Academic Integrity

Academic Integrity Policy

Kingsborough Community College strives to promote academic integrity among students to help prepare them for their future endeavors. The International Center for Academic Integrity defines academic integrity by 5 core values. These values are as follows:

  1. Honesty: The quest for truth and knowledge by requiring intellectual and personal honesty in learning, teaching, research, and service
  2. Trust: Academic institutions must foster a climate of mutual trust in order to stimulate the free exchange of ideas.
  3. Fairness: All interactions among students, faculty and administrators should be grounded in clear standards, practices and procedures.
  4. Respect: Learning is acknowledged as a participatory process, and a wide range of opinions and ideas is respected.
  5. Responsibility: A thriving community demands personal accountability on the part of all members and depends upon action in the face of wrongdoing.

To reach academic success, one needs to uphold the 5 core values of honesty, trust, fairness, respect and responsibility. Failure to do so may result in charges of academic dishonesty. Academic dishonesty is prohibited by CUNY and Kingsborough Community College and is punishable by penalties, including failing grades, suspension, and expulsion. Examples of academic dishonesty include, but are not limited to, cheating, plagiarism, internet plagiarism, obtaining unfair advantages, and falsification of records.

Definitions and Examples of Academic Dishonesty

Cheating is the unauthorized use or attempted use of material, information, notes, study aids, devices, artificial intelligence (AI) systems, or communication during an academic exercise. Example of cheating include:

  • Copying from another person or from a generative AI system or allowing others to copy work submitted for credit or a grade. This includes uploading work or submitting class assignments or exams to third party platforms and websites beyond those assigned for the class, such as commercial homework aggregators, without the proper authorization of a professor. Any use of generative AI tools must be in line with the usage policy for specific assignments as defined in the course of the syllabus and/or communicated by the course instructor.
  • Using artificial intelligence tools to generate content for assignments or exams, including but not limited to language models or code generators, without written authorization from the instructor.
  • Unauthorized collaboration on assignments or examinations.
  • Taking an examination or completing an assignment for another person or asking or allowing someone else to take an examination or complete an assignment for you, including exams taken on a home computer.
  • Submitting content generated by another person or an AI tool or any other source as solely your own work as your own, including, but not limited to, material obtained in whole or in part from commercial study or homework help websites, or content generated or altered by AI or digital paraphrasing tools without proper citation.
  • Fabricating and/or falsifying data (in whole or in part).
  • Giving assistance to acts of academic misconduct/dishonesty.
  • Altering a response on a previously graded exam or assignment and then attempting to return it for more credit or a higher grade without permission from the instructor.
  • Submitting substantial portions of a paper or assignment to more than one course for credit without permission from each instructor.
  • Unauthorized use during an examination of notes, prepared answers, or any electronic devices such as cell phones, computers, smart watches, or other technologies to copy, retrieve, generate or send information.

Plagiarism is the act of presenting ideas, research or writing that is not your own as your own. Examples of plagiarism include:

  • Copying another person’s or an AI tool’s actual words or images without the use of quotation marks and citations attributing the words to their source.
  • Presenting another person’s ideas or theories in your own words without acknowledging the source.
  • Failing to acknowledge collaborators on homework and laboratory assignments.
  • Internet plagiarism, including submitting downloaded term papers or parts of term papers, paraphrasing or copying information from the internet without citing the source, or “cutting & pasting” from various sources without proper attribution.
  • Unauthorized use of AI-generated content; or use of AI-generated content, whether in whole or in part, even when paraphrased, without citing the AI as the source.

Obtaining Unfair Advantage is any action taken by a student that gives that student an unfair advantage in his/her academic work over another student, or an action taken by a student through which a student attempts to gain an unfair advantage in his or her academic work over another student. Examples of obtaining unfair advantage include:
Intentionally obstructing or interfering with another student’s work.

  • Stealing, reproducing, circulating or otherwise gaining advance access to examination materials.
  • Depriving other students of access to library materials by stealing, destroying, defacing, or concealing them.
  • Retaining, using or circulating examination materials which clearly indicate that they should be returned at the end of the exam.

Falsification of Records and Official Documents
Examples of falsification include:

  • Forging signatures of authorization.
  • Falsifying information on an official academic record.
  • Falsifying information on an official document such as a grade report, letter of permission, drop/add form, ID card, or other college document.
  • Falsifying medical documentation that has a bearing on campus access or the excuse of absences or missed examinations and assignments.

Reporting Suspected Incidents of Academic Dishonesty

Once a faculty member suspects that a student has committed a violation of the CUNY Academic Policy, he or she shall review with the student the facts and circumstances of the suspected violation whenever feasible. If a faculty member concludes that here has been an incident of academic dishonesty sufficient to affect the student's final course grade shall report the incident on the Faculty Report Form for Suspected Incidents of Academic Dishonesty.

The Academic Integrity Officer shall update the Faculty Report Form for Suspected Incidents of Academic Dishonesty after a suspected incident has been resolved to reflect the resolution. Unless the resolution exonerates the student, the Academic Integrity Officer shall place the form in a confidential academic integrity file created for each student alleged to have violated the Academic Integrity Policy and shall retain each form for the purposes of identifying repeat offenders, gathering data, and assessing and reviewing policies. Unless the student is exonerated, written decisions on academic integrity matters after adjudication shall also be placed in the student's academic integrity file.

For more information regarding CUNY’s Academic Integrity policy, please refer to https://www.cuny.edu/about/administration/offices/legal-affairs/policies-procedures/academic-integrity-policy/.