The Integrity Blog

Written by Maria Disorbo, Graduate Assistant

With the excitement and anticipation of what this semester will bring, there is always that feeling of doubt and being overwhelmed. For some of us this is our first time ever stepping foot in a college class. Many of us are away from home and on our own for the first time ever. How scary! Not for long. Breathe. You will find your groove. You will make friends. And with the tips offered here here, you will start off right and succeed this semester and the rest to come.

What do you mean they don’t take attendance? What do you mean I’m not in class from 7:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. everyday? I’m responsible for asking for help if I am struggling instead of waiting for my teacher to approach me? Yes, there is a lot that is different moving from High School to College. Follow these tips to help make this transition just a bit easier.

1. Go to class! Although some classes may not take attendance and being in a lecture hall at 8 a.m. may sound daunting, go to class. You’ll tell yourself that you’ll catch up on the reading later and understand the material, but chances are you won’t. Being in class and listening to your professor’s lecture ensures you get all the material you need. When you are confused you can ask a question in the moment. You can hear simplified explanations of complex ideas that your textbook won’t provide. You can hear the material explained in multiple ways that will really help you grasp it. Plus, skipping one class averages out to about $50 that you are paying and missing out on.
2. Be proactive and plan! Although it may seem like a lot of leg work, being proactive about planning your time and looking at your semester as a whole will help. During the first week of classes take out all of your syllabi and your planner (they usually hand out free ones the first week in the Student Union if you are looking for one). Go class by class, write down all of your due dates for assignments and exam dates in your planner. Not only will this ensure you know when your assignments are due as you look at your calendar, but you can also determine when your busiest times in the semester will be.
3. Make lists! Thinking of everything you need to do can become very daunting. To help with this, take some time to make a list. Now this list may feel daunting. Prioritize what needs to get done, whether it is by due date or what is most important, like grocery shopping or laundry. Once you have a prioritized list, focus on one item at a time. While doing this try not to think of anything else on your list. This will help you focus and not feel overwhelmed or start to stress.
4. Start assignments early and ask for help! There is nothing wrong with asking for help. This can include going to office hours for help on starting an assignment or asking for an extension for a valid reason. The key to this is starting assignments early, or at least looking at them early to anticipate any places you may get stuck. The more time you give yourself between starting or looking at assignments and their due date, the more time you can fit getting help on them in your schedule. This also allows you to give yourself the proper amount of time you need to work on them and plan your time accordingly.
5. Get involved! Being away from home for the first time can be scary. One of the best things you can do is to get involved on campus. This will give you more things to do and give you a way to meet new people. UB can seem really big, so giving yourself a smaller setting to connect with people that have the same interests as you will lead to strong friendships.

Everyone at UB wants you to succeed! If you’re looking for any other resources that may help you throughout the semester, you can refer to the Office of Academic Integrity’s student resources. All of these tips will help you achieve with integrity here at UB. Check out some more resources by following these links:

●      8 Tips for Students Starting College, ThoughtCo.

●      Helpful Hints to Maintain Academic Integrity, Brandeis University

●      Common Misconceptions Video, University at Buffalo Office of Academic Integrity

Written by Grace VerWeire, Student Integrity Ambassador

Picture this:

It’s 10:30 PM before the midnight due date. You open the assignment - it’s an essay. After staring at the prompt on the screen until your eyes hurt, you take out a pen and begin furiously scribbling. Concepts. Ideas. Details. The barrage of endless relevant information before you becomes a thesis tsunami; everything connects somehow. At 11:45 PM, you slowly enter the final period in your conclusion paragraph, and breathe a sigh of relief. As you upload your finished product, something catches your attention:

“Must cite at least five sources in APA format for full credit.”

You quickly reopen the assignment in Google Drive. You open the UB Library Database. You enter some key words, pick the first three sources, and begin rapidly skimming for any relevant information. You pull several quotes that may or may not have to do with your thesis, using copy and paste. At 11:55 PM, You slap some quotes around them, copy the URL of the source, paste it under the last page titled “References,” and turn in the assignment with sixty seconds to spare. Three days later, you have an email from the Office of Academic Integrity. You have committed plagiarism.


Professional writing can be a real drag when it comes to citing your sources, but citing sources properly is one of the most important steps towards getting a good grade, getting published, or even just writing in general. When you cite your sources properly, you are not only respecting and paying tribute to those whose information you used, but you are also potentially avoiding a violation of policy, or worse, a lawsuit. Plagiarism is a form of theft. When you use another person’s research or information without crediting them, you are stealing hours and hours of hard work and by putting your name at the top of the page you are, quite literally, calling it your own. Even if you don’t intend to steal someone’s work; even if it is just a small homework assignment for a class that isn’t going to be published anywhere; even if it is just a sentence - it’s plagiarism, and it’s illegal.

