The Council on Academic Affairs met with two representatives from the Office of Student Standards to answer questions about syllabus guidelines on reporting misconduct Thursday.

Heather Webb, the Director of Student Standards, and Shawn Peoples, Associate Director of Student Standards, explained their office’s process.

“All instances of academic misconduct will be reported to the Office of Student Standards,” Webb said.

She said in the past, when faculty sent a report to the Office of Student Standards, they would not expect something like academic probation to be filed on the student. However, when they do file a report, it is usually because the student has a history of academic reports.

“The faculty member may not be privileged to the student’s previous disciplinary history,” Peoples said. “When we look at an incident, we look at the entire disciplinary history of that student.”

Peoples also said when it comes to situations like these faculty need to address the behavior accordingly.

“It’s not required for faculty to report to our office,” Webb said. “Would I like it to be required? Yes.”

Webb said faculty members were also wondering if they had to report such instances.

Council member Rebecca Throneburg, said there was some discussion about whether or not faculty members could handle academic misconduct, even though they would still report it.

“On the Academic Misconduct Form, it does state that in addition to the academic penalty, there will be a response from our office,” Peoples said. “Typically what that is, we have an academic tutorial program which addresses different forms of ethical decision making.”

Peoples said Student Standards assigns the tutorial along with to the academic penalty to ensure that students are able to learn the differences in academic misconduct.

Council members will discuss three revised business courses along with a new marketing minor in their next meeting.

The next council meeting will be at 2 p.m. Thursday in Room 4440 in the Booth Library.

Luis Martinez can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].