Academic integrity topic of conference

Will a business student who cuts and pastes material from an Internet paper mill one day become a corrupt CEO who cooks his company’s books?

Or will a group of biology students who fabricate data in the lab alter their results when trying to get a drug to market?

These types of ethical dilemmas — and possible ways to stave them off, such as strengthening university honor codes — will be among the many academic integrity issues to be examined during a three-day conference in early October at U.Va.

The conference, sponsored by Duke University’s Center for Academic Integrity and co-sponsored by U.Va., will involve noted scholars, student affairs administrators and other university officials from across the country. Mike Adams, a former Kansas City, Kan., high school principal who resigned when the school board did not support a teacher’s decision to hold 28 students accountable for plagiarism, will deliver the conference’s opening address Oct. 5 at 8:30 a.m.

“Fabricating data in research with live patients, embezzlement, lying, cheating and stealing, insider trading and countless other recent examples of widespread failures in integrity plague our society today,” said Diane Waryold, CAI’s executive director.

“So when students collaborate with fellow classmates on an assignment when they’re not authorized to do so, the question then becomes, ‘Do you believe that these behaviors can transform into real-world behaviors?’ A conference to examine these types of issues could not come at a more appropriate time.”

A schedule and registration information can be found at:
http://www.academicintegrity.org/2002_Conference/schedule.asp.