Academic Integrity

Academic integrity is core to UMD's mission. All participants in our community, including students, faculty, administration, and staff, are expected to promote academic integrity on our campus.

The Five Fundamental Values of Academic Integrity

Honesty

An academic community of integrity advances the quest for truth and knowledge by requiring intellectual and personal honesty in learning, teaching, research, and service. Honesty is the foundation of teaching, learning, research, and service. Campus policies uniformly deplore cheating, lying, fraud, theft, and other dishonest behaviors that jeopardize the rights and welfare of the community and diminish the worth of academic degrees.
Cultivating honesty lays the foundation for lifelong integrity, developing in each of us the courage and insight to make difficult choices and accept responsibility for actions and their consequences, even at personal cost.

Trust

An academic community of integrity fosters a climate of mutual trust, encourages the free exchange of ideas, and enables all to reach their highest potential. Only with trust can we believe in the research of others and move forward with new work. Only with trust can our communities believe in the social value and meaning of an institution's scholarship and degrees.

Fairness

An academic community of integrity establishes clear standards, practices, and procedures and expects fairness in the interactions of students, faculty, and administrators. Fair and accurate evaluation is essential to the educational process. For students, important components of fairness are predictability, clear expectations, and a consistent and just response to dishonesty. Faculty members also have a right to expect fair treatment, not only from students but also from colleagues and their administration.

Respect

An academic community of integrity recognizes the participatory nature of the learning process and honors and respects a wide range of opinions and ideas. To be most rewarding, teaching and learning demand active engagement and mutual respect. Students and faculty must respect themselves and each other as individuals, not just as a means to an end. They must also respect themselves and each other for extending their boundaries of knowledge, testing new skills, building upon success, and learning from failure.
Students show respect by attending class, being on time, paying attention, listening to other points of view, being prepared and contributing to discussions, meeting academic deadlines, and performing to the best of their ability. Being rude, demeaning, or disruptive is the antithesis of respectful conduct. Members of the faculty show respect by taking students' ideas seriously, providing full and honest feedback on their work, valuing their aspirations and goals, and recognizing them as individuals.

Responsibility

An academic community of integrity upholds personal accountability and depends upon action in the face of wrongdoing. Every member of an academic community - each student, faculty member, and administrator - is responsible for upholding the integrity of scholarship and research. Shared responsibility distributes the power to effect change, helps overcome apathy, and stimulates personal investment in upholding academic integrity standards.
Being responsible means taking action against wrongdoing, despite peer pressure, fear, loyalty, or compassion.

Reprinted with permission. The Center of Academic Integrity, The Project on Fundamental Values of Academic Integrity, Duke University. Additional information is available at http://www.academicintegrity.org. Our thanks to Dr. Diane Waryold.

Link to Additional Information on the Web

UMD Student Academic Integrity Policy: http://www.d.umn.edu/conduct/integrity/Academic_Integrity_Policy.htm