Academic Honesty

Minnesota State University maintains a strict academic honesty policy. The policy, printed in your Student Handbook, reads as follows:

In order for an academic community to teach and support appropriate educational values, an environment of trust, cooperation and personal responsibility must be maintained. As members of this University community, students assume the responsibility to fulfill their academic obligations in a fair and honest manner. This responsibility includes avoiding such inappropriate activities as plagiarism, cheating or collusion. Students found responsible for one or more of these activities may face both academic sanctions (such as lowering a grade, failing of a course, etc.) and disciplinary sanctions (such as probation, suspension, expulsion).

It is the intent of Minnesota State University, Mankato to encourage a sense of integrity on the part of students in fulfilling their academic requirements. To give students a better understanding of behaviors that may constitute academic dishonesty, the following definitions are provided.

Plagiarism - Submission of an academic assignment as one's own work, which includes critical ideas or written narrative that are taken from another author without the proper citation. This does not apply only to direct quotes, but also to critical ideas that are paraphrased by the student.

The following examples are all acts of plagiarism:

§       submitting the work of others as your own

§       submitting others' work as your own with only minor changes

§       submitting others' work as your own without adequate footnotes, quotations, and other reference forms

§       multiple submission of the same work, written or oral, for more than one course without both instructor's permission, or making minor revisions on work which has received credit and submitting it again as new work.

Cheating -- Use of unauthorized material or assistance to help fulfill academic assignments. This material could include unauthorized copies of test materials, calculators, crib sheets, help from another student, etc.

Collusion -- Assistance to another student or among students in committing the act of cheating or plagiarism.

Complete information on how to cite ideas, words, and larger passages drawn from other sources is available in the MLA Handbook. Be aware that you might commit accidental plagiarism if you forget to mark words and phrases from other sources as you copy them into your notes. To protect yourself and the rights of other writers, always take care in your work to distinguish between your own words and the words of others. In general, it is better to over-cite than to under-cite.

 

All cases of academic dishonesty will be reported to the University, which may suspend or permanently dismiss you. You will receive a course grade of F if you commit an act of academic dishonesty in this course.

 

If you have any questions about this policy, please consult with me.