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
Consult
with your teachers and faculty advisors
Read appropriate sections of the Student Handbook and
the Academic Information Guide
Peruse the Skidmore Guide to Writing published by
the Skidmore Expository Writing Program
Consult with the staff of the Dean of Studies Office
Skidmore College,
September 1999
Creative Thought Matters.
