PWR and University Policies and Procedures for Students to be Included in PWR Syllabi

• The Fundamental Standard and Honor Code
• PWR Policies
• Intellectual Property, Copyright and Plagiarism Policies

PWR offers instructors flexibility to promote a high level of achievement and learning in each class. It also sets a few important policies and procedures to the same ends. The following policies and procedures grow out of and reflect many teachers' experiences, University policies, and national research in the field of teaching in writing and rhetoric. The text written in bold below should appear in your syllabus.

The Fundamental Standard and Honor Code

Students bear the responsibility for their day-to-day behavior. Most University policies and procedures relating to students reflect the Fundamental Standard and the Stanford Honor Code. Because they govern conduct campus wide and inform the PWR policies listed below, the following material should appear in your syllabi. Since 1896, the Fundamental Standard states:

Students at Stanford are expected to show both within and without the University such respect for order, morality, personal honor and the rights of others as is demanded of good citizens. Failure to do this will be sufficient cause for removal from the University.

The Stanford Honor Code

The Honor Code was adopted at the request of the student body in 1921 and has been regularly reviewed and modified since then. The full text of the Honor Code reads as follows and should appear in some form in your syllabus:

1. The Honor Code is an undertaking of the students, individually and collectively:
   1. that they will not give or receive aid in examinations; that they will not give or receive unpermitted aid in class work, in the preparation of
      reports, or in any other work that is to be used by the instructor as the basis of grading;
   2. that they will do their share and take an active part in seeing to it that others as well as themselves uphold the spirit and letter of the Honor Code.
   
   
   
2. The faculty on its part manifests its confidence in the honor of its students by refraining from proctoring examinations and from taking unusual and unreasonable precautions to prevent the forms of dishonesty mentioned above. The faculty will also avoid, as far as practicable, academic procedures that create temptations to violate the Honor Code.
   
   
3. While the faculty alone has the right and obligation to set academic requirements, the students and faculty will work together to establish optimal conditions for honorable academic work.

Examples of conduct which have been regarded as being in violation of the Honor Code include:

• Copying from another's examination paper or allowing another to copy from one's own paper
  
• Unpermitted collaboration
  
• Plagiarism
  
• Revising and resubmitting a quiz or exam for regrading, without the instructor's knowledge and consent
  
• Giving or receiving unpermitted aid on a take-home examination
  
• Representing as one's own work the work of another
  
• Giving or receiving aid on an academic assignment under circumstances in which a reasonable person should have known that such aid was not permitted

At a minimum, you should include the following paraphrase in your syllabus:
Honor Code/Fundamental Standard. Violating the Honor Code is a serious offense, even when the violation is unintentional. The Honor Code is included in the Stanford Bulletin (pp. 670-671), and you are responsible for understanding the university’s rules regarding academic integrity. You should familiarize yourself with the code if you haven’t already done so. In brief, conduct prohibited by the Honor Code includes all forms of academic dishonesty, among them copying from another’s exam, unpermitted collaboration, representing as one’s own work the work of another, revising and resubmitting work for regrading without the instructor’s knowledge and consent, and plagiarism. If you have any questions about these matters, please see me during office hours.

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Standard PWR Course Policies

All PWR instructors should include either the following PWR policy statements or versions of those statements that have been approved by the Associate Director. Text written in bold below should appear in your syllabus.

Attendance

PWR Policy: Because PWR courses make use of writing activities, in-class workshops, and small group discussion, your consistent attendance is crucial to your success. If you must miss a class for religious holidays, medical reasons, or valid University-related activities, you must let your instructor know as far in advance as possible of the absence and obtain information about the work you must do to keep up in class. If you miss a class for any other reason (sudden illness, family emergency, etc.), you should get in touch with your instructor as soon as possible and arrange to make up the work missed. If you do not take responsibility for communicating with your instructor about absences, your instructor will contact you by phone or email and issue a warning about your standing in the course. Should you miss a second unexcused class, your work in the class will be seriously compromised, and a continued pattern of absences may jeopardize your enrollment in the class. The best policy, therefore, is to be in class, on time, every day!
Since your students will have read the PWR statement on attendance in your syllabus, they shouldn’t be confused about the policy or about our procedures for dealing with absences. It is important to implement this policy carefully and consistently: ask students to let you know, in advance, if they must miss class for religious holidays, medical reasons, or valid University-related activities. If students miss two or more classes, remind them of the Program policy and alert them to the serious consequences of missing class. (See the letter in Appendix B1.)

Conferences

Your syllabus should clearly state that students will hold at least three conferences with you during the course of the term, and you should identify the weeks on the syllabus when you plan to schedule conferences. Of course students may choose to consult with you more frequently, and your syllabus should include your office hours when they might do so.

Grade Disputes

PWR Policy: If you have a complaint about this PWR course or wish to question a grade on an assignment, please write me a memo explaining the problems you are having with the course, the reasons for your dispute, and so on. Then meet with me to discuss your dispute. You may want, for example, to ask me to read an assignment again, reconsidering your work in light of points you have made about it. Many misunderstandings or problems can be worked out in such a meeting. If you wish to pursue a complaint or dispute, make an appointment to see the Associate Director of PWR. He will advise you on any further course of action.

Dual Submission Policy

The same paper may not be submitted for a grade in more than one class. Students should be encouraged to explore areas of work they are doing in other classes; however, such a process should strive to research, develop, and synthesize areas not covered in those other classes and, therefore, to generate distinct papers to meet distinct assignments.

Incompletes

You should give a student an Incomplete only in very special cases, when the student has completed all or the vast majority of the work in the class but, for some valid reason, cannot complete the course. If you must give an incomplete, please let the Associate Director know, and file a "Filing of Incomplete Grade Contract" form in the PWR office when you submit your grade sheets. Forms are available in the PWR office and as Appendix F of this Guide.

Revising

Given PWR’s principle that “writing is rewriting,” revision is absolutely necessary in your class. Most instructors allow students to revise as much as they want, up to the due date for the revised assignment, though instructors may agree to respond to only one or two drafts before the final is due. You may provide tentative grades on the drafts and hold off on the final grade until the last revision is submitted, or you can provide a grade on a draft that will be replaced by the grade for the revision. Allowing for such extensive revision means that students will ordinarily not rewrite a paper that has been submitted as a “final draft,” unless you are using a portfolio system that asks students to do one final revision of everything to be included in the portfolio.

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Intellectual Property, Copyright and Plagiarism Policies

Much heated debate in recent years centers on intellectual property, copyright, and plagiarism. Indeed, we reviewed a number of resources in order to develop comprehensive, concise, and usable statements. In addition to including the policy below, you should discuss these issues during the first class meeting and reiterate them as needed to individuals or to the class as a whole.

Academic Integrity/Appropriate Use of Sources

PWR Policy: All written work submitted to PWR classes may be sent by the PWR instructor to one or more databases for the noncommercial purpose of checking the writer’s use of sources. These databases check student writing against published works and other submitted student writing to ensure academic integrity, specifically that works and ideas have not been borrowed without appropriate citation.

Plagiarism

PWR Policy: Students are responsible for living by the Honor Code and for maintaining honesty in scholarship. Work submitted for a course must be the student’s own (or a group’s work, if students have collaborated on an assignment). The use of someone else’s words or ideas without acknowledgment and as your own contradicts PWR goals and principles. As such, PWR will take reasonable precautions to prevent it and all measures prescribed by the Stanford Judicial Affairs Office for remedy and redress.

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