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The final responsibility for fulfilling the requirements of a course syllabus in each class, for meeting all program/degree requirements, and for complying with College regulations and procedures rests with the student. The College of Mount St. Joseph provides academic advising. Students should consult with their academic advisor when selecting courses or making adjustments in their course schedule. Students are expected to attend advising appointments having prepared a tentative schedule of classes.
Attendance
Students are expected to attend classes regularly. They must meet the requirements of the course as set by the instructor and stated in the course syllabus. Attendance at all class sessions is required in accelerated evening and weekend courses.
Academic Honesty
Frequent reports in today’s media indicate that a culture of plagiarism and other dishonesty exists in our society. New technologies combine with old temptations to increase the pressures against acting honestly in academic work.
It is imperative then, that we as a college community value intellectual and moral integrity and promote honesty in work and school as a way to succeed. We must therefore identify and penalize all violations of our shared trust as violations of the principles that inspire our institution and bind us together.
Imperatives for Honesty: Our society and the academic community promote many reasons for intellectual honesty:
- Moral: Judaeo-Christian principles underlying our moral beliefs forbid theft of others’ style and material.
- Academic: The ultimate goal of the learning experience is that one develops his or her own synthesis of knowledge, based on seriously reading and understanding the work of others; the work of others must therefore be meticulously documented as the basis for one’s own; plagiarism, the dishonest use of others’ work, invalidates the meaning of the academic experience.
- Legal: Western law protects the owner of the style and the material used by another.
- Professional: Professional ethics demand respect for the documented labor of others.
Faculty and students have the responsibility of behaving honestly in whatever ways and by whatever means they use and share information.
Honesty must be the foundation of our communication in written, spoken, artistic, scientific, symbolic, and cybernetic ways:
- Written: Essays, research papers, reports, case studies, statistical analyses, poetry, fiction, drama;
- Spoken: Speeches, class discussions, panel discussions;
- Artistic: Paintings, photographs, cartoons, musical compositions;
- Scientific: Field research, research projects, lab reports, lab examinations;
- Symbolic: Mathematical expressions, graphs, tables;
- Cybernetic: Computer databases, files, records.
As with all other character traits, honesty must be consistent if it is to be part of the moral structure of our personalities.
Faculty, students and administrators must value honesty and want to encourage and develop it among their peers and throughout their college and social communities. In an academic community placing a premium on intellectual and moral integrity, students and faculty will take equal responsibility for bringing to light any incidents that violate the shared trust. Students and faculty will avoid allowing or actively participating in acts that violate the community trust (examples: faculty will investigate suspicious documentation; students will refuse requests to cooperate with cheating and plagiarism). So that we may all agree about what behaviors honesty includes, the following contexts are provided as examples.
- Honesty on examinations, tests and quizzes: The student who values integrity
- will prepare for and perform on all exams, tests and quizzes according to the professor’s directions and will consult the professor on any matters on which he or she is unsure;
- will perform on examinations, tests and quizzes using his or her knowledge and information and based on his or her own research and study efforts;
- will use during an exam only those aids that the instructor has specified and approved;
- will refuse to use crib notes, electronic devices including text messaging or instant messaging, have a substitute take an exam, give or receive unauthorized information prior to or during an exam, or alter answer sheets during test reviews.
- Honesty by actions: The student who values integrity
- will respectfully and punctually use public material (e.g., tapes, records, disks, books from the library or an academic department or the Consortium) that needs to be available and in usable condition for other students;
- will not make an unauthorized copy of restricted material without permission (e.g., hard copies, videotapes, software);
- will not provide work or materials for another student to copy and submit as his or her own.
- Honesty of student academic records: The student who values integrity
- will not alter or tamper with student records (e.g., transcripts, grade sheets, financial statements, references, etc.) which are the property of the College;
- will not alter or tamper with grades and assessments maintained by faculty in their records.
- Honesty on written, oral, computer, artistic, and scientific assignments: The student who values integrity
- will document all distinctive language, concepts, data, ideas, statistics, symbols, formulas, graphs, designs, and the like borrowed from published, printed, spoken, or broadcast sources whether these sources are public or private, copyrighted or uncopyrighted. Failure to document written/spoken/visual/symbolic communication, style or material is plagiarism – representing the words and/or images and/or symbols, style, and content of another as one’s own;
- will document his or her research meticulously according to acceptable standards and the professor’s prescribed format; will consult the professor or an appropriate resource (e.g., the Writing Center) on any indefinite matter. (The diligent student may and should consult any legitimate resource when doing a project, such as the Writing Center, about refining his or her writing or speaking style and about ethically using others’ material as part of that project.)
- will not substitute words/images/symbols from another’s work as one’s own and will not rearrange syntax of another’s written document as one’s own sentence structure;
- will not represent the visual or verbal organization of another’s work as one’s own;
- will compose an individual project, or his or her segment of a group project, wholly on his or her own and will not use any deceitful behavior whereby the work of another is represented as his or her own. These deceitful behaviors include ghost-written work, inappropriate collaboration, the use of an assignment for more than one class without the instructor’s permission, the submission of photocopies of others’ work as one’s own.
- Honesty in the use of computer databases and files: The student who values integrity
- will generate his or her own material and will refuse to copy other students’ disk files, databases and other electronically stored material;
- will properly cite and document all information derived from such reference sources as information retrieval services, computer bulletin boards, or CD ROM reference materials.
Students have a responsibility to comprehend and practice the honest academic behaviors that are stated and implied in this document without exception and to consult an appropriate professional resource in any case about which they are uncertain or unclear.
Procedure:
When an instructor has reason to believe that the academic honesty policy has been violated, the following steps will be followed:
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The instructor will notify the student that there is a concern related to academic honesty.
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The instructor will discuss with the student the reasons for this concern and provide the student with an opportunity to respond.
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If the instructor determines that a violation has occurred, then the instructor and the student will discuss the ilable actions before the instructor makes a final decision about the consequences. Possible actions could include:
- requiring the work to be redone;
- receiving a failing grade for the assignment;
- receiving a failing grade for the course or,
- the instructor, with the knowledge of the department chair, may recommend to the Chief Academic Officer one of the following: that the student be discontinued in the department; that the student be suspended from the College; that the student be dismissed from the College.
- The decision to be imposed will be clearly communicated in writing to the student.
- The student has the right to appeal the decision using the process described below.
Academic honesty would not be indicated on the student’s official record as reason for failing a course, suspension or dismissal.
Confidentiality will be maintained and respected throughout all stages of the process.
Academic Dishonesty Appeal Process
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If the student wishes to appeal the decision, within 15 working days he/she must send a written request to the department chairperson for a meeting with the chairperson and the instructor. The chairperson will convene the meeting with the instructor and the student and attempt to resolve the issues.
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Should the resolution be unsatisfactory to the student or the instructor, either party may submit a letter to the Chief Academic Officer (CAO) within ten working days of the meeting in Step 1 describing his/her basis for continuing the appeal. The request should include a description of prior attempts to resolve the issue and the reasons for continuing the appeal. The CAO will collect relevant information and meet with the instructor and student together or separately before making a final decision.
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The final decision made by the Chief Academic Officer or the designated administrator will be based on a review of Steps 1 and 2, materials that have been submitted and the process that has been followed. There is no further appeal.
No legal counsel will be present during the grade appeal process. The student may withdraw the appeal at any juncture by a written request to the department chairperson who will notify the Chief Academic Officer.
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