Academic Integrity

All Penn State and Eberly College of Science policies regarding academic integrity, ethics and honorable behavior apply to this course. In light of the fact that group work is highly encouraged, and to fully facilitate best ethical practices and academic integrity, the following rules apply:

All work submitted for an exam must be entirely the student's own work. For other assignments (i.e., homework/labs and class project), all ideas and work derived from resources beyond class notes must properly acknowledge or reference sources including: assigned readings (including textbooks and online sources), websites, classmates, other students, and solution sets from other or prior courses, etc. This means you should work together on labs/homework assignments, but each student should respond to questions individually and make liberal use of acknowledgments. For the class project, students will be encouraged to work in small teams of two or three students. In the final report, students are required to describe their contributions to the project accurately and to give credit to their teammates for their contributions.

Academic integrity is the pursuit of scholarly activity in an open, honest and responsible manner. Academic integrity is a basic guiding principle for all academic activity at The Pennsylvania State University, and all members of the University community are expected to act in accordance with this principle. Consistent with this expectation, the University’s Code of Conduct states that all students should act with personal integrity, respect other students’ dignity, rights and property, and help create and maintain an environment in which all can succeed through the fruits of their efforts.

Academic integrity includes a commitment by all members of the University community not to engage in or tolerate acts of falsification, misrepresentation or deception. Such acts of dishonesty violate the fundamental ethical principles of the University community and compromise the worth of work completed by others.