Rutgers University Interim Academic Integrity Policy

Academic integrity is essential to the success of the educational enterprise and breaches of academic integrity constitute serious offenses against the academic community. Every member of that community bears a responsibility for ensuring that the highest standards of academic integrity are upheld. Only through a genuine partnership among students, faculty, staff, and administrators will the university be able to maintain the necessary commitment to academic integrity.

The university administration is responsible for making academic integrity an institutional priority and for providing students and faculty with effective educational programs and support services to help them fully understand and address issues of academic integrity. The administration is also responsible for working with other members of the academic community to establish equitable and effective procedures to deal with violations of academic integrity. 

The faculty shares the responsibility for educating students about the importance and principles of academic integrity. Individual faculty members [For purposes of the Academic Integrity Policy, the term faculty member includes not only tenured, tenure-track, and nontenure-track faculty members, but also part-time lecturers, TAs, staff members, and administrators who are serving as the instructor of record in a course; i.e., the instructor responsible for assigning final course grades] are also responsible for informing students of the particular expectations regarding academic integrity within individual courses, including permissible limits of student collaboration and, where relevant, acceptable citation format. Finally, all members of the faculty should report all violations of academic integrity they encounter.

Students are responsible for understanding the principles of academic integrity fully and abiding by them in all their work at the university. Students are also encouraged to report alleged violations of academic integrity to the faculty member teaching the course in which the violation is alleged to have occurred.

This interim academic integrity policy (effective September 2, 2008) was approved by the Rutgers University Senate for adoption for a period of two years. After the two-year period, the policy will cease to be in force unless reapproved by the senate for an additional period. The policy can be viewed at http://academicintegrity.rutgers.edu/integrity.shtml.