It’s typically during first-year classes Syracuse University students receive warnings, instructions and guidelines about academic integrity. But a new report shows graduate students commit more violations than any other grade level.

A report published March 20 by the SU Academic Integrity Office (AIO) stated of all the class levels, graduate students have committed 20 of the 60 violations reported in the 2007 fall semester.

‘That’s awful,’ said Ruth Federman Stein, interim director of the AIO. ‘It’s sad to think that so many graduate students violate the policy. If you’re a senior or a graduate student, you should know what you’re doing.’

The report, e-mailed to all SU students last Thursday, showed nine violations from first-year students, nine violations from sophomores, 13 violations from juniors, nine violations from seniors and 20 violations from graduate students.

Patrick Wilcox, president of SU’s Graduate Student Organization and a sixth-year history graduate student, said he isn’t surprised by the data.

‘Graduate students are just as culpable as undergrads,’ he said. ‘Graduate students occupy a different place when it comes to plagiarism. Hopefully, once you get to the graduate level, this training has already been in place at the lower institution. That may or not be the case. One of the assumptions is they should know better.’

Wilcox served as the graduate representative on the Vice Chancellor and Provost’s Committee on Academic Integrity (VPCAI), a precursor organization to the current AIO. The VPCAI was created in fall 2004 to organize research and conduct student, teaching assistant and faculty surveys. It presented its final recommendations to Vice Chancellor and Provost Eric Spina in May 2006.

Research from the VPCAI established the first university-wide academic integrity policy, as well as the AIO, on July 1, 2006. The report published in March is the second report put together by the AIO since its inception.

In addition to a breakdown of violations by class level, the report included the number of violations reported by each school or college.

The two colleges to report the most violations – 15 each – were The College of Arts and Sciences and the L.C. Smith College of Engineering and Computer Science, according to the report’s data.

The College of Law, the School of Architecture, the School of Information Studies and University College did not report any violations.

Most of the schools and colleges run their own programs to educate students about academic integrity, Stein said.

‘It’s probably more effective to do it through a course that you’re taking than having this outside person coming in and talking,’ she said.

She spoke to some of the First Year Forums required for students in Arts & Sciences in the beginning of fall semester and gave a presentation at an orientation program for student athletes. She said the School of Education has an academic integrity element in its First Year Forum, and the concept is covered in COM 107, the Communications & Society class taken in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.

Vita Racko, academic integrity advisor for Arts & Sciences who teaches one of the First Year Forums, said students benefit when their professors review the policy of what will happen if they’re caught doing something dishonest.

‘Every single first-year student will hear the lecture about what constitutes plagiarism and all the different forms of academic dishonesty,’ she said. ‘Whether it’s cheating on an exam or misquoting sources, to lying about research, to using calculators when you’re not supposed to.’

Anne Fitzsimmons, teacher training coordinator and academic integrity adviser for the Writing Program, said the majority of cases she sees from the writing classes happen when students either willfully or accidentally misuse sources.

AIO’s report places 24 of the 60 violations in the ‘use of sources’ category. The other three types of violations are ‘course work and research,’ ‘representations and materials misuse’ and ‘communications.’

The writing 105 and 205 courses provide explicit instruction for finding, evaluating and integrating sources, Fitzsimmons said. But she said the emphasis on responsible academic writing tapers off after the first few years of undergraduate education.

‘It’s sad and disheartening to see grad students in that position,’ she said. ‘As an educator, it leads me to wonder if the university is doing enough to attend to those issues at (the graduate) level. That’s a question we should be asking. Grad students would benefit from help, feedback and guidelines.’

In the past two years, Stein said, some of the graduate students who committed violations were international students, saying the language barrier may be part of the issue.

The Lillian and Emanuel Slutzker Center for International Services offers education on SU’s academic integrity policies during orientation for international students, Stein said.

Larry Bennett, professor of entrepreneurial practice in the Martin J. Whitman School of Management, said it’s a responsibility of faculty members to set up assignments that require original thought and cannot be taken from the Internet.

For Bennett, academic integrity goes beyond just the classroom.

‘Academic integrity is going to translate outside the classroom,’ he said. ‘If it’s violated knowingly, that helps lend itself to the Ivan Boeskys, the Enrons and the other negative influences of the world. It becomes a moral issue, rather than just taking someone else’s work.’

shmelike@syr.edu

Published on April 9, 2008 at 12:00 pm