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  • Ask the Administrator: You've Got to be Kidding...

    By Dean Dad February 13, 2008 10:02 pm

    A regular reader writes:

    A probationary faculty member in my college plagiarized his entire statement of teaching philosophy in his RST (Rank, Salary, and Tenure) file. Not just lifted a few phrases, but downloaded someone else's teaching philosophy from the Internet, omitted a few paragraphs that were too specifically about the actual author, and put it in his file.

    The department has talked to the faculty member, and he "realizes that this is a serious matter" and he's really sorry. I say that I hear that kind of crap from my students way too often. I don't have to put up with it from them, and I sure don't want to put up with it from a colleague. Somewhere in the course of his advanced degree program, they should have mentioned
    that plagiarism was bad.

    As far as I'm concerned, this is sufficient reason to vote for a terminal contract. The department feels otherwise (although I gather that they are split.) What do you think?

    That's amazing.

    This is where the 'law and order' side of my 'law and order liberal' politics comes out. I'd fire the dumb bastard. The rule against plagiarism is fair, it's directly relevant to the academic enterprise, and this guy doesn't even dispute that he did it. Throw the bum out.

    A friend of mine at a comprehensive university recently had a book project canceled out from under him when a chapter submitted by his co-author turned out to have been lifted wholesale from Wikipedia. (His co-author has tenure; he doesn't.) This is not a victimless crime. My guess is that folks who get away with this keep doing it, though I'd imagine it's much easier to catch in the age of Google.

    Just for fun, let's imagine what happens if, say, this joker gets tenure, but someone else who actually made an honest effort gets shot down. For more fun, let's assume the denied candidate is a member of a protected class. In administrative terms, it's "liability-a-go-go." Let's imagine the courtroom dialogue. "Did you know that Mr. Whiteman's portfolio contained plagiarized
    material?" "Well, yes, but we didn't think it was any big deal." "Did you have any reason to suspect that Ms. Unemployed's file was illegitimate?" "No, but we thought it wasn't up to snuff." "So you define 'up to snuff' as 'plagiarized'? Or do you define 'up to snuff' as 'white and male"?"

    Not pretty.

    On an emotional level, I couldn't help but read your candidate's actions as somewhere between 'arrogant' and 'contemptuous.' If he really can't be bothered to try to whip something up to keep his job, what does he think of his job? Is that really someone you want to make bulletproof for the next several decades? If he escapes consequences now, when he's at least potentially vulnerable, can you imagine the crap he'll pull once he's tenured? This guy will be an ongoing nightmare for the rest of his career, and he will be a nightmare of your department's making.

    I'm guessing that some of your colleagues feel bad for him, probably on the grounds that they think of statements of teaching philosophy as inherently vapid and extraneous. There's some truth to that, but that's an argument to be had on its own merits. (In eight years of observing and evaluating faculty, I haven't noticed any correlation - none - between good statements
    of teaching philosophy and good teaching.) But that's not a justification for cheating. It's a justification for trying to get the rules changed going forward. The issue here isn't whether a statement of teaching philosophy carries any weight; it's whether honesty does.

    If it doesn't, you're in very deep trouble.

    What if the guy starts fabricating outcomes assessments? What if he publishes something that turns out to have been plagiarized? And do you really want this guy judging other candidates for promotion and tenure in the future? My brain hurts just thinking about it.

    Kick him to the curb. If you don't, you ain't seen nothin' yet.

    Wise and worldly readers - what would you do?

    Have a question? Ask the Administrator at deandad (at) gmail (dot) com.

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Comments on Ask the Administrator: You've Got to be Kidding...

  • no big deal
  • Posted by Dr Dad on February 14, 2008 at 8:40am EST

  • I just can't get worked up about this. It is a bloody teaching statement not an article, grant application or anything that requires original thought. When I wrote mine I had a stack of five I grabbed from the Internet and used them as a source of ideas and phrases. That is what you do! These are not actually working documents that you use. They are things you turn in so the education bureaucracy has something to react to and in turn give you a couple paragraphs of meaningless crap. The real stuff is in the classroom not these statements. The person is guilty of stupidity for not spending the extra few hours that would turn plagiarism into stating the same meaningless platitudes in a slight different way.

  • Posted by utahprof on February 14, 2008 at 10:35am EST

  • Sorry Dr. Dad-you're wrong and Dean Dad and the poster are right. As Senor Gump might say-"My Momma Used To Say-Plagiarism is as Plagiarism Does."

    We cannot possibly hold our students to academic rigor and honesty if we do not practice it ourselves.

    Give the offender a terminal year as a lesson learned.

  • Plagiarism and Teaching Statements
  • Posted by Ross Pudaloff on February 14, 2008 at 11:35am EST

  • To get the obvious of the way first--fire the guy. Plagiarism is a capital offense.

