Academic Integrity
EMU faculty and staff care about the integrity of their own work and the work of their students. They create assignments that promote interpretative thinking and work intentionally with students during the learning process. Honesty, trust, fairness, respect, and responsibility are characteristics of a community that is active in loving mercy, doing justice, and walking humbly before God. EMU defines plagiarism as occurring when a person presents as one’s own someone else’s language, ideas, or other original (not common-knowledge) material without acknowledging its source (adapted from the Council of Writing Program Administrators, 2005, http://wpacouncil.org/).
For full policy see general graduate program policies at www.emu.edu/catalog/graduate/.
Advising/Mentoring Process
Upon acceptance into the program, the director and/or the assistant director of the Master of Arts in Education will serve as advisor(s). The director will oversee the advising process. Upon admission to candidacy and before the completion of EDCC 551 Action Research in Educational Settings, the candidate will be assigned to a mentor who will guide the candidate through the action research phase of the program. Request to change a mentor should be made to the director of the program.
Attendance
Because of the interactive nature of graduate classes at EMU, we believe that candidates who miss class for the equivalent of six 50-minute periods or four 75 minute periods (300 minutes in a 3-semester hour course, 200 minutes for a 2-semester hour course, 100 minutes for a 1-semester hour course) have not fulfilled necessary requirements to receive an “A” in the graduate class. Grades may be lowered for absences of less time at the instructor's discretion.
Distance Education (Online)
Select courses are offered online in various formats (e.g. – synchronous, asynchronous, hybrid). Standards of academic quality for these courses are equivalent to those for on-campus courses. Resources, including online library access and Help Desk support, are available to students in online courses. Online pedagogy promotes a relational online learning environment.
Grievance Procedures
The grievance procedures are applicable to all students, faculty and staff of Eastern Mennonite University as well as applicants for faculty, staff or student status. These procedures comply with the requirements of Title IX of the Federal Health, Education, and Welfare procedures and the general employee grievance policy of the Mennonite Education Agency.
The main concern in any grievance procedure is to bring reconciliation and growth in ways that enhance community. To implement this goal, the American Council on Education definition of grievance is adopted: "Grievable issues are those in which there is the possibility of an error in the institutional policies (or lack of them), in its prescribed procedures for carrying out the policies, in the administration of those procedures, or in varying combinations of these." If it is determined that an institutional error has occurred, the second function of the grievance procedure is to provide a process to determine appropriate redress for the grievant.
The first approach to any grievance should be non-adversarial and open, undertaken with careful attention to fostering understanding, problem-solving attitudes. The expectation is that the majority of grievances can be resolved through a flexible process of conflict resolution. These procedures are based on the understanding that differences can be resolved within the institutions of the church without adopting adversarial positions and that the resources of the wider church community are available when mediation is requested. A complete copy of these procedures is available upon request from the President's Office.