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Dean's Letter on Academic Integrity 1

Dear Business Students:

I would like to share with you, as students of the College of Business Administration, the concept of academic integrity. 2

I'm deeply convinced that integrity is an essential part of any true educational experience, integrity on my part as a faculty member and integrity on your part as a student.

To take an easy example, would you want to be operated on by a doctor who cheated his way through medical school? Or would you feel comfortable on a bridge designed by an engineer who cheated her way through engineering school? Would you entrust your tax return to an accountant who copied his exam answers from the classmate seated next to him?

Those are easy examples, but what difference does it make if you as a student or I as a faculty member violate the principles of academic integrity in any business administration course, even if it's not in your specialization?

For me, the answer is that integrity is important in this course precisely because integrity is important in all areas of life. If we don't have integrity in the small things, if we find it possible to justify plagiarism or cheating or shoddy work in things that don't seem important, how will we resist doing the same in areas that really do matter, in areas where money might be at stake, or the possibility of advancement, or our esteem in the eyes of others?

Personal integrity is not a quality we're born to naturally. It's a quality of character we need to nurture, and this requires practice in both meanings of that word (as in practice the piano and practice a profession). We can only be a person of integrity if we practice it every day.

What does that involve for you in your course? Let's find out by going through each stage in the course.

I. Preparation for Class

With regard to coming prepared for class, the principles of academic integrity suggest that you have a responsibility to yourself, to your professor, and to the other students to do the things necessary to put yourself in a position to make fruitful contributions to class discussion. This will require you to:

  • read the text before coming to class,
  • clarify anything you're unsure of (including looking up words you don't understand),
  • formulate questions you might have so you can ask them in class, and
  • think about the issues raised in the directed reading guide.

II. In Class

With regard to class sessions, the principles of academic integrity require you to take both your professor and your fellow students seriously and to treat them with respect. This requires that you:

  • show up for all class sessions, unless you are simply unable to do so,
  • come to class on time and not leave early,
  • make good use of class time by being engaged in what's going on,
  • ask questions about anything you don't understand, and not just for your own sake but because other students might not realize that they also don't understand,
  • participate in the class discussions so as to contribute your thinking to the shared effort to develop understanding and insight (remember that even something that's clearly wrong can contribute to the discussion by stimulating an idea in another student that s/he might not otherwise have had),
  • monitor your own participation so as to allow for and encourage the participation of others,
  • respect the other students by not making fun of them or their ideas, and by not holding side-conversations that distract them (and me) from the class discussion.

III. With Regard to Exams

With regard to exams, the principles of academic integrity require you to:

  • come to class having done your best to prepare for the exam, including seeking your professor's help if you need it,
  • make full use of the time available to write the best answers you can,
  • accept your limitations and not try to get around them by using cheat sheets, copying, or seeking help from another student,
  • not giving help to other students, or making it easy for them to copy off of you.

IV. With Regard to Written Assignments

With regard to written assignments, the principles of academic integrity require you to:

  • start your research and writing early enough to ensure that you have the time you need to do your best work,
  • hand in a paper which you yourself have done specifically for this course and not borrowed from someone else or recycled from an earlier course,
  • not be satisfied with a paper that is less than your best work,
  • seek only appropriate help from others (such as proof-reading, or discussing your ideas with someone else to gain clarity in your thinking), and
  • give full and proper credit to your sources.

Let me expand on this last point, since it applies not only to you but also to your professor.

By its very nature, education and the accumulation of knowledge is a shared enterprise. None of us has the time, let alone the background knowledge required, to learn everything on our own. Virtually everything we know has come to us because someone else has taken the time to think about something, research it, and then share what s/he's learned with us in a class lecture or, more likely, in an article or book. This is every bit as true for your professor as it is for you as students. We'd have very little to teach if all we could talk about is what we've learned solely on our own.

In a class lecture it would be too disruptive if your professors stopped to cite all of their sources, but they know, and you need to know, that they are sharing with you the things they've learned from hundreds of different authors. What your professors contribute is the way they bring different authors' ideas together into a coherent whole so that it makes sense to you.

If this is true for your professor, how much more so for you. Your professors have many more years of education and reading behind them than you do. Your professor doesn't expect you to do original research. Instead, your professor expects you to read about the research of others, and to bring together their ideas in such a way that makes sense to you and will make sense to your professor. Therefore, it's essential for you to cite your sources in any research paper you write. The academic reasons for doing so are to give credit to those who have done the original research and written the article or book, and to allow your professor to look at them if he or she needed to find out if you have properly understood what the author was trying to say.

But at a practical level, citing your sources is a way to show that you've done the assignment. If your paper contains no citations, the implication is that you have done a piece of original research, but that wasn't the assignment. Citations (along with the bibliography) show that you have consulted a variety of resources as the assignment required. They're also an acknowledgement of your indebtedness to those authors.

So don't feel you need to hide the fact that you're drawing from one of your sources. That's what it's all about.

V. With Regard to Your Final Grade

With regard to your final grade, the principles of academic integrity require that, if you feel your professor has made a mistake in computing that grade, you have a responsibility to come to your professor as soon as possible prepared to show why you think your professor has made a mistake.

VI. Failures to Live up to Our Responsibilities

As your partners in learning, we expect that you will live up to your responsibilities. If your professors get a sense that you're not doing so, your professors consider it a matter of their academic integrity that they call you on it.

Indeed, in certain circumstances (such as cheating or plagiarism) your professor may be required to charge you with a violation of the University's regulations on academic integrity. For the University is every bit as committed to academic integrity as we are.

You should familiarize yourself with the University's regulations on academic integrity. You may obtain a copy of the CSULB document on cheating and plagiarism from the Office of Judicial Affairs (562-985-5270). You may also find it online at University Rules and Policies: Cheating and Plagiarism. Be sure to notice that there's a procedure that's designed to protect your rights. But that procedure might also result in one or another sanction being imposed on you if you're found guilty of violating the regulations on academic integrity.

Which brings me to the most difficult question with regard to academic integrity; what if you become aware of a fellow classmate who is not living up to the principles of academic integrity, but you sense that your professor is not aware of it? What should you do? I'll give you the answer, but I'll acknowledge up front that it's a hard one. Nevertheless, I would hope that you would at least grapple with it if you are ever confronted with the situation. The answer is that you should say something to that student, and if worse comes to worse, you should tell your professor. But why?

Academic integrity, as with so much in life, involves a system of interconnected rights and responsibilities that reflect our mutual dependence upon one another. The success of our individual efforts in this course, as with so much in life, depends on all of us conscientiously exercising our rights and living up to our responsibilities. And the failure of any of us — even just one of us — to do what is required will diminish, however slightly, the opportunity for the rest to achieve their goals. That is why it's essential for all of us in this college to practice academic integrity, in both senses of the word practice. For practice today will lay a solid foundation for practice tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that, so that through daily practice integrity will come to be woven throughout the fabric of our lives, and thus through at least a part of the fabric of society.

Sincerely,

Dean's Signature

M. B. Khan, Ph.D.
Interim Dean, College of Business Administration

1 This "Dean's Letter on Academic Integrity" was based on a letter prepared by William M. Taylor, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Oakton Community College, Des Plaines, Illinois. Professor Taylor granted the Dean his permission to modify his letter to suit CBA's needs and to promote academic integrity.

2 The American Heritage Dictionary defines integrity as the "steadfast adherence to a strict moral or ethical code."