Appeals

An academic community must operate with complete openness, honesty and integrity. Responsibility for maintaining this atmosphere lies with the students, faculty and administration. Therefore, the achievement of personal and academic goals through dishonest means will not be tolerated.

Academic misconduct includes but is not limited to:

• Cheating: the unauthorized use or exchange of information before or during a quiz, test, or semester examination. Unauthorized collaboration on a class assignment, submitting the same work in two courses without the professor’s permission, and buying or selling work for a course are also forms of cheating.
• Plagiarism: the representation of words or ideas as one’s own. The various forms of plagiarism include but are not limited to copying homework, falsifying lab reports, submitting papers containing material written by another person, and failing to document in one’s written assignment words secured from publications.
• Providing or receiving assistance in a manner not authorized by the professor in the creation of work to be submitted for academic evaluation including papers, projects and examinations; presenting as one’s own the ideas or words of another for academic evaluation without proper acknowledgement.
• Doing unauthorized academic work for which another person will receive credit or be evaluated.
• Attempting to influence one’s academic evaluation by means other than academic achievement or merit.
• Misconduct assistance: cooperation with another in an act of academic misconduct. A student who writes a paper or does an assignment for another student is an accomplice and will be held accountable just as severely as the other. Any student who knowingly permits another to copy from his or her own paper, examination, or project shall be held as accountable as the student who submits the copied material.

Penalties for Academic Misconduct
Penalties for any infraction are cumulative in that they are imposed in light of a student’s record at Mount St. Mary’s. The minimum penalty for the first offense will be a grade of zero for the assignment or examination; an instructor may impose a more severe penalty if circumstances warrant it. A second offense will result in a semester grade of failure (F) for the course in which this second incident occurs. The penalty for the third offense may be expulsion from the university.

Procedural Guidelines for Academic Misconduct
When a professor believes there is sufficient evidence to demonstrate a clear case of academic misconduct, the following should take place:

• The professor will speak with the dean for academic affairs in order to determine the appropriate academic consequences warranted by the circumstances. The professor should also speak with his/her department chair about the matter.
• The professor will notify the student of the infraction. Notification of the student should come no more than two weeks after the due date for the assignment in question. The professor is responsible for keeping the evidence of academic misconduct in its original form and need not return relevant materials to the student. Copies of the student’s work and information about other evidence will be provided to the student upon request.
• The professor will notify the dean for academic affairs in writing (with a copy of the notification to the department chair) and forward copies of all information and materials. The dean in turn will officially notify the student in writing of the charge and the student’s right to appeal. The dean will be responsible for maintaining the necessary records, recording the incident in the student’s permanent record and ensuring that the penalties for the second and third offenses are administered by the university.

Procedures for Appeals of Academic Misconduct Charges
Students may appeal a charge of academic misconduct, though not the specific penalties. They may register an appeal with the dean for academic affairs, who will convene an academic appeals board. Written appeals must be registered with the dean within four weeks of the formal notice of the charge to the student.

GRADE APPEALS
A student may appeal the final grade in a course only on the grounds that a grading policy is unclear or has been unfairly applied. Recourse should be made first to the professor concerned and then to the chair of the department in which the course was taken. A student wishing to pursue the matter further must register a written appeal with the dean for academic affairs no later than the fourth week of the semester following the posting of the grade. Upon receiving the appeal, the dean will convene an academic appeals board.

ACADEMIC APPEALS BOARD
An academic appeals board addresses student appeals in cases of cheating and plagiarism and in grade protests taken beyond the department level. The board is convened by the dean for academic affairs. The board will include two members of the student government association Academic Committee and three faculty members appointed by the Undergraduate Academic Committee, one of whom shall be from the department affected in the dispute. The dean for academic affairs will name one of the faculty members to serve as chair of the appeals board. On the basis of written information provided by the instructor, the student and any other relevant party, the board will then determine by majority vote whether an appeal is warranted. If the board decides to hear an appeal, it will invite spoken testimony from the student and professor involved in the case and may, at its discretion, solicit other pertinent information. Decisions in appeals hearings will be made by majority vote. The board’s decision may be appealed to the dean for academic affairs by the student(s) or by the professor involved. The dean has final jurisdiction in such matters.