1. A Campus Policy on Plagiarism
We have a well-articulated policy on academic dishonesty in the Student Handbook. You will find it on page 35.
We might want to discuss ways to apply the guidelines more universally across different kinds of courses, but we do not need to invent a policy.
2. The Academic Calendar
We are movi
ng toward making fall, spring, and summer semesters equal in terms of class days. The goal is to have 14 full weeks of classes and one week of exams.Making our fall "vacation" occur the week of Thanksgiving means that all students and faculty, traditional and GPS, will have the same days off. It wreaks havoc with the GPS program to have part of a week off in October (which is in one of the 5-week modules) and part of a week off in November (which is in another of the modules).
This plan means that 45 weeks of the year are used for academic endeavors. Fall and spring semesters have a one-week vacation--47 weeks.
Another goal is to have at least a week between spring and summer as well as between summer and fall. That's two more weeks--49.
The remaining time is a longer break of 3 weeks at Christmas. That puts us at 52, the magic number. Or, we could take a week off in the summer for July 4th and fewer days at Christmas.
Details for this master plan are still under discussion: Should we start every semester on a Monday? Should we keep a Reading Day in the calendar? When are grades due to the Registrar?
3. What about RELG 1001, "Foundations of Christian Thought and Practice"?
There is a meeting scheduled this week to look at the data we collected from students and teaching faculty related to this class. The information we learned from Tim Clydesdale's book and lecture may also play into our discussion about what is appropriate and reasonable for freshmen.
The course will continue to be the cornerstone of the freshman year experience at King College, but the specifics of the course may be altered some.
We are also looking at other aspects of the New Core to make sure we are doing the best we can to reach the outcomes we have articulated. Scheduling is an important part of making the Core functional; we will be looking closely at the Course Offering late in February to try to make it easier for advisors and students to find appropriate scheduling options. Several new courses have been approved for inclusion in the Human Creative Products category by the CCAWG and are up for consideration by the Curriculum Committee at their February meeting.
4. Re-visiting criteria for the R.T.L. Liston Award
Even before this question was raised in our meeting, Tracy Parkinson and Matt Peltier had constituted an ad hoc committee to review the criteria for King's most prestigious academic award. Some of you may be on that committee which will examine this question: "Should an honor code violation of any sort take a student out consideration for the Liston Award even if he/she has the highest G.P.A. in the graduating class?"
Image is the cover of one of Mary Englebreit's 2010 Calendars retrieved from the Barnes and Noble website.
Katie, when I mentioned the rise of plaigarism on campus, I didn't mean to question what was on page 35 of the student handbook. Rather, I was suggesting that the part where it says cheating, etc., on campus "may have their case handled directly by the instructor" be outlined across campus so some professors won't say "Oh, no problem, just don't do it again," and others say, "You just earned an F for the entire semester." I agree that the section on that page is well done.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with your comments. Discussion needs to take place at the department level, then across a School, and finally among all faculty on campus. We could certainly do such discussion at a School meeting, hoping that departments had already talked about specifics in their courses.
ReplyDeleteThe composition faculty considers how to handle plagiarism every semester, and we try to have a uniform methodology for dealing with it and reporting it to Matt Peltier.