What are the CBTS policies regarding academic integrity?
Academic Integrity
CBTS assumes that all of its students desire to pursue all academic work with honesty and scholarly integrity. Breaches of academic honesty and integrity are infringements of the mutual faith and trust essential to the academic enterprise and are inconsistent with the profession of faith upon which the student was admitted to the seminary.
Activities that have the effect or intention of interfering with education, pursuit of knowledge, or fair evaluation of a student’s performance are prohibited. Examples of activities include, but are not limited to, the following definitions:
- Cheating - Using or attempting to use unauthorized assistance, material, or study aids in examinations or other academic work, or preventing or attempting to prevent another from using authorized assistance, material, or study aids. Examples: using a cheat sheet in an exam; altering a graded exam and resubmitting it for a better grade, and so on.
- Plagiarism – Using the ideas, data, or language of another without specific and proper acknowledgment. Examples: misrepresenting another’s work (paper, report, article, or computer work) as one’s own original creation and submitting it for an assignment; using someone else’s ideas without attribution; failing to cite a reference or to use quotation marks where appropriate, and so on.
- Fabrication – Submitting contrived or altered information in any academic exercise. Examples: making up data, misrepresenting data; citing nonexistent or irrelevant articles, and so on.
- Multiple Submissions – Submitting, without prior permission, any work submitted to fulfill another academic requirement. Example: submitting the same paper for two different classes without the instructors’ express prior approval.
- Misrepresentation of Academic Records – Misrepresenting or tampering with or attempting to tamper with any portion of a student’s transcripts or academic record, either before or after coming to CBTS. Examples: forging a Registration Form or a grade report; tampering with computer records, and so on.
- Facilitating Academic Dishonesty – Knowingly helping or attempting to help another violate any provision of this code. Example: working together on an exam or others’ assignments intended to be an individual project without the instructor’s express or prior approval.
- Unfair Advantage - Attempting to gain unauthorized advantage over fellow students in an academic exercise. Examples: gaining or providing unauthorized access to examination materials (either past or present); obstructing or interfering with another student’s efforts in an academic exercise; lying about a need for an extension for an exam or paper; continuing to write even when time is up during an exam etc.
- Computer Crimes - Damaging or modifying computer programs without permission. Examples: piracy of copyright protected software; hacking; constructing viruses; knowingly introducing viruses into a system; copying programs and data belonging to others, and so on.
Those students whose work definitively can be shown to breach academic honesty or scholarly integrity will face academic investigation. Sanctions will be imposed, ranging from grade reduction to course failure to dismissal from the school. No progressive nature is necessarily implied in these sanctions. A first offense may result in dismissal from the school, depending upon the nature of the offense.