LSA Community Standards of Academic Integrity

The undergraduate academic community, like all communities, functions best when its members treat one another with honesty, fairness, respect, and trust. The College holds all members of its community to high standards of scholarship and integrity. To accomplish its mission of providing an optimal educational environment and developing leaders of society, the College promotes the assumption of personal responsibility and integrity and prohibits all forms of academic dishonesty. Conduct that violates the academic integrity and ethical standards of the College community cannot be tolerated and will result in serious consequences and disciplinary action.

Just as students rightly expect to learn in an atmosphere of integrity and mutual trust, so too faculty members are right to expect that all students who seek instruction and evaluation from them will do so honestly. All members of the College community must take an active role in helping create and maintain a culture of integrity in LS&A.

An instructor has the responsibility to make clear what academic dishonesty is and to help her or his students understand what uses may be made of the work of others and under what conditions. A student is responsible for becoming familiar with the LS&A Community Standards of Integrity and for discovering the sort of conduct which will be viewed as an attack upon the community's values.

Questions regarding alleged academic misconduct should be addressed to the LS&A Assistant Dean for Student Academic Affairs, 1213 Angell Hall. Frequently asked questions and answers, as well as procedures to be followed for resolving academic misconduct in LSA can be found at https://www.lsa.umich.edu/academicintegrity/.

Examples of Academic Misconduct

Academic misconduct includes but is not limited to the following:

Cheating

Cheating is committing fraud and/or deception on a record, report, paper, computer assignment, examination or any other course requirement. Examples of cheating are:

• Obtaining work or information from someone else and submitting it under one's own name.

• Using unauthorized notes, or study aids, or information from another student or student's paper on an examination.

• Communicating answers with another person during an exam.

• Altering graded work after it has been returned, and then submitting the work for re-grading.

• Allowing another person to do one's work and submitting it under one's own name.

• Preprogramming a calculator to contain answers or other unauthorized information for exams.

• Submitting substantially the same paper for two or more classes in the same or different terms without the expressed approval of each instructor.

• Taking an exam for another person or having someone take an exam for you.

• Fabricating data which were not gathered in accordance with the appropriate methods for collecting or generating data and failing to include a substantially accurate account of the method by which the data were gathered or collected.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is representing someone else's ideas, words, statements or other works as one's own without proper acknowledgment or citation. Examples of plagiarism include:

• Copying word for word or lifting phrases or a special term from a source or reference – whether oral, printed, or on the Internet – without proper attribution.

• Paraphrasing, that is, using another person's written words or ideas, albeit in one's own words, as if they were one's own thought.

• Borrowing facts, statistics, or other illustrative material without proper reference, unless the information is common knowledge, in common public use.

Unacceptable Collaboration

Collaboration is unacceptable when a student works with another or others on a project, then submits a written report which is represented explicitly or implicitly as the student's own work. Using answers, solutions, or ideas that are the result of collaboration without citing the fact of collaboration is improper. Students also engage in unacceptable collaboration when they expressly have been instructed to do their own work and have not been given prior approval by the instructor to collaborate.

Falsification of Data, Records, and Official Documents

• Fabrication of data

• Altering documents affecting academic records

• Misrepresentation of academic status

• Forging a signature of authorization or falsifying information on an official academic document, grade report, letter of recommendation/reference, letter of permission, petition, or any document (e.g., a Doctor's excuse) designed to meet or exempt a student from an established class, College or University academic regulation.

Aiding and Abetting Dishonesty

Providing material or information to another person with knowledge that these materials or information will be used improperly. This includes both deliberate and inadvertent actions.

Unauthorized or Malicious Interference/Tampering with Computer Property

Unauthorized or malicious interference or tampering with computers is considered an academic offense and, as such, is subject to College judicial sanction.

Classroom Disturbances

Classroom disturbances can also serve to create an unfair academic advantage for oneself or disadvantage for another member of the academic community. Some examples of actions that may violate the LSA Community Standards of Academic Integrity include:

• Interference with the course of instruction or an exam to the detriment of other students.

• Disruption of classes or other academic activities in an attempt to stifle academic freedom of speech

• Failure to comply with the instructions or directives