Academic Programs

Here in the Allen School, we take academic Misconduct seriously and expect you to do the same. The good news is that the vast majority of you will do so. The bad news is that historical evidence indicates that some students will submit work that is not their own, shortchanging not only their own learning but undermining the atmosphere of trust and individual achievement that characterizes our school’s academic community.

Historically, CSE courses account for a large percentage of all Academic Misconduct cases at the UW each year, even though our courses represent only a much smaller percent of the student enrollment. The purpose of this page is to make our expectations as clear as possible in the hope that we will reduce the number of Academic Misconduct violations that occur. Although most violations involve program code, the expectations apply to any work done for a course. Any form of deception by which a student claims as their own work that which actually belongs to another, or otherwise gains unfair advantage over other students is considered Academic Misconduct. This includes cheating on class assignments or examinations and plagiarism, as well as more severe offenses, such as theft or alteration of other academic materials for purposes of acquiring academic credit or enhancing grades.

All incidents of alleged Academic Misconduct will be reported to the Office of Academic Affairs. The Office of Academic Affairs will then refer the matter to the appropriate College for Student Conduct investigation and adjudication.

In all considerations of academic misconduct, the department will carefully follow the letter and the spirit of the University’s Student Conduct Code. This code has been separately printed in pamphlet form and is available to any interested student from the Community Standards and Student Conduct office located in the HUB G20 or online.

The misuse of computing resources is considered another type of academic misconduct (for example, obtaining improper access to another student’s account). Before students obtain accounts on departmental computers they must sign an agreement stating that they will not misuse their accounts. Violations of this agreement may result in the loss of computer accounts and/or being removed from the major.

Each student who accepts admission into the Computer Science & Engineering degree programs agrees to be bound by the provisions of this section.

Below, we outline the general academic integrity policies used by many courses in CSE. If a course declares its own academic integrity policy, that policy supersedes the information found on this page.

The basic principle under which we operate is that each of you is expected to submit your own work. In general, any activity you engage in for the purpose of earning credit while avoiding learning, or to help others do so, is likely to be an act of Academic Misconduct.

As a particular example, attempting to take credit for someone else’s work by turning it in as your own constitutes plagiarism, which is a serious violation of basic academic standards. From the attention that the school pays to the Academic Misconduct issue, some of you will get the idea that any discussion of assignments is somehow a violation of academic principle. Such a conclusion, however, is wrong. In CSE courses it is usually appropriate to ask others — the TA, the instructor, or other students — for hints and debugging help or to talk generally about problem-solving strategies and program structure, as well as lecture and textbook content. In fact, we strongly encourage you to seek such assistance when you need it. The important point, however, is embodied in the following rule:

Rule 1: You must indicate on your submission any assistance you received. If you make use of such assistance without giving proper credit, you may be guilty of plagiarism.

For programs, proper citation usually takes the form of comments in the program. The instructor might indicate other methods of acknowledging help received, especially for other types of assignments. It is also important to make sure that the assistance you receive consists of general advice that does not cross the boundary into using code or answers written by someone else. It is fine to discuss ideas and strategies, but you should be careful to write your programs on your own. This provision is expressed in the following rule:

Rule 2: You must not share actual program code or other written solutions with other students. In particular, you should not ask anyone to give you a copy of their code or written solutions, conversely, give your code or written solutions to another student who asks you for it; nor should you post your solutions on the web, in public repositories, or any other publicly accessible place. Similarly, you should not discuss your algorithmic strategies to such an extent that you and your collaborators end up turning in exactly the same code. Discuss ideas together, but do the coding on your own.

The prohibition against looking at the actual code for a program has an important specific application in computer science courses. Developing a good programming assignment often takes years. When a new assignment is created, it invariably has problems that require a certain amount of polishing. To make sure that the assignments are as good as they can be, our school — like most others in the country — may reuse assignments, incorporating a few changes each time to make them more effective. The following rule applies in all CSE courses:

Rule 3: You must not look at solution sets or program code from prior course offerings, nor should you make your own solutions publicly available even after the due date. Beyond being a clear violation of academic integrity, making use of old solution sets is a dangerous practice. Most assignments change in a variety of ways from year to year as we seek to make them better. Each year, however, some student turns in a solution to an assignment from some prior year, even though that assignment has since changed so that the old solution no longer makes sense. Submitting something that solves a previous offerings’s assignment perfectly while failing to solve the current one is particularly damaging evidence of Academic Misconduct.

Whenever you seek help on an assignment, your goal should be improving your level of understanding and not simply getting your work completed correctly. Suppose, for example, that someone responds to your request for help by showing you a couple of lines of code that do the job. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking about that code as if it were a magical incantation — something you simply include in your program and don’t have to understand. By doing so, you will be in no position to solve similar problems on exams. The need to understand the assistance you receive can be expressed in the following rule:

Rule 4: You must be prepared to explain any work you submit.

Although you should certainly keep these rules in mind, it is important to recognize that the cases that we bring forward to the University are not those in which a student simply forgets to cite a source of legitimate aid. Most of the students we charge with Academic Misconduct have committed fairly egregious violations. Students, for example, have rummaged through paper recycling bins or undeleted trash folders to come up with copies of other students’ work, or have e-mailed part of all of their solutions to other students in advance of the due date.

Rule 5: Modifying code or other artifacts does not make it your own.

In many cases, students take deliberate measures — rewriting comments, changing variable names, and so forth — to disguise the fact that their work is copied from someone else. It is still not your work. Despite such cosmetic changes, similarities between student solutions are easy to detect — and we have effective tools for doing so. Programming style is highly idiosyncratic, and the chance that two submissions would be the same except for changes of the sort made easy by a text editor is vanishingly small. In addition to solutions from prior course offerings or from other students, you may come across helpful code on the Internet or from other sources outside the class. Modifying it does not make it yours.

