1.5 Academic Integrity

Approved April 1991, amended/edited March 2007, Sept. 2010, Sept. 2014, Jan. 2019

The College considers an academic infraction a very serious matter. Procedures and standards exist for reporting, investigating, and adjudicating alleged instances of academic infraction. 

These procedures and standards are maintained by the Academic Infractions Board (AIB), which consists of students and faculty members. The AIB is a subcommittee of the faculty Committee on Academic Standards. 

Instructors should respond to inquiries concerning the forms that academic dishonesty may take in the particular kinds of work required in their courses. Also, instructors are responsible for detecting instances of academic dishonesty and dealing with suspected instances according to the procedures adopted by the faculty. Those procedures are designed to make the responsibility of judging and penalizing instances of suspected academic dishonesty a collegiate matter.

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Regularized procedures and standards exist for reporting, investigating, and adjudicating alleged instances of academic dishonesty. These procedures and standards are maintained by the Academic Infractions Board (AIB). 

The AIB consists of six faculty members (serving two-year terms) and at least four student members. For each AIB hearing, at least three faculty members and two student members are needed to convene a hearing, unless an alternative arrangement is authorized by the Associate Provost overseeing the AIB. The faculty members of the AIB are elected by the faculty during the elections for faculty committees in the spring. At least two of the AIB faculty members must be tenured faculty. After the elections are held, the Provost appoints a chair and a vice chair to the AIB. This arrangement aims to distribute the Board’s workload so that, whenever possible, the chair and the vice chair will alternate presiding AIB hearings. The student members are appointed, from among the members of the Student Council's Academic Affairs Committee, by Sept. 1.

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For a complete discussion of academic integrity, examples of types of violations, levels of offenses, and sanctions, as well as a detailed description of the procedures for handling academic warnings and infractions, please see the Course Catalog. 

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 Amended Nov. 2017, Jan. 2019

In addition to the written notice to the student concerning results of any hearing, copies of the decision letter conveying such notice will be sent to AIB members, the student's hearing advisor, the student's academic advisor, the instructor(s) of the pertinent course, the pertinent department or program chair(s), and the Coordinator of Administrative Services at the Office of the Provost. Copies of the decision letter will also be sent to the Dean of Student Development, the Dean for Academic Advising and Support, and the Registrar. For students in F-1 and J-1 status, the Director of the Center for Global Engagement will be notified immediately after a hearing date has been set. The primary reason for this notification is to enable a college representative to work with the students to understand the possible immigration consequences of being found guilty of an academic infraction.

Materials collected for an academic hearing will be delivered to the Provost's office, where they will remain at least until all students charged have graduated or withdrawn from the College.

A student accused of a Tier-1 case may not drop the course in question while the charges are pending. The student may elect to drop the course after the conclusion of the Tier-1 case as long as the student receives permission from all of the following individuals: the course instructor, the department or program chair, the Dean of Academic Advising and the Associate Provost overseeing the AIB. 

However, in Tier 2/3 cases, a student against whom charges have been brought for an academic infraction may not, while such charges are pending nor after being found responsible for an infraction, seek to drop, withdraw from, or change the grading status to a pass/D/fail basis in any course for which charges were brought. If a student withdraws from the College before the rendering of a final decision in an academic infraction case, the academic infractions process will be suspended, and the academic transcript entry for the current semester will include the notation “Institutional Action Pending” when the Registrar posts the semester grades. At that point, the student will receive “NG” (No Grade) for the course in which the infraction was alleged. The academic infractions process will resume if and when the student returns to the College. A student's withdrawal from the College while charges are pending, or any time after the rendering of a decision in an academic infraction case, will not preclude the addition of such information to the student's records maintained by the College

The Office of the Provost will summarize infractions and actions recommended, and that information can be used, without reference to specific students, for reporting to the Committee on Academic Standards, in training sessions for new members of AIB, and for annual release to campus media. Notifications to students of results will be kept permanently; however, a winnowing of all other materials will generally occur after four years.

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All faculty and administrative persons involved in a case of suspected academic dishonesty are required to maintain strict confidentiality.

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