Academic Integrity

History
In 2003, as a result of recent concerns about the prevalence of academic misconduct, a survey of academic integrity was done to (1) gauge community perceptions and (2) get some idea of the amount of misconduct that was occurring. The results of the survey are at the following link:

http://www.umbc.edu/oir/Reports/UMBC%20AI%20Survey%20Report%20S2003.pdf

This resulted an a series of faculty- and administration-led initiatives to address this issue. Among these projects were the distribution of academic integrity-themed bookmarks as well as, for at least one semester, a test on academic integrity available for incoming freshmen to take along with their placement exams.

In spring 2010, an anonymous student submitted a post to UMBC Underground with the following content:

There has been growing concern that a professor at UMBC is doing more harm than good to academic integrity because of their fervent methods of enforcement. This professor requires all of their students to use the website Turnitin.com while schools such as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton have all denounced the practice. There have also been court cases which have ruled that the website violates intellectual property laws, but the professor will fail any student that decides not to turn their material in through the website.

Furthermore, current rumors suggest that students have been falsely accused of cheating and were failed without hesitation. From my personal experience and from the conversations I’ve had with students who have this professor, I do not doubt the possibility. How does everyone else feel about this?

This prompted a thread of over 300 comments responding to this, contributors being both faculty and students. The tone of the comments was overwhelmingly negative with many students expressing similar frustrations about the state of academic integrity at UMBC. This post was picked up by myUMBC, and a similar discussion started there with over 300 comments. At the point, the identity of this professor, who was in the Biology department, was clear, and the name was being used openly on the discussion boards. A Facebook group was started to petition for the termination of the professor, and an additional petition was circulated around to students via Google Documents. It is uncertain whether these petitions ever formally made their way to the appropriate personnel at UMBC.

On April 11th, 2010, SGA Academic Affairs Director Richard Blissett and student Oliver Muellerklein (who had written the original UMBC Underground post) met with Provost Eliot Hirshman and General Counsel David Gleason to discuss turnitin.com. More information about this project can be found on the TurnItIn.com SGA wiki page.

A conversation with the student members of the Academic Conduct Committee revealed that many of the arguments surrounding academic integrity, especially in relation to this particular professor, were products of two different problems: legitimate personality issues when it came to faculty-student relations, and real misunderstandings by students about how the academic misconduct processes worked. Richard and Megan Shook, President of the Biology Council of Majors, met with the Chair of the Biology Department and the aforementioned professor. Here, Richard and Megan were able to clarify what the students' concerns were, while also addressing some of the more inflammatory comments. While this meeting did not necessarily change anything immediately, it did spark conversation among the faculty and provided a lot of background information about academic integrity here at UMBC to those students working on the initiative.

Later, Richard posted a public statement to address the inflammatory statements made on the online forums. Throughout the rest of the semester, Richard, Megan, and Oliver also met with Dean Rous of the College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences, Drs. Amy Everhart and Carolyn Tice from of the Academic Conduct Committee, and the professors who had been active in the online discussions of the issue.

Further Work:
Though the wider student discussion on academic integrity died down a bit over the summer of 2010, a student workgroup was put together to work on the issue throughout the fall of 2010. This included: Saqib Ashraf (Associate Vice President for Student Organization Communication and Collaboration), Vikram Bambawale and Gift Jayakar (Senators and student representatives on the Academic Conduct Committee), Richard Blissett (new Executive Vice President), Ryan Caney and Sarah Storch (Executive Staff for Academic Affairs), Catherine Collins (Chief Judge Advocate), Andrew Heo (First Year Ambassador for the Office of the Executive Vice President), Nathaniel Kim (new Director for the Department of Academic Affairs), Toby Le (Speaker for the Senate), Soo Lee (Executive Staff for Academic Affairs and a student representative on the Academic Conduct Committee), Matthew McNey (Senator), Oliver Muellerklein (new Assistant for Special Projects to the Executive Vice President), and Stephanie Ward and Patrick Nguyen (Director and Assistant Director, respectively, for the Department of Student Advocates). This group was originally led by Richard and was later headed by Oliver in the spring semester (2011). The purpose of the group was not only to address issues of academic misconduct, but academic integrity as a whole.

First, Richard and Toby presented to the Council of Deans, at the invitation of Provost Hirshman, to talk about the issue. Here, their presentation circled mostly around issues of differing perception and implementation of academic integrity, as well as an attempt to shift the focus of academic integrity away from simply punitive action. This same presentation was later given to the Undergraduate Program Directors by Richard, Ryan, and Oliver. Responses from faculty were mixed, though all expressed a definite need to continue these conversations. (Additionally, the issue of turnitin.com was reintroduced by a faculty member at one of the UPD meetings.) At the same time, Fritzie Merriweather from the Office of Student Life had started investigating this issue with David Hoffman. A meeting was held with David, Fritzie, Nate, Richard, Gift, Vikram, Soo, and Ama Duah (Executive Staff for Academic Affairs and the last student representative on the Academic Conduct Commmittee) to fill everyone in on the history and current status of the issue.

Simultaneously, Dr. Diane Lee was assigned by Provost Hirshman to head up all university initiatives to address academic integrity. A committee consisting of the co-chair of the Academic Conduct Committee, several staff members (David Hoffman included), Robert DeLuty from the Graduate School, Dr. Lee, and Oliver and Vikram was convened to implement these initiatives. As this committee has a limited scope, the students working on the issue are still continuing to explore and implement different ideas.

Issues:
From the student perspective, there are two main problems with the discussion of academic integrity at UMBC. Firstly, the methods by which it was being addressed often focused on the punitive measures to keep students accountable rather than culture changes. Secondly, for many students, the responsibility for upholding this culture seemed to rest on their shoulders. In addition, the issue of the definition of academic integrity became the focal point for many debates about the issue.

Other Information:
The Retriever Weekly posted three articles related to the issue, one entitled “The pitfalls and problems of turnitin.com,” one entitled “Students are not required by law to use Turnitin.com,” and one (written by Richard) entitled "SGA investigates issues of academic integrity."