It takes a lot of work, time, and skill in order to master citations, and there isn’t much wiggle room when it comes to errors. However, plagiarism is a completely avoidable mistake. In order to tackle this issue, you should familiarize yourself with the multiple forms of citations. Then, you should practice with each form of citation, and reach out for help if you need it. There are multiple resources available on campus for free that provide assistance when it comes to citations and citation forms, no matter what type of help you may need. The Center for Excellence in Writing and the Office of Academic Integrity are great places to start when you need help with citing your work, and they are completely accessible to all students on campus when needed.

This article will walk you through creating common citations in MLA and APA format - the two most common academic writing citation formats. Examples will be presented, and the format will be explained below each example.

Now let’s jump into the formats:

APA

APA stands for the American Psychological Association. It is most commonly used to cite sources when writing in the social or behavioral sciences. It has seven editions and many professors accept this form of citation.

Citing in-text:

“I want to know that I earned my degree honestly.” (VerWeire, 2021)

(Last name of author, year of publication)

References:

- Website

Verweire, G. (2021). Office of Academic Integrity. University at Buffalo. Retrieved 10 March 2022, from https://www.buffalo.edu/academic-integrity.html.

Author last name, first initial. (Year of publication). Page title. Website name. Retrieved (date retrieved), from (URL).

- Article

Sefcik, L., Striepe, M., & Yorke, J. (2020). Mapping the landscape of academic integrity education programs: what approaches are effective?. Assessment & Evaluation In Higher Education, 45(1), 30-43. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2019.1604942

Author last name, first initial. (Year of publication). Article title. Journal name, volume number(issue number), pages used. URL.

- Book

Bertram Gallant, T. (2008). Academic integrity in the twenty-first century: a teaching and learning imperative (5^th ed.). Jossey-Bass.

Author last name, first initial. (Year of publication). Book title. (Edition ed.). Publisher.

MLA

MLA stands for Modern Language Association. It is used most commonly in the humanities and literature. Almost all professors accept this form of citation. There are nine editions.

Citing in-text:

- Website/Book

“I want to know that I earned my degree honestly.” (VerWeire)

(Last name of author)

- Article

“I want to know that I earned my degree honestly.” (VerWeire et al.)

(Last name of author, et al.)


References:

- Website

Verweire, Grace. "Office Of Academic Integrity". University at Buffalo, 2021, https://www.buffalo.edu/academic-integrity.html.

Author last name, author first name. “Page title”. Website name, year of publication, URL.

- Article

Sefcik, Lesley et al. "Mapping The Landscape Of Academic Integrity Education Programs: What Approaches Are Effective?". Assessment & Evaluation In Higher Education, vol 45, no. 1, 2020, pp. 30-43. Routledge, https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2019.1604942. Accessed 10 Mar 2022.

Author last name, author first name et al. “Article title”. Journal, vol (volume number), no. (edition number), year of publication, pp. (pages used). Database name, URL.

- Book

Bertram Gallant, Tricia. Academic Integrity In The Twenty-First Century: A Teaching And Learning Imperative. 5^th ed., Jossey-Bass, 2008.

Author last name, author first name. Book title. (number of edition) ed., publisher, year published.


Now picture this:

It’s three days before the deadline. You open the assignment in Blackboard, and read it from top to bottom, twice. It’s an essay requiring five sources or more in APA format. You form a thesis surrounding the question in the assignment. Using keywords from your thesis, you use the UB Library Database to find relevant sources. You take the time to thoughtfully read the sources, enhancing your understanding of the content. You find quotes to bolster up your thesis and type them out, careful to put them in quotations when directly quoting, and cautious to include the in-text citation. The information before you becomes a flowing river of facts and supporting evidence, much different from the tsunami prior. You create a references section chock-full of sources - six, to be exact - and the last page of your paper becomes a masterpiece of APA formatting. With days to spare, you stop in at the Center for Excellence in Writing to make sure that your paper receives a peer review. Three days later, you receive an A, and you think to yourself:

“Worth it.”

Sources (cited in APA 7th edition format):

Bertram Gallant, T. (2008). Academic integrity in the twenty-first century: a teaching and learning imperative (5th ed.). Jossey-Bass.

Sefcik, L., Striepe, M., & Yorke, J. (2020). Mapping the landscape of academic integrity education programs: what approaches are effective?. Assessment & Evaluation In Higher Education, 45(1), 30-43. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2019.1604942

Purdue Writing Lab. (2022). APA Style Introduction. Retrieved 10 March 2022, from
https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_style_introduction.html

VerWeire, G. (2021). Office of Academic Integrity. University at Buffalo. Retrieved 10 March 2022, from https://www.buffalo.edu/academic-integrity.html.

