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THE ETHICS OF SCHOLARSHIP
~ Notes for Skidmore Students ~
Dear Students:
These notes and reflections, provided by the Dean
of Studies Office in consultation with representative
faculty and student leaders, explore the ethics
and protocols of academic endeavors at Skidmore.
We hope that most of the observations seem commonplace,
because they are the common fabric of personal
and intellectual integrity.
Trust: at the heart of a college education
is a fundamental trust between students and their
teachers and among the students themselves. An
unwavering commitment to doing the best we can
with our own intellectual resources, and to respecting
the academic help we receive from other students
and scholars, are the central tenets of our educational
experience.
Ethics and Uncertainty: an unflinching
commitment to honest struggle is inherent in the
process of discovery. In pushing the frontiers
of their knowledge and expanding their acquired
skills, college students must expect to find many
academic tasks as intellectually uncomfortable
as they are interesting and rewarding. We need
to embrace the challenges of serious inquiry in
order to grow intellectually, not rush the process
and avoid intellectual discomfort through easy,
expedient, sometimes dishonest, strategies. Often
the better work that creative thinkers produce
not only presents hard-won conclusions but also
explores and clarifies major questions still to
be addressed.
The Learning Community: another sign of
student-scholars’ intellectual strength is their
ability to engage in a critical and appreciative
dialogue with the findings of other students and
scholars. The process of discovery is often inter-dependent
and interdisciplinary, often demands that we incorporate
in our work, or challenge and modify, the information
gathered and ideas propounded by other people.
At what stage in your education you enter into
this larger, exciting intellectual dialogue with
the work of other scholars will depend in part
on your own initiative and in part on the guidance
supplied by individual teachers as they define
the expectations of a particular assignment.
My Work, Their Work: whenever our inquiries
take us into the larger world of what others have
thought and said, we must distinguish carefully
between our own information and perspectives and
the help we have received from other sources.
The ability to perceive the precise dividing lines
between our own ideas and words and the contributions
of other people is not only an academic skill
that students must exercise and refine but also
the fundamental expectation of academic integrity.
It is a sign of academic maturity and strength,
not of weakness, to reveal exactly what you have
contributed to a field of inquiry and what you
have gained as a member of the larger community
of scholars.
Collaborative Learning: with growing frequency,
you will encounter academic work that is to be
done collaboratively, and a cooperative approach
to tasks is also becoming a significant aspect
of many jobs and careers. Thus collaborative endeavors
in the classroom, laboratory, and studio constitute
an important part of a Skidmore education. But
it is imperative in every such activity for you
to recognize just where collaborative effort ends
and when your own individual work must stand on
its own merits. College teachers, and your fellow
students, assume that everything you present as
though it were your own—whether in spoken, written,
digital, or visual form, whether for a grade or
not—is truly and solely the result of your own
efforts. If your work has benefited from the ideas,
information, or words of other people and sources,
it is your most serious responsibility as a student,
colleague, and friend to acknowledge all partnerships
in the learning process.
The Challenge of Interdisciplinary Learning:
much of your work in the contemporary liberal
arts setting requires you to move from one academic
discipline to another, often to work in the same
course with multiple disciplines and their likenesses
and differences. This interplay among the disciplines
raises the stakes further for the ethics of scholarship.
Working among the various disciplines demands
even more intellectual vigilance and agility,
for you must find out about each discipline’s
distinctive discovery processes and protocols
for handling resource materials. This challenge
raises the most fundamental questions about how
we explore an issue through the lens of particular
disciplinary expectations and how we present what
we have found.
When in Doubt, Ask: if you keep in mind
that the intellectual processes and partnerships
of the sort we are describing are complex and
are mastered only through experience, you will
not hesitate to ask a teacher or faculty advisor
when you are uncertain about the nature of an
assignment, the limits of collaborative work,
when to use primary and secondary sources, when
to rely solely on your own analytic abilities,
and when and how to document the influences upon
your thinking. The asking is another part of your
responsibility as a college student and is important
to your educational growth. Most academic integrity
problems can be avoided if you simply ask your
teachers for clarification before submitting your
work.
Some Practical Integrity
Reminders
Be
Informed: Remember that it is your responsibility
to be fully informed about the requirements of
the Honor Code. Claims of ignorance provide no
defense when one is facing charges of violating
Skidmore’s academic code of conduct. Naivete and
good intentions cannot substitute for responsibility.
Don’t operate in a state of confusion and pay
the price later.
Paraphrasing: it is not OK to paraphrase
material without fully acknowledging your source;
putting someone else’s thoughts, observations,
or information into your own words does not make
the material your own.
Plagiarism: when in doubt, document every
source that has influenced your work. Seek your
instructor's advice before turning in material
that might need further citation of sources. Plagiarism
includes copying, paraphrasing, or imitating another
person's ideas, information, data, words, descriptions,
choice of evidence, structure of argument, and
so on. Material gleaned from Web sites is no more
your own than material printed in a book or journal.
Unauthorized Collaboration: the most common
faculty expectation is that everything you submit
to an instructor with your name on it is entirely
the result of your own labors, not the result
of a collaboration. If an instructor has allowed
or even encouraged you to collaborate on some
work for the course, be certain to check his or
her expectations when you are preparing to turn
in your work.
Exams Re-examined: while it is obvious
that one cannot use notes, books, or other sources
during an exam (unless given express permission
from the instructor), you may not realize that
any talking during an exam, or other mode of communicating,
constitutes a violation of the Honor Code and
should result in immediate failure on the exam.
The content of the conversation does not matter;
the act of speaking violates the Honor Code.
Further Information on
the Ethics of Scholarship
Skidmore
College, September 1999
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