Academic Integrity Values

Honesty: Honest students respect college policies, follow their instructors’ instructions, and do their work on their own without any unauthorized help. For a graduate of the business program, that honesty might look like making large bank deposits at the end of the night.

Trust: If you are always honest, you will be able to build a relationship of trust both with your peers and your instructors. Trust is established over time and is based mostly on your actions. In your classroom, an example might be knowing that other people in a group assignment will do their part to help meet the deadline your instructor has given. For a graduate of the early childhood education program, it means the high level of trust placed in you by the parents of the children you care for in a daycare or preschool setting.

Courage: To uphold academic integrity standards requires courage to resist temptations for the “easy way out” and to speak up against wrongdoing. In a class this might be a shy student participating in mock interviews or a difficult scenario, which can both be stressful to do in a workplace. This might be graduates of the nursing comprehensive healthcare aid or police studies programs working in dangerous situations.

Fairness: A person of integrity is fair. You are fair to your peers when you do your own work, to authors when you acknowledge their work by citing it, to the college when you respect and follow academic integrity standards, and to alumni when your behaviour helps to support the value of their degree. In a classroom, this might be your instructor giving you lots of time to practice and develop a skill before you are tested. And just as you have supports at ACC to help you be the best student you can be, a lot of your future workplaces will have staff and policies in place to help you to do your best.

Respect: You show respect when you adhere to your assignment instructions, when you actively participate in learning and show interest in gaining new knowledge, when you contribute your thoughts to the academic discourse while accepting that others may disagree with you, when you credit others for their ideas, and when you show that you are putting your best efforts forward.  Respect for self and others is a universal value across many family, community, religious, and cultural spectrums. For graduates of programs like land and water management or sustainable foods, you might be working with an external stakeholder group whose cultural values are part of a partnership or collaboration.

Responsibility: You show responsible behaviour when you lead by example, when you resist negative peer pressure, and when you discourage others from violating academic integrity principles. Being responsible means being accountable to yourself and others and to do your work to the best of your abilities. As a student, you and your instructors have a responsibility to be on time and ready to work upon graduation. Whether you’re working in a restaurant, a government agency, or a construction company, your responsibilities will be very similar, so you’ll see academic continuity in many aspects of your student life. Here at ACC, this could be in classroom environments, whether they’re in person or online, in your assignments, tests, and exams, and in the ACC Student Honest and Integrity policy.