At Coe College, we expect academic integrity of all members of our community. Academic integrity assumes honesty about the nature of one’s work in all situations. Such honesty is at the heart of the educational enterprise and is a pre-condition for intellectual growth. Academic dishonesty is the willful attempt to misrepresent one’s work, cheat, plagiarize, or impede other students’ academic progress. Academic dishonesty interferes with the mission of the College and will be treated with the utmost seriousness as a violation of community standards.

Forms of Academic Dishonesty:

Cheating is the attempt to deceive an evaluator by claiming credit for work one has not done. It includes (but is not limited to) the use of unauthorized sources of information on in-class or take-home exams, or other assignments; copying from other students on exams, assignments, or lab reports; fabrication of data, research, quotations, or other information; and taking credit for collaborations to which one has not contributed.

Plagiarism is the use of someone else’s words or ideas without acknowledgement and, when intentional, is a form of academic dishonesty.

The unacknowledged use of words or ideas from any published or unpublished sources, including Internet resources or other student papers, constitutes plagiarism.

Plagiarism may occur intentionally or unintentionally through the omission of appropriate citations. Any ideas or information the student adopts from a source, whether or not directly quoted, must be acknowledged by specific reference in notes or the text. Any words or phrases that are taken from a source must be quoted and cited. Any paraphrase—the restatement of an idea in your own words—must be cited.

The methods of citation and documentation vary from discipline to discipline. Students are responsible for determining the appropriate method for any given assignment or, in the absence of a clearly stated protocol, using any accepted academic method. Guidelines can be found on the library website and in the Writing Center.

Other forms of academic dishonesty include (but are not limited to) deliberately impeding other students’ work and misuse of common academic property, in the libraries, labs, and elsewhere.

Sanctions:

Instructors have responsibility for determining whether academic dishonesty has occurred. Instructors shall proceed with sanctions accordingly. Any act of academic dishonesty that results in one of the sanctions below shall be detailed in a formal report filed with the Vice President of Academic Affairs.

Cases of unintentional plagiarism may be dealt with through educational procedures such as further assignments requiring the student to practice documentation and citation methods, or by other means determined by the instructor.

Acts of academic dishonesty will be subject to one or more of the following sanctions:

1. failure of the assignment, i.e. exam, paper, lab report, etc.
2. failure of the class
3. suspension or expulsion

An instructor may impose the first two of these penalties. Suspension or expulsion may be recommended by the instructor but can only be carried out by the Vice President of Academic Affairs.

Repeated acts of academic dishonesty will result in suspension or expulsion. When academic dishonesty has been determined to have occurred a second time, the Vice President of Academic Affairs shall decide on the student’s status at the College.

Procedure:

When an instance of academic dishonesty is suspected, the instructor will meet with the student to discuss the incident and will decide which, if any, of the above sanctions is appropriate.

If the instructor files a report with the Vice President of Academic Affairs, the student will be given a copy and will be notified of the right to appeal. The report will detail the nature of the violation and the steps taken to address it. The report will stay on file with the Vice President of Academic Affairs for five years after the student graduates from or permanently leaves the College. The Vice President of Student Affairs will be notified that a report has been filed. Information in the file will be confidential, to be shared only at the discretion of the Vice President of Academic Affairs for a legitimate educational or legal purpose.

Appeals Process:

The student may appeal the charge and/or the sanction within two weeks of receiving the instructor’s report by writing a letter to the Vice President of Academic Affairs requesting an appeals hearing. Students wishing to appeal are strongly encouraged to consult with the Director of the Academic Achievement Program (AAP) who has been designated by the College to provide information and advocacy in these matters.

The case will be heard by an Academic Integrity Appeals Board consisting of one faculty member of the Academic Policy Committee, one member of the Executive Committee, one faculty member of Judicial Board, the Vice President of Student Affairs, and the Vice President of Academic Affairs, who will chair the hearing. The faculty appointments will be made by the Executive Committee. The student may choose to have the Director of AAP present at the hearing. The student and the instructor will each appear as witnesses and each may request that other pertinent witnesses appear.

A majority vote of the Appeals Board is necessary to uphold or overturn a sanction. If a sanction is overturned, the Appeals Board may impose a lesser sanction. The Appeals Board will submit a written finding which will be sent to the student and the faculty member(s) involved in the case and which will become part of the student’s file.