Academic honesty

Graduate students have a primary, unique relationship and responsibility to the faculty of the academic departments, the faculty upon whose recommendations graduate degrees are awarded. A major feature of the graduate student’s responsibilities to the faculty is the adherence to academic honesty. Academic honesty is a requirement for all graduate activities and assumes that the student is honest, that all coursework and examinations represent the student’s own work, and that all documents supporting the student’s admission and graduation are accurate and complete. Any violation of academic honesty may be subject to disciplinary sanction as provided in the PSU Student Conduct Code.

Violations of academic honesty include but are not limited to:

1. Cheating in examinations and course assignments. The willful use or provision to others of unauthorized materials in written or oral examinations or in course assignments.
2. Plagiarism. The appropriation of language, ideas, and products of another author or artist and representation of them as one’s own original work; failure to provide proper identification of source data; use of purchased or borrowed papers in graduate courses without complete identification of the source.
3. Selling or offering to sell course assignment materials. Selling or offering to sell material to another person; knowing, or under circumstances having reason to know, that the whole or a substantial part of the material is intended to be submitted in fulfillment of a course requirement.
4. Academic fraud. Furnishing false or incomplete information to the University with the intent to deceive; forging, altering, or misusing University documents or academic forms which serve as the basis for admission, course study, or graduation; misrepresenting a person’s identity to an instructor or other University official.