The 10-member blue ribbon panel that released a working definition of plagiarism in September will be reconstituted to form system-wide procedures for dealing with the offense.
Vice President for Academic Affairs John Haller said Thursday the 10 members would work with eight others from within the SIU system to develop the procedures.
The SIU Board of Trustees commissioned Haller and SIU General Counsel Jerry Blakemore Oct. 11 to discuss the issue with constituency bodies from SIUC and SIU-Edwardsville and then determine the best way to shape the measures.
The order to form system-wide procedures came the day the board approved a report from a 7-member committee that reviewed plagiarism allegations against SIU President Glenn Poshard. The committee determined Poshard had committed "inadvertent plagiarism" in his 1984 dissertation and should keep his job.
Haller said four of the additional committee members would come from SIUC and four would come from SIU-Edwardsville.
Each campus will be represented by an undergraduate student, a graduate student and an administrative professional staff member, he said. A member of the law school at SIUC and a graduate student with a doctoral degree from SIU-Edwardsville will also serve on the committee, he said.
Haller said he had not yet met with the 18-member group, but he planned to do so soon.
"Clearly our objective is to get the report from the committee as quickly as possible," he said.
SIU President Glenn Poshard said he hoped the procedures would be in place by the end of the academic year.
"It is our goal to have this process finished and to be able to educate the broader university system communities to the results of this by the end of the spring semester before people go home for the summer," Poshard said.
Joe Crawford can be reached at 536-3311 ext. 254 or jcrawford@siude.com.
