Academic Standards Committee Minutes
January 27, 1999
Present: Ken Clark, Brad Tomhave, John English, Susannah Hannaford, Marianne Taylor, Wade
Williams, Peter Greenfield, John Finney, Heping Liu, Greg Elliott, Peter Wimberger, Yvonne Swinth, Tom
Gething, Jack Roundy
1. Minutes: The minutes of the December 9th meeting were approved as written.
2. Announcements: Meeting times were set for the full committee and petitions subcommittee:
Full Committee: Alternate Wednesdays at 8 a.m. in Library 134: Feb. 10, 24; March 10, 24; April 7, 21.
Petitions Subcommittee (Clark, Williams, Hannaford, Swinth, Evans, Finney, Gething, Tomhave,
English as needed): Days and times to be set; first meeting in week of February 1.
3. Petitions Committee: Tomhave submitted the following report, adding that January’s Probation and
Dismissal Meeting yielded 119 sanctions: 37 Warnings, 66 First Probations, 9 Continuing Probations, 7
One-Year Dismissals. Finney and Roundy added that the number and kinds of sanctions imposed were
not unusual.
Date
12/14/98
1/13/99
YTD
Approved
5
6
117
Denied
1
1
16
No Action
Total
0
0
0
6
7
133
4. Re-examine the Idea of an Ethics or Honor Code for the University: English reported having
talked with Ann Wilson about the work of the 1995-96 ASC Honor Code subcommittee; she provided him
with their teaching guide, which he will be sharing with all ASC members when copies can be made.
Gething was asked for his views on the integration of academic honesty and integrity codes, and he
replied that he had worked at institutions which handled integrity issues in both distinct and integrated
ways; the key to a healthy climate for academic honesty, he thought, was for faculty to send a message
about its importance to students in the classroom every term. He added that he did not have a sense that
Puget Sound’s policies were “broken.”
Finney, recalling the work of the Honor Code subcommittee, remembered that they had backed away in
the end from the promotion of a campus-wide Honor Code in favor of the more modest goal of better
educating students about academic honesty. The subcommittee’s teaching guide, a tool intended to
accomplish this as part of Prelude, was never adopted because of the time crunch Prelude faculty already
felt meeting the program’s objectives. Finney thought the teaching guide could still be used in Puget
Sound classrooms, though Prelude is not an available venue.
The conversation turned for a time to the question of how widespread cheating is on our campus. Finney
mentioned an article in the most recent Chronicle (January 22) detailing problems across the country with
academic dishonesty, but said he didn’t believe Puget Sound’s problems were nearly as serious as those
described in the article. Further, he assured committee members that administration support for firm
responses to academic dishonesty is solid at Puget Sound, unlike some of the schools the Chronicle
describes. Wimberger said he thought that many cases of academic dishonesty on our campus go
unreported, in part because of the cumbersomeness of the reporting process; could we streamline that
process?, he asked. Roundy seconded his concern with underreporting, adding that faculty sometimes
fail to go through official channels because they want to deal with academic dishonesty in their own way,
expeditiously and with as few ripples in their teaching lives as possible.
English sought the committee’s views on the seriousness of academic dishonesty problems at Puget
Sound, saying that he did not think they were significant. Greenfield said he believed that small classes
and the absence of the cover of anonymity reduces the frequency with which students take chances
cheating. At the same time, he thought we should do a better job educating students about academic
honesty, citing a case in which one of our very good students was burned in two classes when his grades
were reduced because he submitted the same paper for both; he apparently hadn’t been aware of the
prohibition against doing so. Could we propose adding the academic honesty teaching guide to the
curriculum for our two first-year seminars in the new core?, he asked.
As the hour was drawing to a close, English asked the committee to review the teaching guide before the
next meeting, and come prepared to discuss how it might be used in our classrooms. Roundy requested
that we also examine the reasons for faculty reluctance to use the official University reporting process for
academic dishonesty cases. With that, we adjourned at 8:48.
NEXT FULL COMMITTEE MEETING: Wednesday, February 10 at 8 a.m. in LIB 134.
th
Respectfully submitted as his 50 set of minutes by the ASC amanuensis,
Jack Roundy