Now that university administrators have scientifically and statistically found that nearly three-fourths of Syracuse University undergraduates have engaged in a cheating behavior, it is making moves to determine why this came to be, and perhaps more importantly, how to fix it.

The Vice Chancellor and Provosts Committee on Academic Integrity met Wednesday in the Physics Building for the first of two meetings regarding the its academic integrity survey and how to ameliorate the issues it revealed.

In one of the most telling statistics, it was found that while 11 percent of undergraduate students admitting to cheating at SU within the last year, 74 percent admitted to engaging in at least one of 20 cheating behaviors at least once in the last year.

‘If the reason that (the discrepancy) is there is the fact that people don’t recognize what constitutes cheating behavior, I think that’s a problem,’ said Jessie Cordova, a senior history major and member of the VPCAI.

While the common explanation for the discrepancy is that students do not understand standards for cheating, said Elet Callahan, the committee’s chair, this explanation doesn’t seem to be the reason, as the next question on the survey asked respondents to rank the level of dishonesty that those behaviors represented.

The miscommunication and lack of education for students regarding academic integrity and cheating standards was one of the several possible contributions to the integrity issue raised at the meeting.

The survey revealed that certain students, including men, students with Type A personalities, lower GPAs, engineering or business majors and students who work are more likely to engage in cheating behavior, said Abby Kasowitz-Scheer, head of instructional programs for SU Library said during the meeting.

‘This is just a snapshot. There are other reasons as well,’ she said.

The contradiction and competition between achievements versus scholarship was also cited as one of the contributors towards the rampant academic dishonesty.

‘(Students) are more worried about getting a good grade or completing a project instead of learning for the sake of learning,’ Kasowitz-Scheer said.

Now, the committee is turning its attention to ways to prevent academic dishonesty.

The committee analyzed the academic integrity polices of 11 of the schools and colleges within SU, and found that within the university there exist different definitions, sanctions and records-keeping policies about and for academic integrity, said Michael Olivette, the associate dean of the College of Human Services and Health Professions, in his report at the meeting.

There are questions as to whether all students and faculty are aware of their policies, or that such policies even exist at all, he said.

‘We’re sending mixed messages, perhaps, about the serious issue of academic dishonesty,’ Olivette said.

A major portion of the problem lies in the miscommunications between colleges about which students have integrity issues, especially when students transfer to another school or college within SU.

‘We may never get to the point where records are kept, because faculty deal with them at that level,’ Olivette said, referring to the tendency of professors to admonish misbehaving students on a class-per-class basis, rather than in a formal reporting setting.

The results of the survey showed that about half of the faculty thought that setting integrity standards on a university-wide basis would be a possible remedy, while the other half preferred setting standards on a college-to-college basis, Callahan said.

Juanita Perez-Williams, director of Judicial Affairs and member of the VPCAI, presented the committee’s comparison of SU to other colleges of comparable size and standing and those with different academic integrity policies.

She suggested making education and hearings a larger part of the sanctions for students accused of dishonesty. Many of the comparable colleges had policies formulated by students and faculty who ‘owned the process,’ she said.

‘We need to continue to educate students in hopes of bringing them back on track,’ Perez-Williams said.

The survey also included open-ended questions in which students could suggest changes and ways to improve academic honesty on campus.

‘Students were basically asking, ‘Could you tell us the policy, could you tell us the sanctions … could you explain to us that fine line between cheating and collaborating when we’re working in group projects,” said Noreen Gaubatz, a consultant at the Center for Support of Teaching and Learning.

Student comments shown to those in attendance expressed general disgust and disappointment in the way in which the university handles the issue.

‘They were very much calling for playing an active roll,’ Gaubatz said.

The culture on campus now, Cordova said, is one that does not necessarily promote academic integrity.

The university must first deal with the culture it has now, and try to move towards one where there is greater trust and more respect between faculty and students, Callahan said.

Changing the campus culture will take years, Cordova said, but faculty and professors can change the culture in the classrooms by emphasizing integrity in their syllabus from day one.

‘We want to move to a culture where the attitude is, ‘Well, we don’t need a professor to watch us because we’re just not going to cheat.”

Published on April 5, 2005 at 12:00 pm