Academic Honesty

The College of Mount Saint Vincent maintains and affirms a strong policy of academic honesty. Every member of the academic community has a duty to neither cheat nor condone cheating. Principles of honesty should be reflected in all aspects of student work, including examinations, research papers, laboratory work, oral reports, logs and all work submitted in fulfillment of course requirements. These principles also apply to the borrowing and careful use of library and all other learning material, and to the expectation that a student’s work is his/her own work and not the prior work of others.

Plagiarism is the act of passing off as one’s own the words or ideas of another and is a serious form of academic dishonesty. The following description of plagiarism should serve as a guide for graduate student work:

“Plagiarism may take the form of repeating another’s sentences as your own, paraphrasing someone else’s argument as you own, or even presenting someone else’s line of thinking in the development of a thesis as though it were your own. In short, to plagiarize is to give the impression that you have written or thought something that you have in fact borrowed from another. Although a writer may use other persons’ words and thoughts, they must be acknowledged as such.”
(MLA Handbook)

Examinations, papers, laboratory work, oral reports, logs, and any other materials submitted in fulfillment of course requirements must be the student’s work. All documented types of academic fraud committed–including the illicit giving and receiving of information on tests, the presentation of false data, plagiarism, and multiple submissions are therefore subject to the following penalties:

A documented academic integrity violation by a graduate student or a student in the accelerated Nursing program will result in academic dismissal from the College.