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 was originally
approved by the Rutgers University Senate for a two-year period beginning on
September 2, 2008. The senate has approved the continuation of the policy for
an additional year, beginning September 1, 2010. The new academic integrity
policy is expected to go into effect in September 2011. The policy can be viewed at http://academicintegrity.rutgers.edu/integrity.shtml.