Academic Integrity

About This Policy

The Montclair State University community holds academic honesty and personal integrity as core values. All students are expected to apply themselves to their coursework and follow assignment instructions. Students must refrain from actions that provide an unfair advantage for oneself or others, refrain from actions that misrepresent a student’s proficiency or accomplishments, and refrain from assisting others who seek to engage in, or benefit from, dishonest activity. Engaging in any of these prohibited behaviors is considered academic misconduct.

Academic misconduct is any action or attempted action by a student that compromises the academic integrity of the University, subverts the educational process, or results in creating an unfair academic advantage for oneself or an unfair academic advantage or disadvantage for any other member of the academic community. This applies to both graded and ungraded coursework, individual and group work, and to all academic work products and academic activities at the university.
Academic work products include but are not limited to: essays, papers, quizzes, tests, examinations, speeches, internal and external presentations, abstracts, posters, reports, projects, proposals, manuscripts, problem sets, computer code, compositions, artistic designs and creations, surveys, translations, transcriptions, exhibitions, deliverables, graduate comprehensive exams, graduate qualifying exams, masters theses, and doctoral dissertations.

Examples of student academic misconduct include, but are not limited to:

• Copying from another student’s work product or permitting another student to copy from one’s own work.
• Re-submitting a work product that was generated by another student who previously took the course.
• Submitting one’s own work products for credit in more than one course without prior permission from all instructors (i.e., submitting one’s own term paper in two or more courses).
• Using unauthorized assistance or unauthorized materials from any source (including but not limited to oral, audio, physical, digital, text messages, generative artificial intelligence (AI), photographs, apps, websites, and services) to generate a work product.
• Unauthorized collusion or collaboration with other persons in preparing work products, or otherwise giving or receiving unauthorized assistance.
• Unauthorized gathering, stealing, buying, transporting, soliciting, giving or selling a work or educational product.
• Coercing any other person to obtain information regarding course materials, assignments, and work products.
• Impersonating another student to complete a work product on their behalf, or soliciting or engaging an impersonator for such purposes on behalf of oneself or others.
• Altering information on a graded work product, and then claiming the instructor improperly graded the work product.
• Submitting altered, fabricated, or falsified information in a work product.
• Sabotaging or disrupting the learning experience for other students, for example by defacing, destroying, or withholding shared information or shared materials from classmates.
• Plagiarism

Plagiarism: Using words, ideas, or work products of another person or entity (including generative AI), to any extent, as if they were one’s own, unintentionally or otherwise, and the unacknowledged incorporation of the content in one’s own work. Submitting a copied, partially copied, or partially paraphrased work of another as one’s own is plagiarism. Plagiarism pertains to words, ideas, pictures, images, data, audio content, and speech without proper citation. Source citations must always be given for works and information quoted or paraphrased.

The following guidelines will assist students in avoiding plagiarism:

• General indebtedness for background information and data must be acknowledged by inclusion of a bibliography of all works consulted;
• Specific indebtedness for a particular idea, or for a quotation, must be acknowledged by an in-text citation, footnote, or endnote reference to the actual source. Failure to identify quoted text, or text used largely in its original form even with an accompanying citation present, is “patch writing,” a form of plagiarism.
• Work will be considered plagiarism if it duplicates completely or in part, without citation, the work of another person to an extent that is greater than is commonly accepted. The degree to which imitation without citation is permissible varies from discipline to discipline. Students must consult their instructors to ensure they understand acceptable practices within the discipline.
• Information taken from the Internet/websites must always be cited. Failure to properly acknowledge online information is plagiarism.
• Cite a generative AI tool whenever work created by the tool is paraphrased, quoted, or incorporated into one’s own work product. If generative AI was used to edit one’s own prose, the use of the tool for this function should be acknowledged in the work.

Adjudication of Academic Misconduct – Academic

Students are subject to disciplinary action for reasons of academic dishonesty. Course instructors play an integral role in the process for resolving academic dishonesty complaints.

An instructor with suspicion or information of dishonesty should first discuss the matter with the student(s) involved.

The instructor should then discuss the situation with the academic department chair/school director.

At the department/school level, one of the following may be chosen:

For a student who seems mistaken in practice rather than guilty of intention, or in the case that seems to warrant leniency, the instructor, consulting with the academic chairperson/director, may do any of the following which they deem appropriate:

• Grade the work under question “zero” or “failing”
• Allow the student to demonstrate that s/he can fulfill an assignment through her/his own honest effort.

For an offense which seems to be a clear case of intentional academic misconduct or which does not seem to warrant leniency, the instructor, after consulting with the academic chairperson/director, may do either or both of the following:

• Grade the work under question “zero” or “failing”
• Assign a grade of “F” for the course.
  • Students have the right to remain in a class during the term of any course until or unless suspension from the class or the University is imposed.
    • In cases where an “F” grade is assigned for academic dishonesty, the instructor should immediately transmit a request to post a grade of “F” on the student’s record. The request should be sent to registrar@montclair.edu, with a copy to the academic chairperson/director.

Academic Due Process

When a course instructor asserts that a student has committed academic misconduct and a grade penalty is assigned, the student has the right to appeal the grade decision through the established Grade Grievance procedure.

Adjudication of Academic Misconduct – Student Conduct System

The instructor may report the incident to the Director of Student Conduct. The student conduct system is administered by the Division of Student Development and Campus Life, following a non-academic process for adjudicating assertions of academic misconduct with non-academic potential sanctions (which exclude course grades) as described in the Student Code of Conduct.

The academic grade grievance and student conduct systems are separate systems. A decision in one system is not binding to the other system.

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