Your instructor may choose to allow exceptions in certain obvious instances. For example, you might be assigned to work with a project team. In that case, developing a solution as a team is expected. The instructor might also give you starter code, or permit use of local libraries. Anything which the instructor explicitly gives you doesn’t normally need to be cited. Likewise, help you receive from course staff doesn’t need to be cited. But help you receive from the outside the course, such as from tutors, even if the tutors are paid for by the university, must be explicitly mentioned. Finally, the instructor may have additional clarifications or additions to the policies on this page.

We have no desire to create a climate in which students feel as if they are under suspicion. The entire point of the Academic Misconduct Code is that we all benefit from working in an atmosphere of mutual trust. Students who deliberately take advantage of that trust, however, poison that atmosphere for everyone. As members of the CSE community, we have a responsibility to protect academic integrity for the benefit of the community as a whole.

This policy, and the text in this page, are derived from the Honor Code of the Computer Science Department at Stanford University.

Protecting Student Records (including grades)

Instructors and TAs are reminded that the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 requires that the University treat student records in a confidential manner. Student records include examinations and papers submitted by students. Faculty who plan on distributing grades, papers, and exams through departmental mailboxes or in hallways must first have the permission of their students or be prepared to distribute such papers in ways that safeguard the students’ personal information. Visit the university’s FERPA page and view the complete university policy governing student education records as put forth in the Washington State Administrative Code WAC 478-140.

University’s Sexual Harassment Policy

Our University of Washington community is committed to maintaining a civil and compassionate environment. To that end, our community does not condone or tolerate sexual harassment. The University’s non-discrimination policy is guided by state and federal laws that prohibit sexual harassment, including the Washington State Law Against Discrimination (RCW 49.60); Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended; and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. With that in mind, the University is pleased to announce the recent updating of its policy definition of sexual harassment, which now reads as follows:

“Sexual harassment” is a form of harassment based on the recipient’s sex that is characterized by:

1. Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, or other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature by a person who has authority over the recipient when:
1. Submission to such conduct is made either an implicit or explicit condition of the individual’s employment, academic status, or ability to use University facilities and services, or
2. Submission to or rejection of the conduct is used as the basis for a decision that affects tangible aspects of the individual’s employment, academic status, or use of University facilities; or
2. Unwelcome and unsolicited language or conduct that is of a sexual nature or that is sufficiently severe, persistent, or pervasive that it could reasonably be expected to create an intimidating, hostile, or offensive working or learning environment, or has the purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering with an individual’s academic or work performance (Executive Order No. 31).

Sexual harassment is illegal and sexual violence is also a form of sex discrimination. Faculty, staff, and students who engage in sexual harassment will be subject to corrective or disciplinary action. Violations can lead to severe penalties, up to and including termination of employment or termination from educational programs, as well as possible personal liability.

Because consensual relationships between students and instructors may interfere with the learning relationship, President Cauce issued Presidential Order No. 54, regarding Employee-Student Romantic Relationships and Conflicts of Interest:

All University employees or appointees, including faculty and other academic personnel, staff (e.g. coaches and academic advisors), temporary staff, Academic Student Employees, and student employees (e.g. Resident Advisors) are prohibited from:

– Engaging in a romantic relationship with a student that creates an actual conflict of interest or could be perceived to create conflict of interest; or

– Exercising authority over a student with whom the employee has or has had a romantic relationship that creates an actual conflict of interest or could be perceived to create conflict of interest.

The above are prohibited unless they can be effectively managed through an acceptable plan. This policy is in addition to Executive Order No. 32, Employee Responsibilities and Employee Conflict of Interest.

The University will promptly respond to and take appropriate action concerning allegations of sexual harassment. In addition, the University also prohibits retaliation against anyone for reporting, cooperating with, or participating in the University’s complaint process regarding allegations of sexual harassment (Executive Order No. 31, Nondiscrimination and Affirmative Action).

The University provides a number of resources to members of the campus community who either have been subjected to sexual harassment or have knowledge that a member of our community has been subjected to sexual harassment. The offices that help coordinate our RCW 49.60, Title VII, Title IX and University non-discrimination and compliance efforts include:

• Investigation and resolution of allegations of sexual harassment and related information and assistance are available by contacting:

Office of Civil Rights Investigations (effective September 2023; is comprised of both The University Complaint Investigation and Resolution Office (UCIRO) and the Title IX Investigation Office (TIXIO)).

By appointment only
email: cr-investigations@uw.edu
phone: 206-616-2028
https://www.washington.edu/cr-investigations/

• Consultation, conciliation and mediation services are available by contacting:

University Ombudsman

email: ombuds@uw.edu
Phone: 206-543-6028
https://www.washington.edu/ombud/

• Assistance and information regarding student conduct rights and responsibilities are available by contacting:

Director, Community Standards and Student Conduct,

Office of the Vice Provost for Student Life

206-685-6194

The Office of the Director of Athletics, Intercollegiate Athletics

206-543-2279

• Referral to the appropriate Human Resources Consultant/Specialist is available by contacting:

Human Resources Operations, 206-543-2333 (upper Seattle campus, Tacoma, and Bothell)

Human Resources Operations, 206-543-9406 (Health Sciences)

UW Medical Center Human Resources, 206-598-6116

Harborview Medical Center Human Resources, 206-744-9220

Academic Human Resources, 206-543-5630 (Faculty, librarians and academic staff)

• Consultation and compliance assistance are available by contacting:

Director, Office of Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action

206-543-1830