In a truly academic community, honor must be expected. Honor is an ideal that is evident in the lives of ethical scholars. Primarily, the function of the Georgetown College Honor System is to educate and instill a common purpose within the campus student community. The Honor System is an educational tool to assist the process of teaching morality and ethics. The Honor System helps create an environment that will assist in the development of the whole person by insisting upon honorable traits and behavior. Further, the process assists in the establishment of precedent, consistency, and fairness with regard to questions of academic integrity. An effective honor system requires students and faculty to understand and abide by the system’s expectations.
The strength of the Honor System is in the creation of an atmosphere in which students can act with individual responsibility. This includes the personal decision to act honorably and not to tolerate others who choose to violate the conditions of the Honor System. Therefore, an important aspect of the College’s Honor System is that all students must report violations of the Honor System by their peers. Faculty and staff must also understand the spirit of the system and do everything possible to abide by the guidelines. All students are expected to sign an understanding of the Honor System. Details of the process for adjudicating Honor offenses can be found in the online Student Handbook.
Disposition Concerns
All candidates enrolled in a Graduate program must demonstrate the professional dispositions expected of candidate as outlined in their program’s disposition rubric. Candidates’ dispositions are assessed upon program entrance and throughout the program during each course. If a disposition concern occurs outside of a course experience, the department chair may submit a disposition concern to the Dean of the respective program to document the issue.
Honor code infractions are included in the disposition concern review process for graduate candidates. These infractions include cheating, plagiarism, stealing, lying, and double assignments (the use of one assignment to fulfill the requirements of more than one course).
Technology Ethics Policy
The Graduate programs adhere to all of the principles outlined in the Technology Ethics Policy. A statement of the policy, enforcement of the policy, and guidelines for use of computing resources including the internet, worldwide web, email, and related networks are available in the online Student Handbook, or by contacting ITS.