Standards of Academic Conduct Policy

The purpose of education, especially Christian education, is to enhance intellectual, social, emotional, physical, and spiritual development of students at the same time that they are learning the skills of a profession. In the classroom, students shall be responsible to and respectful of their peers by avoiding any behavior that would disrupt the learning environment. Cheating is not tolerated. Cheating robs the student of an opportunity to learn, and undermines relationships among peers, as well as students and teachers. Where cheating is known, but not confronted, it ultimately allows a toleration of dishonesty, that if carried over into professional practice may result in abuse of patients and malpractice problems. For these reasons, cheating will not be tolerated and will be dealt with as a matter of serious discipline.

Some types of violations of ethical conduct encountered in educational programs in the health-related professions are of particular concern. The following examples are illustrative but are not intended to be a complete list of concerns.

1. Academic dishonesty

Academic dishonesty involves a willful perversion of the truth in an academic setting. Examples include, but are not limited to:

a. copying from peers, or knowingly and willingly permitting or assisting others to copy from examinations, assignments, or lab materials;

b. using unauthorized aids for examinations, quizzes, assignments, clinicals, and laboratory procedures;

c. looking at another individual's examination or quiz in a way that appears that information is being sought;

d. plagiarizing, which includes the undocumented use of sources or ideas, or either whether quoted or paraphrased, or otherwise presented as one's own;

e. fabrication and/or fraudulent insertion of scholarly materials, not the product of one's own efforts, into assignments or clinical records;

f. interfering in a harmful way with another's work (e.g., sabotaging laboratory work, or illicit entry or deletion of computer data);

g. writing a test, or examination, or assignment for another student, or having another person wrongfully write an examination for a third party.

h. misrepresenting the attendance of self or of another party in a required class, laboratory, or assembly; or

i. altering grades or arranging for others to wrongfully alter grades on tests or examinations, instructors' records, or records of the school or University.

2. Forgery

Forgery consists of the falsifying of signatures, altering of the content of documents after they have been signed, and may include other forms of lying or intentional misrepresentation. Examples of forgery include but are not limited to:

a) falsifying instructors' signatures on charts or evaluation forms;

b) altering patient records, grade forms, evaluation sheets, or other documents after a signature is received;

c) signing another student's name on a classroom attendance record; or

d) forging a person's signature on clinic records.

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