Maintaining Academic Honesty
Each of the three elements of the academic community—students, staff, and faculty— carries part of the responsibility for maintaining academic honesty. Every case of academic dishonesty, no matter how minor the infraction, must be reported to the Associate Dean of the College before a grade is determined.
Members of the faculty have a clear professional responsibility to minimize the opportunities for academic dishonesty. To meet this responsibility, the College Council has voted (November 11, 1981) to observe the following practices:
A. The instructor or a faculty colleague should actively monitor all exams, including make-ups and exams given early. Administrative assistants, student assistants, and other staff members should not be asked to give or monitor exams, with the exception of the staff in the Proctoring Center and those traveling with students for athletics or other approved trips.
B. Instructors should not leave the classroom during examinations.
C. Students should bring to the classroom only those materials necessary for taking the examination. All other books, notes and materials should be left outside the classroom, or in a common location within the room, including cell phones and smart watches.
D. Students should be separated and dispersed throughout the classroom as much as possible. If the instructor anticipates that the scheduled room will be too small to assure adequate dispersal, the instructor may contact the Registrar about the possibility of alternate arrangements.
E. Students ordinarily should not be permitted to leave the classroom during an assessment, unless it is administered in distinct parts that allow the student to take a break between having
access to those different parts. In cases where it is clearly necessary for a student to leave the room, the student should leave individually and the instructor should take reasonable precautions to prevent access to test-related materials.
F. Instructors with multiple sections of the same course should make separate examinations.
G. Students taking earlier exams or make-up exams should be given exams different from those given to the regular class.
H. Instructors should check footnotes and references. For this task, instructors may use Turnitin.com, which reports internet sites containing material that corresponds to identified passages in a submitted paper.
I. Instructors should vary topics of written assignments to minimize the use of previously written papers. Students should not use the same or substantially the same material in different courses without the prior approval of both instructors.
J. Instructors should repeatedly emphasize the proper referencing of sources, recognizing that the style of referencing varies among academic disciplines. Instructors should provide resources to students who may need to learn or to refresh their understanding of guidelines for quoting, paraphrasing, and acknowledging other’s work.