Morally and spiritually, Southern Adventist University is dedicated to scholastic integrity. Consequently, both students and faculty are required to maintain high, ethical Christian levels of honesty.
Faculty Responsibilities:
- Professors must explain clearly the requirements for assignments, examinations, and projects, such as "open book," "take home," or "peer collaboration."
- Professors may assume "no collaboration" is the rule unless they state otherwise.
Student Responsibilities:
- Students assume responsibility to avoid plagiarism by learning the proper procedures for acknowledging borrowed wording, information, or ideas. Otherwise students might innocently misrepresent others' material as their own.
- Students unfamiliar with procedures for citing sources should confer with their professors.
- Students are to assume that all course work is "no collaboration" unless stated otherwise by the professor.
- Many professors will require students to submit papers through Turnitin, an originality checker application.
Schools/Departmental Policies:
Some departments/schools, because of the nature of their programs, have additional honesty policies which have the same force as those published here. Such policies will be presented to students before implementation.
Procedures for Handling Academic Dishonesty:
- When a professor suspects that academic dishonesty has occurred, the professor should first privately discuss the incident with the student. After the meeting, if the professor is convinced the student was dishonest, he or she will file an incident report with the Associate Vice-President of Academic Administration describing the infraction and the penalty administered. The professor shall also give a copy of the report to the student.
- In verified instances of academic dishonesty, the commonly applied penalties include, but are not limited to the following:
- Record a failing grade on the exam, assignment, or project.
- Assign a failing grade in the class.
- Allow the student to resubmit the assignment with a reduced value for the assignment.
- Assign the student a paper, project, or activity that improves the student's understanding of the value and nature of academic integrity.
- The University keeps a centralized file of dishonesty reports in the Academic Administration office. After two reported incidents of academic dishonesty, the Associate Vice President will notify the dean or chair of the student's major. Two incidents also make a student eligible for dismissal from the University.
- At any point, the student may appeal any of the above actions through the established appeal procedures spelled out in the "Academic Grievance Procedure" section of this Catalog.