Written by Grace VerWeire, Student Integrity Ambassador
Edited by Jeremy Raymore, Graduate Assistant

The beginning of the semester has surely come to an end as we enter our sixth week of the academic year! Fortunately for some, this means getting into a routine and building a schedule that can help them stay on track. However, it can be hard and sometimes even seem impossible for some students to come up with a comprehensive plan or schedule for the semester. It can be a daunting task: sitting down, pulling up countless emails, syllabi, and to-do lists of homework assignments and exams. Sometimes, this can lead students to become disorganized and miss out on important deadlines. The path of procrastination can lead students down a path of academic dishonesty as well.   

When a student is faced with the challenge of a rapidly approaching deadline, sometimes it can seem tempting to text a friend and ask for their homework answers or even purchase the assignment online. But one thing that students who fall victim to this behavior forget is the consequences that can follow it. Although it may seem harmless to copy a few answers from a friend, the truth is that you miss out on the practice that you need in order to achieve an honest degree. Your professors assign homework and readings in order to prepare you for not only upcoming classes, but your future career. Missing out on this preparation can be detrimental to your future. Also, by submitting someone else’s work, you’re not only putting yourself at risk of getting sanctioned, but your friend as well.

Here are a few personal habits you can practice to protect yourself from ending up in these situations and maintain your personal integrity:

1. Make a list. It may seem silly to think that lists can help prevent you from missing huge deadlines, but the act of writing something down, or even typing it, can help cement it in your mind and allow you to remember it better. Also, by making a list, you can see all of your tasks laid out in front of you. This allows you to re-order them, move things around, and check them off as you complete them. Nothing feels better than crossing off to-do list items!
2. Use a buddy system. You might not realize it, but your friends could be struggling with the same things as you are! Reach out to a friend, roommate or classmate to see if you can rely on one another to remind each other of the things you have to get done for your classes. Communicate with one another and reach out when you need help keeping your thoughts or tasks organized. You could also study in the same space so you both stay on task, also known as body doubling. Just make sure your work is your own.
   
3. Focus on only one thing. Sometimes when we have a lot to do, we tend to jump from one thing to another in order to get multiple things done at once. It’s best to avoid this situation; multitasking can not only lead to things not getting done, but can also lead to incredible levels of stress and even disorganization in the long run. Choose one task and focus only on that before moving to the next thing in order to stay on track and succeed.

There are many other ways to reduce the chances of you ending up in a situation where academic dishonesty could be at play. By staying organized, focused, and level-headed, anything is possible in your academic career. Remember, honesty is always the best policy! If you are facing burnout, communicate with your professors and see if together you can make a plan to get back on your feet with integrity.

Check out the Office of Academic Integrity’s student resources page for resources to help you stay on top of your studies, or take a look at the following external resources:

• How to Easily Stay Organized and Productive in College, College Info Geek
• Stack Your Habits to Achieve Academic Integrity, Wilfrid Laurier University
• Three Tips for Turning Academic Integrity Into a Habit, University of Manitoba

Kennedy Alexis, Graduate Student, Urban Planning, Class of 2021

So, it’s officially been a year since COVID-19 impacted the academic experience of us all. The transition to virtual learning caused us all lots of stress including Zoom fatigue, decreased privacy from living back at home with family, and the overall feeling of having no outlet to relax and de-stress because the spaces, once available to us, have all been closed. Like many of you, the stress and overload by our circumstances has left me feeling overwhelmed at times. I often felt depressed or anxious, and would question my path, as life wasn’t the same anymore. As the graduate assistant in the Office of Academic Integrity, I saw how this impacted the academic choices of many students at UB. Students did not know how to manage their feelings and often experienced difficulty accessing and expressing their needs for help to professors and teaching assistants. This led many students to use unacceptable resources for class assistance and/or participate in class group chats, both of which caused numerous instances of cheating over the past two semesters. In this post, I want to talk, not about cheating, but about what we should do in times where we experience adversity during our academic careers.

A tool that I’ve adopted during the pandemic to combat stress and overload is mindfulness. Mindfulness is the state of being aware or conscious of something. It is the basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we’re doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what’s going on around us (mindful.org, 2020). Research shows that “mindfulness practice decreases stress and anxiety, increases attention, improves interpersonal relationships, [and] strengthens compassion” for students (Mindfulness Schools, 2021). An example of where mindfulness can be helpful would be when you’re stressed during finals week. The back-to-back exams and projects that is finals week can make us feel overwhelmed and anxious; mindfulness can help us take deep breaths and develop perspective to calm our busy minds. For example, through mindfulness one may learn that the pressure to receive an A on an exam is what’s causing them stress. Through further practice a student may realize that an A on the exam is not a representation of their intellectual abilities, because their abilities were shown throughout the entire semester. This realization can help calm the mind of a very anxious student.

