Letter from the Chancellor

Dr. Howard Cohen
Integrity is the idea of living consistently so your actions are in harmony with your professed principles and beliefs. We live in a society where failures of integrity have become all too common: corporate executives using company funds for personal gain, athletes on steroids, journalists fabricating stories, doctors accepting gifts to promote certain drugs, and students buying term papers. Failures of integrity fall into two categories, neither of which is very appealing. Hypocrites are people who claim certain values but do not live them – the IRS agent who cheats on taxes. Cynics renounce values when they are inconvenient. They believe that “rules are for fools.”

The mission of a university is to educate the next generation to carry on our society and advance it to the next level. Hypocrites and cynics can not do that because they are self-serving. They cut corners and don’t care much about the rest of us. That is why integrity is important to a university. When Purdue Calumet educates a student who will be a teacher, a nurse, and engineer, a systems analyst, a financial advisor or anything else, our society is counting on that person to practice that profession well. None of us wants to put ourselves in the hands of a professional who has cheated for a grade rather than learned the material. We count on one another’s integrity.

The public relies on Purdue Calumet to produce graduates who, personally, have the knowledge and skills we say they have when we grant their degrees. If the public thought our graduates could get through our programs without actually learning, they would place little value in our degree. In other words, our students’ integrity is Purdue Calumet’s guarantee of quality.

Letter from the Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs

Dr. Nabil Ibrahim
The goal for Purdue University Calumet is to provide the best possible learning environment for all its students. The university community has an expectation that students will learn in an atmosphere of mutual respect and trust where education is highly valued; where cheating and plagiarism are not acceptable. This type of environment demands that standards of honesty be abided at all levels of our university community. Maintaining the highest standard of academic integrity is an important responsibility of all of us who are involved in the education process, faculty, students and staff.

It is a requirement that all students, both undergraduate and graduate, produce work that is clearly their own; that any work used, that is produced by others, be identified and fully acknowledged. This will allow for the best possible learning environment where there is value and regard for others’ intellectual property and where academic integrity is a way of life.

With this purpose in mind, a Purdue University Calumet committee was charged with producing a policy addressing integrity on our campus that will satisfy these requirements.

Letter from the Chair of the Honor Council

Each party should take steps to minimize misunderstandings. Instructors should be very clear, on their syllabi and in their course materials, about what is (and is not) permissible practice for the coursework they assign. This is especially helpful to students, who encounter among their instructors a wide range of acceptable limitations in their various courses. Students, meanwhile, should understand clearly that plagiarism and other forms of dishonesty need not be intentional. Students are therefore advised to consult with their instructors whenever there are questions about appropriate guidelines for their coursework.

As Chair of the Honor Council, my responsibilities include facilitating student appeals, ensuring that the rights of all parties are respected and recognized, and acting as a resource for students, faculty and all members of the university who have questions about the process.

A brochure for you to download on Academic Integrity and the Honor Council at Purdue University Calumet is available here.