a student in one of my classes. I am unable to provide letters of recommendation for students I have never taught. 

• Due to the amount of work that I have on my hands, but also because I trust my students to know their own strengths and weaknesses, I am afraid that I must request that you draft the letter yourself and send the draft to me. 

• Specify what the deadline for the letter is.

• With the possible exception of students whose Special Projects or research projects I directly supervise, when you send me the draft of the letter, please include a reminder of your past performance. These could be copies of papers you have written, assignments you have completed, emails we have exchanged, or discussion forum posts you have contributed---basically anything that can serve as evidence that can support what the letter says---from a class in which you were my student. Please do not provide evidence from a class in which you were not my student.

• if possible, please make sure that I should be able to submit the letter directly to its reviewers and that I do not need to first send the letter to you. 

Please accept my apologies if I decline your request for a letter of recommendation, which I might do because I do not feel like I can write you the best letter, or because I have not had the opportunity to sufficiently supervise you or observe your work in class.