Policies

Student Absences:

  Faculty members in the Department of Literature and Language recognize that unexpected occasions may arise when a student must be absent from class. Although such absences are not encouraged, the following policy will prevail:

• Three absences will be tolerated in Monday-Wednesday-Friday classes;
• Two absences will be allowed in Tuesday-Thursday classes;
• One absence only will be permitted for classes that meet once a week.

Students remain responsible for all material covered in missed classes, including reading assignments, announcements and changes of schedules. Should any further unexcused absences occur, however, the instructor has the option of lowering the final course grade by one letter grade for each hour missed. Failure to attend class in a responsible and committed manner may thus be grounds for failure in the course.

Plagiarism:

In order to avoid confusion, the UNCA Department of Literature and Language defines plagiarism in this widely accepted fashion: Plagiarism involves the appropriation and use of someone else's ideas or words as one's own. All definitions, terminology, concepts, and patterns of organization taken from an outside source must be identified and given credit in any essay or exam you write--whether it be for the Literature Department or any other department.

When outside reading is undertaken for an assigned paper you are responsible for recording accurate reading notes so that later, should you wish to incorporate some of the ideas or phraseology encountered in your reading, you may properly and adequately identify the source. In identifying such sources, you should follow the style sheet provided in the HANDBOOK FOR MAJORS.

Facts of general knowledge (such as the place and date of an author's birth, honors granted during his or her lifetime, the titles and dates of published works, etc.) need not be footnoted. However, facts which are not in the area of general knowledge must be credited to the source. Ideas, interpretations, terms, and patterns of organization taken from an outside source may be either directly quoted (in which case the exact words should be placed in quotation marks) or paraphrased. Paraphrase is recommended whenever possible in order to avoid a disproportionate amount of direct quotation in your paper. In either case--whether you are quoting or paraphrasing--credit must be given to the source.

A good definition of paraphrase is this one: "To paraphrase is to express the sense of a passage entirely in your own words, selecting and summarizing only information and ideas that will be useful . . . It is the recording of relevant information in the student's own words. It extracts items of information instead of merely recasting the entire passage and line of thought in different words."1

The key to avoiding plagiarism is to remember that when an idea, phrase, term, definition, or pattern of organization is not your own, you are responsible for giving credit to the source from which you took these elements.

1. Floyd C. Watkins, William B. Dillingham, and Edtin T. Martin, Practical English Handbook, 3rd ed. (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1971).

The Department of Literature and Language considers plagiarism a grave breach of intellectual integrity. Instructors in the department have the authority to give students a failing grade for the course because of a single instance of plagiarism or other form of cheating. At the least, the following minimal steps will be taken:

• The student will receive the grade of F for the particular work attempted in which plagiarism or cheating is involved;
• The incident will be reported to the Department Chair;
• The incident will be reported to the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs who will determine whether any other punishment should be taken. Additional penalties may be imposed at the Vice Chancellor's discretion. They may include cancellation of scholarships, suspension, and expulsion.