- If you have a suspected academic misconduct case see guidelines below and email the appropriate staff person.
- On-campus classes EN 101, 102, 103, 104: Contact Jessica Kidd (kidd005@ua.edu).
- Traditional distance learning classes EN 101, 102: Contact Dr. Natalie Loper (nloper@ua.edu).
- EN 120, 121 (TESOL classes): Contact Dr. Dorothy Worden (dlworden@ua.edu)
- For their protection, all teachers must follow A & S policy for handling academic misconduct. Teachers who don’t follow the policy may be liable if students pursue legal action.
Quick Guide: Materials Needed for Submitting a Case
These guidelines are for final draft essays. For information on how to talk to students who have problems at the draft stage, please see “Draft Stage Issues” below.
- Don’t accuse your student or discuss the paper in question with her/him/them.
- Send the following information and files to your appropriate FWP contact.
- Your CWID
- The student’s email address and CWID
- Your course and section #
- Explanation of what you’ve found and any pertinent info about the student’s participation (drafts not turned in, conferences attended or not, etc.)
- Copy of paper in question, highlighted and labeled to correspond with evidence (this can be the Turnitin report)
- Copy of supporting evidence (usually copies of webpages or a matching student paper), highlighted to correspond to paper in question.
- Course syllabus including policies and class calendar
- Assignment sheet
- All pertinent due dates if not listed on your assignment sheet
- A FWP administrator will review your materials and submit them via the A&S online form (new as of fall 2021)
Draft Stage Issues
Communicating with Students About Pending Cases
While you and FWP admin are reviewing the case, if the student asks about the paper, you may say only that you have some questions about or problems with grading the paper and you have asked someone else in the department to look at it. After the case has been turned over to the dean’s office, use the following statement if students ask about papers under review:
“I have submitted your paper to the dean’s office for review, and they will be contacting you to set up a meeting. While the dean’s office reviews this assignment, I cannot discuss the paper with you, so please wait for contact from the dean’s office.”
You may also print out the above language if you need to return papers to your class while a paper is being reviewed by the dean’s office.
Please don’t give students this notice until the FWP has notified you that your paper has been submitted.
Related Grading Issues
- Students found guilty of academic misconduct are not allowed to withdraw from the class.
- If you have a pending plagiarism case at midterm or the end of the semester when grades are due, that student’s grade will need to be reported as “I.”
200+ Level Courses
- Suspected plagiarism cases in 200-level (or above) courses are turned in via the online reporting form which can be found on the A&S Guidelines page.
- See this annotated version of the online form for more info on submitting for 200-level and above