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Academic Integrity

Even though their top priority is promoting students' learning and achievement, professors must also enforce basic principles of academic integrity and civility. When students violate principles pertaining to cheating or plagiarizing and rules of etiquette that govern classroom conduct, the professor must intervene with sanctions for the violators and rewards for those who conform. Professors, too, should strive to comport themselves in an appropriate fashion. Links below address issues of academic integrity from both the student's side and the professor's side.


Suggestions for Reducing Untoward Behavior in Classes

Although surveys of faculty indicate that many tend to "look the other way" when they confront a student who cheats, plagiarizing, cheating, and gaining unfair advantages over other students is inconsistent with the fundamental purposes of higher education. Suggestions for reducing cheating include introducing a code of conduct and instituting control procedures during tests, For more information, please click here.


Honors Violations Centers for Academic Integrity
  • Plagiarism: The Center for Intellectual Property at UMUC offers extensive information about plagiarism, including the effectiveness of various "detection" methods.
  • CAI: : The Center for Academic Integrity provides a "forum to identify, affirm, and promote the values of academic integrity among students."
Professional Ethics Student-faculty Relationships
  • Academic Sexual Correctness. Dr. Barry Dank (1997), of California State University, "recognizes the need for sexual harassment rules in academe," but he "rejects the concept that consenting adult student-professor sexual/romantic relaionships fall under the rubrick of sexual harassment." This view point is described in more detail at his academic sexual correctness page.
  • Forbidden Love: Student-Professor Romances, by Barry M. Dank (California State University, Long Beach) and Joseph S. Fulda (New York City) examines these issues in detail. From the abstract: This paper "explores the history, sociology, and dynamics of a contemporary taboo: romances between students and faculty on college campuses. We show how the taboo has fed off unrelated notions such as sexual harassment and pedophilia, with the result that such romances have been pornographized and their participants--students and faculty alike--objectified."

Virginia Commonwealth University | Donelson R. Forsyth
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Date Last Modified: February 2002