Report to Faculty Assembly, Spring 2006

Report on Provost’s Committee on Intellectual Integrity

Delivered to Faculty Assembly
March 27, 2006

The Task Force on Academic Quality created, a few years ago, an ad-hoc Committee on Cheating and Plagiarism. One of the recommendations of that group, and endorsed by  TFAQ, was that a permanent committee be created, charged with providing educational material and instruction to both faculty and students, and to lead campus-wide discussions on the issue of integrity. The Provost’s Committee on Intellectual Integrity was created.

The current membership includes David Bozak (chair), Rhonda Mandel, Paloma Jalife, Michael LeBlanc, Cathy Santos, Jean Chambers, Barbara Shaffer, Gwen Kay and Mike Ameigh. We have invited two students to join the committee, and are looking for a third, to represent undergraduates, graduate students, and international students.

The committee first met in late fall, and has had three meetings thus far this semester. As a result of the committee’s recommendation, SUNY Oswego has joined the Center for Academic Integrity, located at Duke University and affiliated with the Kenan Institute for Ethics. We have also worked with Dr. Don McCabe (CAI and Rutgers University) in preparing surveys of students and faculty on academic integrity. While set to occur this semester, we have postponed the surveys until the fall semester, as students have been heavily surveyed this semester.

The committee is currently working on the creation of a set of guidelines which can be used by faculty as they consider appropriate penalties for incidents of dishonesty that they uncover. The goal is to provide more uniformity across the campus.

Among the committee’s goals are the creation of a website for both faculty and students on cheating and plagiarism; the administration of the academic integrity survey and the dissemination of the results of those surveys.