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Academic Honesty

Policy Changes For Instructors

ATTENTION: OUR ACADEMIC HONESTY POLICY HAS CHANGED
This is the current policy as of Fall 2015.
Need the old policy? Applies to classes taken during and before Summer 2015.


The following is a very concise summary of key changes only. Please refer to the policy document for complete information.

For all examinations, all students will be required to write and sign an Honor Pledge: "I affirm that I will not give or receive any unauthorized help on this exam, and that all work will be my own." Instructors may require Honor Pledges on other graded assignments, including group work. Resources to implement the honor pledge in courses are found here.

All course instructors must include an academic honesty statement on each course syllabus or on the course website indicating how the College policy applies in the course (examples here), and should call attention to it in the first two weeks of the course. Any discipline-specific or unique guidelines for academic honesty on an assignment, such as proper citation or inappropriate collaboration, should be clearly communicated to students. Resources for instructors on encouraging academic honesty are found here.

Membership on the Board on Academic Honesty is now open to all full time tenured, tenure-track and non-tenure track faculty. Service on the Board is limited to no more than two four-year terms.

Several new violations are defined in the Policy, and new categories of violations guide the determination of penalties.

There are three options for instructors to report suspected academic dishonesty: a Instructor Resolution Warning Letter (used only for undergraduates suspected of improper academic conduct that is minor and due to inexperience; warning letters address such conduct as a learning opportunity for students, rather than a policy violation), an Instructor Resolution With Penalty (previously the Short Form), and a Board Resolution (previously the Long Form). Guidelines for how to complete each are available here.

Graduate students will now be covered under the College Academic Honesty Policy for suspected academic dishonesty in coursework (misconduct in sponsored research is covered under federal guidelines governing the funding agency). For minor violations, Instructor Resolution With Penalty may be used at the instructor's discretion; all other cases must go through Board Resolution.

Instructors may check whether a student has a prior finding of responsibility for academic dishonesty for making hiring or awards decisions through a waiver form. The student must sign the waiver, or no information will be released. When a warning letter is the only report on file, it will not be reported.  For more detail, see Section XV.C.