Integrity Week promotes ethical issues on campus
Ethical issues will be addressed during Integrity Week starting Monday.
Utah State University’s second annual Integrity Week will address issues including the ethical use of humans and animals in research, copyright laws, computers and pornography, plagiarism and other ethical issues facing college campuses today, Joyce Kinkead, vice provost, said.
Integrity Week was created to shine the spotlight on ethical issues on campus covering as many areas as possible and is especially important because USU is a research institute, she said.
“We’d much rather get the word out to folks on campus about the issues than have to go into the disciplinary process. It just makes us heartsick when a student plagiarizes and doesn’t realize it or the consequences,” Kinkead said.
This year Integrity Week was saved until mid-April to see if the new honor system would pass.
Now that it passed, when a faculty member believes that a case of academic dishonesty warrants a more severe penalty than a grade adjustment or a reprimand, the student becomes entitled to a hearing in front of the Student Honor Board. When a student is accused of misconduct, the student is entitled to a hearing before a Student Judicial Board, according to the new honor code.
“That’s really something to celebrate,” Kinkead said.
Integrity Week also now goes along with Library Week which is Monday to Friday as well and coincides with April being undergraduate research month. Kinkead said the dovetailing of the events is important because the library system faces many ethical issues as do undergraduates doing research.
Kinkead said ideas such as having a week to address integrity and ethical issues is becoming increasingly popular on college campuses.
“I think there is an effort to draw attention to these issues. Our goal is to communicate to the students what our ethical standards are,” Kinkead said.
Since President Kermit L. Hall came to Utah State University the university has been a member of the Center for Academic Integrity hosted by Duke University. It provides colleges with ideas and advice on how to prevent academic dishonesty and how to deal with such problems if they do arise.
Kinkead said while some don’t believe USU needed a new honor code or needs to address issues such as academic dishonesty or ethical research because of the overall good of the student body there are still problems to deal with.
“Frankly we are like other schools. We have the same kind of problems,” Kinkead said.
Speakers on campus will be addressing different ethical issues all week. Bruce Bugbee, professor of crop physiology and 2001 Graduate Mentor of the Year, will kick off the week by presenting “On Being a Scientist: Ethics and Issues” Monday from 1:30 to 2:20 p.m. in Old Main, Room 119. Helen Berry, chair of the Institutional Review Board, will present “Human Subjects Research Training in Ethics” Tuesday from 3 to 5 p.m. in Main, Room 115. The presentation “Ethics in Writing” will be held from 10 a.m. to noon in the Science and Technology Library, Room 120.