Academic Conduct

Faculty members are expected to maintain the following standards in the context of academic conduct:

• To inform and instruct students about the procedures, standards of research, and documentation required to complete work in a particular course or in the context of a particular discipline.
• To take practical steps to prevent and detect cheating.
• To report suspected academic misconduct to the Dean of Students office for consideration by the Academic Conduct Committee of the University Senate.
• To present evidence of plagiarism, cheating on exams or lab reports, falsification of records, or other forms of academic misconduct before the Academic Conduct Committee.

Students are expected to abide by the following standards in the context of academic conduct:

• To be aware of and practice the standards of honest scholarship.
• To follow faculty instructions regarding exams and assignments (including group assignments) to avoid inadvertent misrepresentation of work.
• To be certain that special rules regarding documentation of term papers, examination procedures, use of computer-based information and programs, etc., are clearly understood.
• If a student believes that practices by a faculty member are conducive to cheating, he or she may convey this information to the faculty member, the chairperson of the department, or any member of the Academic Conduct Committee (either directly or through the Dean of Students office).

This includes, but is not limited to, the following when not authorized by the instructor: the use of any assistance or materials such as books and/or notes, acquiring exams or any other academic materials, the use of any other sources in writing drafts, papers, preparing reports, solving problems, works completed for a past or concurrent course, completing homework or carrying out other assignments. No student shall copy from someone else’s work or help someone else copy work or substitute another's work as one's own. No student shall engage in any behavior specifically prohibited by an instructor in the course syllabus or class discussion.

Plagiarism is using someone else’s work or ideas without giving that person credit. By doing this, a student is, in effect, claiming credit for someone else’s thinking. This can occur in drafts, papers and oral presentations. Whether the student has read or heard the information used, the student must document the source of information. When dealing with written sources, a clear distinction should be made between quotations, which reproduce information from the source word-for-word within quotation marks, and paraphrases, which digest the source of information and produce it in the student’s own words. Both direct quotations and paraphrases must be documented. Even if a student rephrases, condenses or selects from another person’s work, the ideas are still the other person’s and failure to give credit constitutes misrepresentation of the student’s actual work and plagiarism of another’s ideas. Buying a paper or using information from the Internet without attribution and handing it in as one’s own work is plagiarism.

by falsifying data or submitting data not based on the student’s own work.

Altering records or providing misinformation regarding one’s credentials.

This is the unauthorized interaction with anyone in the fulfillment of academic requirements and applies to in-class or take-home coursework. Individual (unaided) work on exams, lab reports, homework, computer assignments and documentation of sources is expected unless the instructor specifically states in the syllabus or verbally that it is not necessary. Collaboration can also include calculating homework problems with another person, having another person help to rewrite a paper, sharing information/sources with others and checking coursework with others.

When an instructor assigns coursework, the instructor intends that work to be completed for his or her course only. Work that students have completed for a course taken in the past, or may be completing for a concurrent course, must not be submitted in both courses unless they receive permission to do so from both instructors.