University works to end cheating

Cheating continues to be some students' answer to making the grade.

Students stealing ideas is a big academic problem for the University, said Jean Landa Pytel, chairwoman of University Faculty Senate's committee on student life.

Pytel's committee is currently working on a senate recommendation to tighten University cheating sanctions, she said. She said she hopes to develop a system for uniform punishments and a central database where faculty can track proven cheaters.

"It's not something the faculty senate is taking lightly," Pytel said. "This is a very serious topic with us and we want to do it right."

Currently, no official records exist on what percentage of students cheat. Individual faculty members or departments handle their own cheating problems, or students can be referred to judicial affairs, Pytel said.

This system leaves many cheaters undetected and under-punished, Pytel said. Because no statistics exist on who is cheating, students may practice similar techniques in multiple classes.

"All I know is only a minuscule fraction of the cases go to judicial affairs," she said.

One of the University's educational objectives is eliminating academic dishonesty, according to the Student Guide to University Policy and Rules.

The guide continues to define academic dishonesty as plagiarizing, fabricating information, facilitating acts of dishonesty and wrongful possession of class material.

Precisely because this is an educational institution, faculty must instruct students on why any form of academic deception remains unacceptable, Pytel said.

However, eyes will wander at any large institution, said Bonj Szczygiel, assistant professor of landscape architecture.

Szczygiel, who teaches Landscape Archtecture 60 to 375 students, said she has picked students out of her class for cheating -- partially because attending school with 40,000 other people is all about measuring up, she said.

Students copy work because they don't know if they'll make the cut, she said. Administering tests to mass numbers of students makes the problem worse, Szczygiel said.

"I think we need to create a more humane situation for students," Szczygiel said. "I'm concerned about cheating, but I'm also concerned about that other aspect of trying to make testing less stressful for the student."

Daniel Fritton, professor of soil physics, said about 10 percent of students in his course Soils 101 (Introductory Soils) cheated several years ago. After canceling a section of a lab report, he received numerous papers with previous semesters' answers for the eliminated portion. Plagiarism was the only plausible explanation, he said.

"If we can't trust the students to come back and to honestly report what they saw . . . we've lost them," he said.

For the University to get a handle on plagiarism, department policies need tightening, said John Sammler, vice president of the Undergraduate Student Government Academic Assembly.

From his experience proctoring Biology 110 exams, a number of students begin their exams by looking at their neighbors' tests, said Sammler (senior-wildlife and fishery sciences).

"If we need to be successful in cutting down cheating," Sammler said, "we need to be uniform in regulating assignment and exam giving."