Academic Misconduct
The university may discipline a student for academic misconduct which is defined as any activity which tends to undermine the academic integrity of the institution. Academic misconduct may involve human, hard-copy, or electronic resources. Policies of academic misconduct apply to all course-, department-, school-, and university-related activities; including field trips, conferences, performances, and sports activities off-campus, exams outside of a specific course structure (such as entrance exams or auditions, theses and master's exams, and doctoral qualifying exams and dissertations), and research work outside of a specific course structure (such as lab experiments, data collection, service learning, and collaborative research projects). Academic misconduct includes, but is not limited to, the following:
Cheating
- A student must not use or attempt to use unauthorized assistance, materials, information, or study aids in any academic exercise including, but not limited to, the following:
- A student must not use external assistance on any "in-class" or "take-home" examination, unless the instructor specifically has authorized external assistance. This prohibition includes, but is not limited to, the use of tutors, books, notes, calculators, computers, and wireless communication devices.
- A student must not use another person as a substitute in the taking of an examination or quiz.
- A student must not steal examinations or other course materials including, but not limited to, physical copies and photographic or electronic images.
- A student must not allow others to conduct research or to prepare work for him or her without advance authorization from the instructor to whom the work is being submitted. Under this prohibition, a student must not make any unauthorized use of materials obtained from commercial term paper companies or from files of papers prepared by other persons.
- A student must not collaborate with other persons on a particular project and submit a copy of a written report which is represented explicitly or implicitly as the student's individual work.
- A student must not use any unauthorized assistance in a laboratory, at a computer terminal, or on fieldwork.
- A student must not submit substantial portions of the same academic work for credit or honors more than once without permission of the instructor to whom the work is being submitted.
- A student must not alter a grade or score in any way.
Fabrication
A student must not falsify or invent any information or data in an academic exercise including, but not limited to, records or reports, laboratory results, and citations to the sources of information.
Plagiarism
- A student must not submit work that reproduces ideas, words, or statements of another person without appropriate acknowledgment. A student must give credit to the originality of others and acknowledge an indebtedness whenever he or she does any of the following:
- Quotes another person's actual words, either oral or written;
- Paraphrases another person's words, either oral or written;
- Uses another person's idea, opinion, or theory; or
- Borrows facts, statistics, or other illustrative material, unless the information is common knowledge.
Interference
- A student must not steal, change, destroy, or impede another student's work. Impeding another student's work includes, but is not limited to, the theft, defacement, or mutilation of resources so as to deprive others of the information they contain.
- A student must not give or offer a bribe, promise favors, or make threats with the intention of affecting a grade or the evaluation of academic performance.
Violation of Course Rules
A student must not violate course rules as established by a course syllabus, verbal or written instructions, or the course materials which are rationally related to the content of the course or to the enhancement of the learning process in the course.
Facilitating Academic Dishonesty
A student must not intentionally or knowingly help, or attempt to help, another student commit an act of academic misconduct, nor allow another student to use his or her work or resources to commit an act of misconduct.