Wheelock VP's Memo to Faculty Used Others' Words

Shirley Malone-Fenner, vice president for academic affairs at Wheelock College, sent a start-of-the-year letter to faculty members, and a number of passages came, without attribution, from the words of others, The Boston Globe reported. Six passages came from a letter from Drew Faust, Harvard University's president. Other phrases came from speeches by the presidents of Rutgers University and the University of the Pacific. Faculty members discovered the phrases by running Malone-Fenner's letter through plagiarism detection software that the college uses to check students' work. Malone-Fenner told the Globe: “In preparing my message, I reviewed many letters from other institutions and used words from others’ welcoming messages without attribution. What I intended to share is quite simple -- I am excited about working with each member of the faculty to make this a most successful year.”