Tom Isern, NDSU

History majors--looking for summer internship opportunities? Check out what's offered at the State Historical Society of North Dakota. Here's the list of internships I just received.

It is a proud pleasure to announce that Miles D. Lewis, PhD student in History at NDSU, is co-winner of the History Compass Graduate Essay Prize for North American History in 2006. His award-winning essay, "Railroads, Regionalism, and Postwar Economic Decline in the West: The Case of Montana's Upper Musselshell Valley," derives from his master's and doctoral research on his home region in central Montana. The award was announced at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association in Atlanta the first week of January. Lewis, formerly a staff member of the NDSU Memorial Union, currently resides in Seattle where he is writing his dissertation and teaching the NDSU online course, HIST 103 U.S. to 1977.

News today: Prof. Mark Harvey has received the Charles A. Weyerhauser Award for the best book in forest and conservation history in 2007. The book winning the award was Wilderness Forever: Howard Zahniser and the Path to the Wilderness Act. (Some of you grad students may remember that evening at the Harveys' when we got into a discussion of the title for the work, and we urged "Wilderness Forever." Must have been a good choice!) A splendid honor for Harvey, one richly deserved, and one reflecting well on the university.

(I'm repeating here an announcement originally posted last March.)

I need to say a word about a situation that has developed in the History program here at NDSU. Somehow, a belief has arisen that it is OK to submit the same paper for more than one course. It is not. NDSU has no specific policy on this, but there are principles generally accepted across the United States. Here are quotations from the written policies of a few institutions.

The Dartmouth College Honor Code: "Submission of the same work in more than one course without the prior approval of all professors responsible for the courses violates the Academic Honor Principle."

Yale College Undergraduate Regulations: "You may not submit the same paper, or substantially the same paper, in more than one course. If your topics for two courses coincide, you must have written permission from both instructors before either combining your work on two papers or revising an earlier paper for submission to a new course."

University of Southern California Academic Integrity Quiz: "Our rules prohibit using the same essay, term paper or project in more than one course without permission of the instructors. Remember it is always scholastic dishonesty if your action allows you to obtain an unfair academic advantage. For example, you would have the assistance from your previous professor's comments and instructions and also save all the time that your classmates are using to write the paper. In addition, your professor assumes that you are writing an original paper for this class."

These are just a few examples of such statements. Broader study of extant policies reveals a range of treatments. Many institutions specifically define the submission of the same paper in more than one course as plagiarism. Personally, I don't agree with this; I don't think the term "plagiarism," commonly defined as representing someone else's work as your own, applies; but I do think it is academic dishonesty of some kind. Most institutions provide for exceptions to the prohibition of multiple submissions, with clauses to the effect that if you have the prior permissions of both instructors, it is acceptable. Often institutional policies go on to explain that a rationale for exception to the multiple-submission rule would be if a student planned a project that was bigger than the requirements of one course and therefore sought to submit simultaneously to two courses, with permission of instructors, of course. Policies also (as does the USC policy above) sometimes explain that if a student is allowed to submit the same paper to more than one course, that student gains an unfair advantage over others.

So, here is where I stand on the matter. Hereafter, in any course I teach that includes a research paper, I will announce that simultaneous submissions simply are not acceptable.

This policy is in line with accepted principles to which I, and other respectable historians, adhere in professional practice. Historical editors prohibit simultaneous submissions.

History, after all, is a profession. What defines professions is that they have rules, expectations of acceptable behavior and practice. It is important that we at NDSU play by the established, accepted rules of the profession. In the short term, some may think this is burdensome. In the long term, we all--students and faculty--will benefit by upholding the reputation of the university and our program.

On Sunday afternoon the 4th we'll be launching another "Great Books of the Great Plains" series for Communiversity at the Zandbroz. I'm looking forward to discussing Kathleen Norris and Nevil Shute. For details go to the website of the Center for Heritage Renewal, which organized this year's series.

It was a great pleasure to participate in Gackle last night in the kick-off of the Horizons program organized by NDSU Extension. Many thanks to Mary Conrad for the invitation. I expect to hear a lot more from this community development initiative. For reports from Gackle, see my Plains Folk weblog, Travel on the Gravel.