Resources for Faculty

Faculty play probably the most important role in promoting academic integrity at Penn. By discussing academic standards, research has indicated that professors can reduce the rate of cheating in their classes. Even in proper counteractive measures are employed, sometimes cheating will occur.

Faculty members are often unaware of what to do if they suspect cases of academic dishonesty. Please consult with the Office of Student Conduct at (215) 898-5651.

Dealing with Cheating

Preventing Cheating

Dealing with Cheating

When it comes to questions of confronting a student's academic integrity, faculty members have two choices:

1] Resolve the issue with the student on a personal level.

This option is one to pursue if the offense is "minor" and the faculty member feels that the student should get the benefit of the doubt in terms of past "bad acts". You make the call whether it is best that the student resubmit a plagiarized paper with all the appropriate sources listed this second time around or whether it is better to just make your message loud and clear by failing the student in your course.

2] Send the case to the Office of Student Conduct for disciplinary investigation.

OSC takes their job seriously and so if you file a report, they are going to take all the appropriate steps to find out what happened. The student will be notified that they are under investigation and that they are responsible to participate in the investigative process.

What's the difference between these two?

When students cheat, they are really gambling with their futures. In a nutshell, if students are found guilty after going through the standard process OSC supports, their offense GOES ON THEIR PERMANENT RECORD. What they have done, stays with them forever.

Preventing Cheating

We have come up with a few simple ways that you can prevent cheating in your classes:

  1. Print your feelings about cheating and the action(s) you will take if you catch a student cheating in your class directly on your syllabi and be sure to point this out when reviewing the semester plan for the course.
  2. Verbally remind students about your anti-cheating policy during the class prior to an examination and then again at the start of the examination hour.
  3. Require TAs to readdress the issue during recitation sessions.
  4. Color code the pages of your exams so that exam monitors can easily detect two students with the same test sitting next to one another.
  5. Check PennCards at the entrance of the examination room to verify that the student is enrolled in the class.
  6. Have your students actually sign the back page of the blue book which adheres the student to the code of academic integrity -- at least this will make them think twice.
  7. Do not allow students to bring laptop computers, palm pilots, pagers, cell phones or (if possible) graphing calculators into examinations.
  8. Reference the University Honor Council and the Office of Student Conduct as resources for your students should they have any questions about cheating.


The key is to bring up academic integrity at every opportunity. Let those students know that you are serious about this issue and that they should be too.