Volume CXXXI, Number 22 April 19, 2002 f

Group will develop plagiarism initiatives
ALISON L. McCONNELL
ORIENT STAFF

Students may see some new academic honesty procedures and iniatives at work when they return to campus next fall. A working group of College decision makers met last Tuesday to discuss issues related to academic honesty and the need for Faculty responsibility in that area of College policy.

Dean for Academic Affairs Craig McEwen said that the working group emerged from a Faculty meeting back in March. "There was a full Faculty discussion of academic honesty, dishonesty, and issues of plagiarism two months back," he said. "That [brought up] questions about our responsibilities as faculty members to help students understand the nature of academic honesty, to assist students in learning appropriate methods of citation, etc.

"The question was, 'What are the mechanisms by which we can take on this responsibilities?'" he said.

The Committee on Governance (a Faculty committee) asked for volunteers to develop a set of such mechanisms for addressing academic honesty issues. A wide variety of College administrators, professors, and the like joined up, with McEwen and Associate Professor of English Elizabeth Muther serving as co-chairs of the group.

Other members included Director of Hawthorne-Longfellow Library Sherrie Bergman, Professor of Physics Dale Syphers, Associate Professor of Economics Dorothea Herreiner, Associate Professor of History Patrick Rael, Associate Dean of Student Affairs Margaret Hazlett, and Director of Educational Technology Center Peter Schilling.

The committee has met twice since the March Faculty meeting; the most recent of such meetings was Tuesday. According to McEwen, the group has been making progress. "We've been outlining a set of interrelated activities we'd like to suggest to the Faculty as the way to proceed on this matter," he said. "We're still in the planning stages, developing these ideas."

While McEwen chose not to reveal the nature of the concepts and activities currently being developed by the group, he said that they plan to have a fully prepared agenda ready by the end of the academic year. "We will present a report to the entire Faculty at the May meeting, with finalized plans for implementation," he said.

No new guidelines or procedures will go into effect before the end of this term, since the academic year will essentially be over by the time the committee presents to the Faculty.

McEwen also said that the nature of the committee's work is indefinite after that point. "We're still figuring out how responsible we are for implementation," he said. "We all signed on with understanding that we were identifying a set of iniatives, and not [necessarily] promising to implement them."