The medium for discussion was organized by Professors Deanna Thompson, Don Drew, and Linda Layne; former Grand Marshal Julia Leusner ’08, Patricia Leusner ’10, and graduate student Ken Girardin; Dean of Students Mark Smith; and Associate Dean of Graduate Education Dennis Gornic. The forum was funded through the Office of the Provost.

Roughly 50 people attended the workshop, including Vice President for Student Life Eddie Ade Knowles, Dean of the School of Engineering Alan Cramb, and Director of the Advising and Learning Assistance Center Michael Hanna.

McCabe, also the founding president for the Center of Academic Integrity at Clemson University in South Carolina, has conducted extensive surveys in an effort to better understand the prevalence of academic dishonesty among students as well as student and faculty attitudes toward academic dishonesty.

As part of his research he has surveyed over 165,000 students from 1990 through 2007 at over 160 schools. McCabe said that, in general, business and historically engineering majors have had the highest self-reported cheating rates.

He cited from his research, that among a pool of 4,000 engineering majors surveyed, roughly 19 percent admitted to cheating on tests compared to 22 percent in other majors, while 40 percent admitted to cheating on written assignments compared to 42 percent. McCabe also gave statistics showing that the faculty view of how many students are cheating on tests is even greater, coming in at 57 percent on tests and 91 percent on written assignments among engineering schools.

In addition to investigating how prevalent cheating is, McCabe also has looked into students’ reasons for cheating, some of which include pressure to succeed and course demands being unreasonable.

After presenting his data, McCabe spoke on honor codes at other campuses. Traditional honor codes consist of unproctored exams and student judiciaries; however, modified honor codes are growing in popularity. These codes make integrity a campus-wide priority, while pledges and unproctored exams are typically optional.

McCabe pointed out that 10 of the top 25 engineering schools have some form of an honor code.

McCabe said, “We want to create a dialogue to see if change is necessary here at Rensselaer.”

Following McCabe’s presentation, those attending the workshop broke out into groups of roughly seven people each to discuss topics related to academic integrity for roughly 20 minutes before presenting to the rest of the group.

The topics included whether an honor code would make sense at RPI, whether it should include a reporting clause, effective classroom strategies to avoid the occurrence of cheating, what the likely pitfalls of implementation would be, and who should control the hearing process.

“The point was to educate the community on different academic policies on campuses and to start thinking about whether there is interest among students and faculty in implementing an honor code at RPI,” said Thompson.

Thompson added that this was to be the first in a series of discussions involving academic integrity and the possibility of implementing an honor code at the Institute. “It is meant to be a partnership among students, faculty, and the administration,” Thompson said. “It should be a collaborative effort, since it is such an important issue.”

Julia Leusner said, “The workshop was a success, if not because it got us talking about an issue of paramount importance to an institution like RPI—academic integrity—then because students were able to voice their opinions on a topic that will largely affect them and actively participate in the discussion, which was centered on the possibility of instituting an honor code at RPI.”