Academic Honesty

POLICIES AND GENERAL INFORMATION

ACADEMIC HONESTY Academic honesty is essential to the spirit of Christian community in a seminary environment. Such integrity is requisite to productive collegiality among students and faculty as well as for genuine and creative learning. All members of Austin Seminary are expected to practice academic honesty and to hold one another faithful to this mark of scholarly inquiry. No form of cheating, collusion, or plagiarism will be tolerated. Students who disregard the basic requirements of academic honesty by any such acts are liable to course failure and dismissal from the Seminary.

Modern scholarship in most fields rests upon the work of many individuals, depends upon a great body of common knowledge, and is highly dependent upon the achievements of people who are no longer credited with them individually. Nevertheless, research work, such as that represented by essays, projects, and term papers, is expected to acknowledge indebtedness to the published work of others, as well as to any unpublished sources.

When written work is submitted under an individual’s name, it is implied that the ideas, form of expression, and supporting arguments are one’s own, unless by footnote indebtedness to another for an idea, an argument, or verbiage is acknowledged.

It is incumbent upon every writer to acknowledge indebtedness fully, in order to assist the reader to pursue the matter further, and in order to make clear the writer’s own sense of obligation to others.

There are various forms of indebtedness in scholarly writing. General indebtedness can be acknowledged in a prefatory note, in the bibliography attached to the work, or in the body of the essay.

Particular indebtedness for materials such as quotations, phrases, ideas, and sentences that originated with someone other than the essayist must be indicated in footnotes. Acknowledgment of indebtedness should disclose the exact source of the material adduced.

All essays should be considered incomplete until a full bibliography of all the sources used has been attached, including unpublished sources such as a professor’s lecture, or an unpublished essay by the author or by someone else. All sources referred to in footnotes should be listed in the bibliography.

Therefore, when a student at Austin Seminary submits an essay, it will be understood that the paper, apart from the obligations indicated, is presented as the student’s own work and has been written with full recognition of the above standards.

The Chicago Manual of Style (17th Edition) should be used to ensure that footnotes, bibliographies, etc., are in adequate form to acknowledge all indebtedness to the work of others. Faculty and students are referred to The Chicago Manual of Style section titled “The Author’s Responsibilities” for information on avoiding charges of plagiarism, and to “Section 14, Documentation I: Basic Patterns” for instruction on proper citation. The Chicago Manual of Style Online is available to all faculty and students free of charge. A link to this resource is available in the Library Quick Links on the Resource Page in MyCampus.

Academic dishonesty also includes the unacknowledged use of one’s own