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Professional and Ethical Behavior

The CEE Department at Cal is committed to providing its students the very best education that is possible within its resources. The CEE Department tries to attract the finest faculty members, endeavor to maintain excellent laboratory facilities, and support a number of co-curricular activities that enhance the undergraduate student's experience. Yet, for the Department to succeed, it is not enough for the faculty and administration to carry out their respective obligations. It is equally important that every student assume his or her individual responsibilities as future engineering professionals. 

Here's your Professional and Ethical Responsibility. 

Foremost among these, of course, is the student's responsibility to perform academically to the full extent of his or her ability. In so doing, it is assumed that each student will observe the basic tenets of academic honesty. Therefore, any act of cheating or misrepresenting one's own or someone else's academic work will be considered a very serious offense. Intellectual products -- including papers, exams, laboratory reports, articles, and books - - are the heart and soul of any university's academic life. We cannot permit them to be willfully compromised or expropriated (that means stealing!). 

Please define "Academic Dishonesty". 

Academic dishonesty is any action or attempted action that results in creating an unfair academic advantage for oneself or an unfair academic advantage or disadvantage for any other member or members of the academic community. For example, copying all or part of another person's work, or using reference materials not specifically allowed are forms of cheating that will not be tolerated. Academic dishonesty can take the following forms: 
 

1. Cheating - Cheating is defined as the use of materials or resources that are prohibited or inappropriate in the context of the academic assignment in question, such as: copying from others during an exam or an assignment, communicating answers with another person during an exam, using unauthorized materials, prepared answers, written notes or concealed information during an exam, and collaborating on an assignment with any other person without prior approval from the instructor.
2. Plagiarism - Plagiarism is defined as use of intellectual material produced by another person without appropriate acknowledgment, for example: wholesale copying of passages from works of others into homework, essay, or term paper without acknowledgment, use of views, opinions, or insights of another without acknowledgment, and submitting another person's assignment (either copied or paraphrased) as his or her original assignment in a course.

It should also be understood that any student who knowingly aids in plagiarism or cheating (e.g. allowing another student to copy a paper or examination question) is as guilty as the student who directly performs the act of cheating 

But my goldfish ate my homework and...... 

If an instructor finds that a student is involved in an incident of academic dishonesty, the instructor will notify the student and the following policy will apply. 
 

1. The instructor may take actions including assigning an F grade both to the assignment in which the cheating occurred and, when the offense is sufficiently serious, for the course as a whole. The recommended action for cheating on examinations or term papers or projects is assignment of an F grade for the course. 

2. The instructor must inform the student and the Department Chair (preferably in writing) of the incident, the action taken, if any, and the student's right to appeal to the Manager of the Office of Student Conduct. Involving the Manager of the Office of Student Conduct at the early stages of a case is advisable when the student denies the charge of cheating. 

3. The instructor should retain copies of any written evidence or observation notes. 

4. The Department Chair must inform the Manager of the Office of Student Conduct of incident, the student's name, and the action taken by the instructor. To discourage repeat offenses, notification of the resolution of each charge of cheating must be given to the Office of Student Conduct. 

5. The Office of Student Conduct may choose to conduct a formal hearing on the incident and to assess a penalty for misconduct (see the University of California at Berkeley Code of Student Conduct). 

6. The Department will recommend that students involved in a second incident of academic dishonesty be dismissed from the University. 

7. A student also has grounds for an appeal of his or her grades to the Chair of the Department's Grievance Committee if he or she feel that considerations of race, politics, religion, sex, or sexual harassment affected his or her grades, or that his or her work was evaluated by other criteria that do not directly reflect his or her performance of the course requirements.

These Department procedures describe the actions to be taken in cases involving academic dishonesty. Details of the governing University procedures are contained in the Academic Senate Principle on "Student Cheating" and in the "Code of Student Conduct" available from the Office of Student Conduct. 

Time to "Bottom-line it"  

The best advice is to play it straight. Ethics and integrity are two of the qualities that make a professional CEE. Now is the time to start practicing. Remember that the world needs CEEs: 
 

• whose truth cannot be bought, 

• whose word is their bond, 

• who put character and honesty above wealth, 

• who do not hesitate to take chances, 

• who will not lose their identity in a crowd, 

• who will be as honest in small things as in great things, 

• who will make no compromise with wrong, 

• whose ambitions are not confined to their own selfish desires, 

• who will not say they do it "because everybody else does it," 

• who are true to their friends through good report and evil report, in adversity as well as in prosperity, 

• who do not believe that shrewdness and cunning are the best qualities for winning success, 

• who are not ashamed to stand for the truth when it is unpopular, and 

• who have integrity and wisdom in addition to knowledge. 
 

Next Chapter, Please. 
  

• Chapter 3:  Advising and Mentoring