In the Office of Academic Integrity, we understand that the role of a college student is inherently very stressful as students have to manage classes, stay involved in campus activities, and participate in work experiences. Although life may be stressful, committing acts of academic dishonesty is never the best solution for dealing with stress. In actuality, getting caught cheating adds another layer of stress and always leads to more serious consequences than doing poorly on one assignment. We want students to know there are free resources available to help them deal with stress; one resource is UB’s Counseling Services. The Counseling Services department offers self-help resources that teach students strategies for relaxation and de-stressing. UB’s Student Life Gateway is another resource which offers stress management and prevention resources to students. Lastly, the Graduate School has compiled a list of health and wellness resources, both on- and off-campus. For the rest of the semester, I challenge students to practice mindfulness, breathe, and do their best, especially in times of adversity.

“What Is Mindfulness?” Mindful, 8 July 2020, https://www.mindful.org/what-is-mindfulness.

“Research on Mindfulness.” Mindful Schools, 26 Aug. 2019, https://www.mindfulschools.org/about-mindfulness/research-on-mindfulness.

Kennedy Alexis, Graduate Student, Urban Planning, Class of 2021

On Sept. 3, 2020, William & Mary College published a letter announcing that the college will be cutting seven athletic programs after the 2020-21 academic year. In this letter, William & Mary explains that the costs associated with sponsoring these Division I programs have grown dramatically over time and have become unsustainable. The letter further explains that the COVID-19 pandemic “has made [the] budget constraints acute and has brought [the university] to a point of reckoning” (William and Mary, 2020). Many universities across the United States took similar approaches to alleviating their increased financial burdens inflicted upon them due to the Coronavirus. This is not what brought William and Mary College to media headlines; it was that many sections of this letter were found to be plagiarized from an announcement made by Stanford University on July 8 about cutting 11 of their teams. Braden Keith from swimsman.com released images that highlight obvious parallels between the two documents.

In her Sept. 18, 2020, statement, Athletic Director Samantha Huge stated that it was her staff’s goal to “emulate best practices, not imitate” and that they “should have taken more care with the review of the materials shared”. The William & Mary Honor Code defines plagiarism as the “the presentation, with intent to deceive, or with disregard for proper scholarly procedures of a significant scope, of any information, ideas or phrasing of another as if they were one’s own without giving appropriate credit to the original source.” Following this definition, it is a bit difficult to understand that their goal was to emulate best practices when no credit was given to the institution whose best practices they were emulating. Huge, who holds a Juris Doctorate from Campbell University, has stopped working at William & Mary since October, but in her departure, she left a negative impact on the William & Mary reputation and her own.

As a student, the policies regarding academic integrity often feel biased as there are many formal processes that keep students accountable for their acts of academic misconduct, but very little or no processes that keep professors or administrators accountable for their actions. Students too often feel the consequences of academic punishment and to some extent it is warranted, as we are the ones preparing for our careers; but where is the accountability for professors and administrators who are in their careers? I think the William & Mary case shows us that there is a need for processes that also hold professors and administrators accountable. It seems that one stepping down from their position is the standard repercussion, but where is the lesson learned? At UB, students go through remediation to learn from their mistakes and understand how their acts of academic misconduct affect different people in their lives. When Samantha Huge stepped down, did she learn how her actions may have impacted students? I highly doubt it.

When students see acts of academic misconduct performed by professors and administrators it makes it difficult to create a culture of academic integrity on campus because these actions confirm the “everyone does it” phenomenon. “Everyone does it” is a common reason for cheating reported by students. Under normal circumstances, maintaining academic integrity when one sees their classmates cheating is difficult, but this William and Mary case could make it even more difficult for students. Imagine being a student that is struggling with an English assignment and is constantly pressured by their parents to receive high grades. After reading the article, one may consider that cheating or plagiarism is OK, because a school’s administrator did it, and many more may have also done it. For this reason, professors and administrators should all join the effort to create a culture of academic integrity on college campuses, not just as enforcers of policies, but also as followers. If academic integrity were more transparent and held all parties accountable, students would probably be more willing to abide by academic integrity policies because the standards are shared by all members of the academic campus.

Amid financial concerns, W&M to discontinue seven sports following the 2020-21 academic year. (n.d.). William & Mary. Retrieved November 16, 2020, from https://www.wm.edu/news/stories/2020/amid-financial-concerns,-wm-to-discontinue-seven-sports-following-the-2020-21-academic-year.php

Statement regarding communications about the future of Division I athletics at William & Mary. (n.d.). William & Mary. Retrieved November 16, 2020, from https://www.wm.edu/news/announcements/2020/statement-regarding-communications-about-the-future-of-division-i-athletics-at-william-mary.php

Section VI: Honor Code Violations. (n.d.). William & Mary. Retrieved November 16, 2020, from https://www.wm.edu/offices/deanofstudents/services/communityvalues/studenthandbook/honor_system/section_VI/index.php