Please find below required and recommended language for your syllabus (updated 2.28.24)
Academic Integrity
From the LaGuardia Community College Catalog & CUNY Central:
Academic Dishonesty is prohibited in the City University of New York and is punishable by penalties ranging from a grade of “F” on a given test, research paper or assignment, to an “F” in the course, or suspension or expulsion from the College. Academic Dishonesty includes:
CHEATING — the unauthorized use or attempted use of material, information, notes, study aids, devices or communication during an academic exercise. Examples: Copying from a student during an examination, unauthorized collaboration on take home assignments, submitting someone else’s work as your own, allowing another student to take an examination for you, or unauthorized use of notes, electronic devices or other materials during an examination.
PLAGIARISM — the act of presenting another person’s ideas, research or writings as your own. Examples: Copying another person’s actual words without the use of quotation marks and/or footnotes, failure to acknowledge a source when using information that is not common knowledge or failure to acknowledge collaborators on homework or laboratory assignments.
INTERNET PLAGIARISM — plagiarism that includes the submitting of downloaded term papers or parts of term papers as a student’s own work, paraphrasing or copying information from the internet without citing the source, as well as other forms of “cutting and pasting.”
OBTAINING UNFAIR ADVANTAGE — any activity that intentionally or unintentionally gives a student an unfair academic advantage over other students. Examples: Stealing, circulating or otherwise gaining access to unauthorized examination materials, intentionally obstructing or interfering with another student’s work, depriving other students of access to needed class or library materials by stealing, destroying or defacing them, retaining or circulating examination materials that clearly should have been returned at the end of the exam.
In addition to the official CUNY Policy, your syllabus should outline the specific consequences for violations of academic integrity.
The Department of English also recommends adding specific language around AI-generated content. The Department of English’s AI Task Force, offers several possible AI Syllabus statements here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NsVJj-CZIM10LAonG_Msp2kvl64Fw5nU/edit
Accessibility
LaGuardia’s Advising Council has developed the following statement about accessibility for use on your syllabi:
Federal law and CUNY policy prohibit discrimination on the basis of a disability. Under the guidelines of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the College will provide reasonable accommodations to students with documented disabilities. Therefore, if you are in need of or have any questions regarding accommodations or services, please contact Jhony Nelson, Director of the Office of Accessibility, at 718-482-5260 or Jhonyn@lagcc.cuny.edu (or visit M-102). Any information provided to the office is confidential and will not be released without your permission.
Attendance Policy
In January 2024, the Department of English voted on a new attendance policy for the entire department which takes effect in Spring 2024. Please include the following attendance policy on your syllabus:
In all English department courses, students can be absent without penalty for no more than two weeks’ worth of class time during session I, and one week’s worth of class time during session II. Absences begin to be counted on the first day of class, regardless of when you registered.
This means you can miss:
- 6 hours in a 3-hour per week course
- 8 hours in a 4-hour per week course
- For ENA 101, which meets for 7 hours a week, students are limited to:
- 8 hours of absence in the ENG 101 course and 6 hours of absence in the ENA 101 course.
Students missing less than two weeks’ worth of class time will not be penalized for those absences. However, student engagement, which is part of the overall course grade, relies on in-class activities such as low-stakes writing assignments, peer review, and in-class high stakes essays. Some of these cannot be made up outside of class and may affect the engagement grade.
Students who exceed the two-week limit may receive a lower course grade. After four weeks of absence, students can no longer pass the course.
This policy applies equally across in-person, online-synchronous, hybrid and online-asynchronous courses. For hybrid courses, which meet once a week in-person and have a weekly asynchronous activity, missing the weekly asynchronous activity counts as an absence. For online-asynchronous courses, your instructor’s syllabus will explain how attendance will be counted.
Mental Health and Wellness
LaGuardia’s Advising Council drafted the following statement to use on your syllabus:
Many students find balancing their academic, personal and professional lives quite challenging, and in some instances, overwhelming. If you or a peer experience this, mental health and wellness services are here to help. Email WellnessCenter@lagcc.cuny.edu or use the English [forms.office.com] or Spanish [forms.office.com] in-take form, and you will be contacted by a Counselor (you can also call 718-482-5471 or visit C-249). Peer-to-peer support is also available via the Women’s Center (MB-08, 718-482-5188 or womencenter@lagcc.cuny.edu), or our Multicultural Exchange Programs.
