Professional Conduct and Academic Integrity

Responsible professional conduct and academic integrity are essential for maintaining the high quality of education and research in the department. Faculty and graduate students must conduct themselves in a professional and collegial manner in all dealings with each other. Graduate students holding teaching assistant (T.A.) or research assistant (R.A.) appointments should work together with their supervisors to develop a plan, based on reasonable expectations of student productivity, to involve an amount of effort commensurate with the percentage time of the appointment. For further useful information, consult the campus’ official statement on Responsible Professional Conduct: Guidelines for Teaching, Research, and Service, available at http://research.illinois.edu/responsible-conduct-research (login required).

The faculty of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering expects all students to always maintain academic integrity in the classroom and the research laboratory and to conduct their work in accordance with the highest ethical standards of the engineering profession. The basic campus policies and definitions regarding academic integrity in course work are presented in the Student Code, Article1, Part 4. (https://studentcode.illinois.edu/article1/ ).

All members of the university community are expected to adhere to the highest standards of academic integrity and ethical behavior in research and publications. The official university statement is online at https://research.illinois.edu/. Further definitions and information are provided in the Graduate College Handbook for Students, Faculty and Staff (http://www.grad.illinois.edu/gradhandbook/ ).

Additional helpful information about academic integrity and plagiarism is at http://www.library.illinois.edu/learn/research/academicintegrity.html. It is expected that all graduate students in the department will read and understand these campus policies.

To further foster and promote integrity among students, the CEE Honor Code was developed. The honor code is a written pledge. Instructors are requested to put the CEE Honor Code in the syllabi of all CEE courses, and on the cover page of every CEE exam. Students commit to the honor code each time they sign an exam, and implicitly whenever they put their signature on a class assignment.

The CEE Honor Code is the following:

I pledge to uphold the highest levels of professional and personal integrity in all of my actions, including 1) never assisting or receiving unfair assistance during exams, 2) never assisting or receiving assistance on class assignments beyond that specified by an instructor, and 3) always fully contributing to group activities that are part of a course activity.