Student Handbook

Academic Integrity Preface

The two most common kinds of academic dishonesty are cheating and plagiarism.

• Cheating is the act of obtaining or attempting to obtain credit for academic work through the use of dishonest, deceptive or fraudulent means.
• Plagiarism is representing the work of someone else as your own and submitting it for any purpose.

For Students

It is every student’s responsibility to know what constitutes academic dishonesty. If you have any questions, ask your instructor, division dean or the Dean of Student Affairs & Activities.

Academic Integrity Honor Code at Foothill College

What is Academic Integrity?

Academic integrity means honesty and responsibility in scholarship. Unless collaboration is explicitly authorized, all academic work should result from an individual's own efforts. Intellectual contributions from others must be consistently and responsibly acknowledged. Academic work completed in any other way is fraudulent.

Foothill College students, staff, administrators, and faculty are proud to be a part of our college and proud of the reputation we have earned over the years. As a student here, you join a community of scholars committed to excellence in teaching and learning. At the heart of our community is a culture of academic integrity; the biggest threat to the values we share comes from individuals whose actions undermine that culture. We invite you to share our commitment to excellence in teaching and learning and to strengthen our culture of integrity.

Shared Responsibility

When you join our Foothill community of scholars, you take on a part of the shared responsibility for academic integrity. You're responsible for completing assignments according to the expectations of your instructor and for demonstrating your individual level of competence in such a way that your instructor can fairly and accurately evaluate and certify your knowledge, skills, and abilities.

Academic integrity is a value shared throughout the Foothill community and a policy that applies not just to students, but also to faculty, staff, and administrators. It fosters trust and confidence from those who depend on our knowledge and competence. Faculty, staff, and administrators hold each other to the same standards of honesty, integrity, and responsibility that we ask of students.

You can help. By pursuing your studies with integrity, by refraining from cheating and plagiarism, and by discussing the grey-area integrity issues that arise in your course of study, you reinforce our shared values and reap the benefits of being a full and valued member of our community of scholars.

You can also damage our community. By failing to pursue your studies with integrity, by cheating, by plagiarizing, or by any other failure of academic integrity, you undermine our shared values.

Failures of academic integrity are not victimless. They threaten Foothill's reputation for excellence, are unfair to those who play by the rules, and degrade the educational experience of everyone associated with the college. Each failure of academic integrity reduces the value of every program of study at Foothill. We punish these failures in part to defend the high quality of your education.

Foothill College students, staff, administrators, and faculty uphold these ideals by supporting the mission of the College to guide academic careers and educational experiences; by modeling the core values of the College: honesty, integrity, trust, openness, transparency, and forgiveness; and by affirming the Academic Integrity Pledge:

The Foothill College Academic Integrity Pledge

I pledge to support the mission of Foothill College and to demonstrate its core values by upholding academic integrity in all my activities associated with the college.

Acknowledgments

We thank the Student Affairs Vice President's Office at San Jose State University, the University Library at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, the Academic Integrity Office at the University of California - San Diego, the University of San Francisco, and the Academic Integrity Seminar for materials incorporated in this code.

The Foothill College Academic Senate developed and approved this Academic Honor Code in 2004. The Academic Senate collaborated with the Associated Students of Foothill College, the Foothill College Classified Senate, and the Foothill Student Affairs and Activities Office for this 2013 update.