What does USU mean by academic participation for Federal Aid recipients?

Your federal grants may need to be reduced if you withdraw from a course and USU cannot verify that you ever participated academically. Academic participation means any active engagement in coursework: attending class, submitting an assignment, taking a quiz, or similar activity. If we cannot document your participation, we are required to reduce your grant and will contact you to explain your options and next steps.

Your federal grant amounts are based on your enrollment after the last day to add classes. If that enrollment changes:

  • We will check whether you participated academically in any courses you are no longer enrolled in.
  • We are required to return any aid you received for courses where we cannot confirm participation.

We document your academic participation by:

  • Reviewing your course activity in Canvas to see if you engaged with the coursework. If we can confirm participation, we will note it in your file.
  • Reaching out to your instructor if needed. If they confirm your participation, that response is saved to your file.

If we cannot confirm your participation, we will email you within two weeks to ask for any documentation that shows you were academically engaged in the course.

How Do I Document Academic Participation?

Contact our office within two weeks of a dropped or failed course to submit any of the documentation outlined below.

Participation can be confirmed with documentation that shows one of the following:

  • Attendance at an in-person class or class activity
  • A graded assignment, quiz, or test
  • Canvas grade notification emails showing your name, course, assignment, and grade
  • Screenshots of the Canvas Grades page showing your name, course, and completed assignment grades
  • Completion of an interactive tutorial
  • Attendance at a required study group
  • A documented interaction with your instructor about academic matters, such as an email exchange
  • Your instructor can email our office directly to confirm your participation. Please do not forward their reply; it must come from them directly. Ask them to include your full name and USU A-number in their message.

Participation does not mean:

  • Logging into Canvas without any further academic engagement or interaction
  • Participating in academic counseling or advisement
  • Living in institutional housing or using a meal plan
  • Passively reviewing course materials such as watching lectures, reviewing the syllabus, or taking notes without submitting work or interacting with your instructor

What Happens If Participation Cannot Be Confirmed?

Federal aid is provisional. If you do not pass or complete a course, we are required to determine whether you participated academically. If we cannot confirm that you did, your federal grant may be reduced or reversed, typically within two to three weeks of your withdrawal or failing grade being posted. This may create a balance on your student account that you will be responsible for paying.

Dropped courses

  • Federal aid is not intended to cover courses you try on a trial basis. If you drop a course during the refund period, which is the first 20% of the term or session, your federal grants generally cannot be reinstated for that course.
  • If you need to swap courses during the refund period, we strongly recommend adding the new course before dropping the old one, or doing both on the same day, to protect your aid eligibility.

Classes that have not started yet

  • If you drop a class before it was scheduled to start, including mid-semester courses that have not begun yet, you will not be able to keep the financial aid that was intended to cover that course.

Online courses

Online-only classes have stricter provisions. Simply logging into a course, watching lectures, taking notes, or reviewing the syllabus does not meet federal academic participation requirements for online courses. If you can document any of the following activities, you should be able to confirm your participation.

  • Submitting an assignment
  • Taking a quiz or test
  • Participating in an interactive tutorial
  • Attending a required study group
  • Interacting with an instructor about academic matters

Summer Courses

  • Your federal Pell Grant may increase or decrease based on your enrollment through the last day to add of your final or latest session.
  • If you are enrolled in the second seven-week session, dropping classes from the first or general session may result in changes to your federal grant. In this case, documenting participation is not enough. Some or all of the grant may need to be repaid.

Complete Withdrawal

  • If you completely withdraw from all your courses, we are required to calculate how much federal aid you earned based on your last documented date of participation. You may owe back some or all of your aid for the portion of the semester you did not complete.
  • If you fail all of your courses, you must have documented participation in at least one course to keep any portion of your federal loan disbursement.

Repaying your Aid

If this applies to you, please repay the balance as soon as possible or make payment arrangements with the Bursar's Office.

Any federal Pell Grant that is returned may be available to you again in a future semester, as long as you remain eligible.

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