    As a guy who not only does Foucault and lawn care, but also hires someone to cut his lawn, I recognize any additional comments on my part are as compromised as I am. Still, I was struck by cc dean's perhaps offhand statement that he has found no correlation whatsoever between statements of teaching philosophy and actual performance in the classroom over an eight year period. Actually, I'm being disingenuous. I'm not struck by statement but by the admission. It's not often that one finds an administrator admitting that this kind of chore is worthless. Moreover, and here I think cc dean is being disingenuous, what is one to make of the advice that what needs to be done is change the rules? One might think that eight years is enough time and then some to do that. The fact is, at least as far as my experience shows, that such tasks never go away; on the rare occasions that they are examined, the result inevitably is a yet more complex and detailed form to be filled out.
    Teaching, or rather the evaluation of teaching, is a sacred cow, immune from any serious academic critique that might even toy with suggesting less is more. Criticism of the processes of evaluating, even if those processes clearly are meaningless, wasteful, and irrelevant, is a waste of time--hence the dean continues to review laboriously constructed statements of teaching philosophy even as he discounts their value. To suggest the abolition of such statements will probably get one a reputation as a bad teacher and an uncaring person. Better in short to waste even more time and energy.
    Gotta love it.
    best,
    Ross

  • What about the students?
  • Posted by John on February 14, 2008 at 11:55am EST

  • So, Dr. Dad, what happens when one of the faculty member's students turns in a plagiarized assignment? The student says, "hey no big deal, it's just a meaningless bureaucratic requirement, this isn't my major, so yeah, I grabbed it off the web." And then adds, "I'm really sorry." How would this faculty member respond?

  • But it wasn't real work
  • Posted by Dr Dad on February 14, 2008 at 2:00pm EST

  • It really depends on the assignment. If it was a 15 page term paper that they were to research and put in original work, they would flunk the class. If it was a two page paper on what their learning expectations from the class were (I can't imagine ever assigning such a useless task but it is the closest student equivalent to a teaching statement I can come up with) I would sit them down and tell them that it was not acceptable and make them give six pages worth of their own writing. In other words, I see the situation as "clueless" rather than "arrogant/contemptuous" and react accordingly. I mean, teaching statements all say the same thing so I can see how someone could find something that they agree with and submit it without thinking about it.

    It is all about proportionality. Some tasks we do are more important than others and we should be willing to recognize differences in our reactions. After all "consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds". Teaching statements are something that the system demands but god help us when we start treating them like real work. Unfortunately as a probationary faculty member, the person was in no position to press for change, nor do I think that such change is likely. After all there's a whole institutional structure dedicated to the consumption of these things and they will protect their job security.

    Now if this was a real piece of work that was plagiarized, I'd be at the head of the mob to tar and feather the bastard. But come on, this is a redo.

  • Posted by Ugh on February 15, 2008 at 7:50am EST

  • Dr Dad [and those just like him] are the reason so many highly qualified people can't get full-time work.

    If Person #1 is a total bungler...and there is a line of 5 other newly minted PhDs just waiting for a job, they why would you keep #1 around?

    And, btw, Dr Dad, a Teaching Philosophy is indeed "real work" for someone who wants a teaching position in the academy.

    Did you get tenure 30 years ago?

  • Teaching is real work, statements are not
  • Posted by Dr Dad on February 16, 2008 at 9:30am EST

  • Cool. I've never been taken for an old fogey before. For the record I got my ph.d about half a decade ago and was tenured last year.

    Teaching is real work and something that every professor needs to continually work on. Teaching statements are the things that you turn into the bean counters and "educational" professionals so that they can "evaluate" your proformance. They have very to do with anything that happens in the classroom

  • PLAGIARISM IS A NO-NO
  • Posted by Lev D. Zilbermints on February 16, 2008 at 5:35pm EST

  • I will be short and to the point. Plagiarism is unacceptable, period. When someone plagiarizes, it hurts not only the reputation of the person, but also of the workplace that accepts and tolerates such plagiarism. The reason being, a student or faculty member, what-have-you, must be able to come up with his/her own innovative ideas, not plagiarize. What good are you if you cannot be creative and need to pass off somebody else's ideas as your own?

    Now, if you read up about someone else's ideas, give them due credit, and then come up with something entirely new, then that is not plagiarism, for the new idea is your own.
    For example, Smith invents a bicycle that can hover in the air for five hours straight.
    Then Jones improves on the idea and finds a better concept that allows the bicycle to teleport anywhere on the planet.

    Get the picture?

    The same applies to writing papers. If you credit your source, that is not plagiarism. But if you lift ideas without citing the source, that's plagiarism, pure and simple.

    All that said, I suggest you get rid of people who plagiarize and teach others to do so.

    Case in point.

  • Posted by Perspective on February 19, 2008 at 2:15pm EST

  • I think people need some empirics before they pass judgement on anyone. I did a web search of the first generic teaching statement I found. You guessed it. It was shared in whole or significant part by 5 people! Should all of these people be fired? I also found several shared by 2-3 people. In situations like these, it might be better for people that determine the fates of others to view the institutional context of the alleged infraction prior to passing judgement. A determination of guilt or innocence should be made with context in mind.

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