Honor Code

As a community of scholars, the students and faculty at Augustana College commit to the highest standards of excellence by mutually embracing an Honor Code. As a College of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, we understand the individual and collective responsibility we have in fostering integrity. Ultimately, our purpose is to be an engaged body of academically excellent, highly articulate, and morally centered persons who learn about and examine the world together. We believe that only when we are honest with ourselves and each other can we begin to contribute to the world in a meaningful manner.

Augustana’s Honor Code consists of inter-related elements that guide scholarship and leaning; the Honor Pledge, the Honor Board, and a set of judicial procedures that guide the College’s response to alleged academic integrity violations.

The Honor Code states the principles that guide our work together. Students will sign an honor pledge on every examination and other assignments deemed appropriate by the faculty member. The Honor Pledge is as follows;

“On my honor, I pledge that I have upheld the Honor Code, and that the work I have done on this assignment has been honest, and that the work of others in this class has, to the best of my knowledge, been honest as well.”

The Honor Board has the responsibility for administering the Honor Code by developing the rules of procedure and educating the campus community about academic integrity. The Honor Board is composed of upper-class students and faculty. Students will apply for Honor Board membership in the spring semester.

Members of the Honor Board are a resource for students and faculty members regarding the working of the Honor System and by offering programs that engage students and faculty in conversations about academic integrity, the Honor Code and its goals.

Note: A comprehensive description of the Honor Code is published Academic Affairs website.

What is Academic Integrity?

Integrity is vital to the academic classroom at Augustana College because it involves the search for and acquisition of knowledge and understanding. Any willful misrepresentation of the relation between the work being evaluated and the student's actual state of knowledge is a violation of the Honor Code. The following is a partial list of examples:

• Plagiarism
  • Using the exact language of someone else without the use of quotation marks and without giving proper credit to the author.
  • Rearranging another's ideas or material and presenting them as though they are one's original work without giving appropriate acknowledgment.
  • Submitting a document written by someone else as one's own work.
• Paying for or obtaining another's work and submitting it as one's own
• Giving or receiving answers to an exam
• Copying, with or without another person's knowledge, during an exam
• Doing class assignments for someone else
• Submitting a paper that has been purchased from another or the web
• Fabricating sources on a bibliography
• Obtaining an unauthorized copy of a test in advance of its scheduled administration
• Using unauthorized notes during an exam
• Collaborating with other students on assignments when it is not permitted
• Stealing an assignments from another student and submitting it as one's own
• Fabricating laboratory or research data
• Destroying, stealing or sabotaging the work of other students
• Submitting a previously graded assignment for a different course