"What's so important about Academic Integrity?"

“What’s so important about academic integrity?” How would you answer this question? Have you seen the video? As it happens the first question was put to participants at the annual conference of the Center for Academic Integrity in 2008 and you can see the video of their responses here.

The 2009 CAI conference was held at Washington University in St. Louis, October 16-18. The theme this year was “Creating a Culture of Integrity: Research and Best Practices.” 156 people attended the conference (133 attendees from 26 states; 1 from Australia, 18 from Canada, 1 from Egypt, 1 from Mexico, 1 from Qatar, and 1 from United Arab Emirates).


In addition to a wide variety of presentations in concurrent sessions of the conference, there were two keynote talks.

David Callahan, author of The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead (Harcourt, Jan. 2004) and five other books including Kindred Spirits: Harvard Business School's Extraordinary Class of 1949 and How They Transformed American Business (John Wiley/Forbes), spoke on October 16.

William Astore, Lieutenant Colonel USAF retired, who teaches history at the Pennsylvania College of Technology and writes regularly for several web sites, including TomDispatch.com, History News Network, and Nieman Watchdog, spoke on October 17.

You can get a sense of the variety of presentations from the conference program

CAI director Teddi Fishman and Donald L. McCabe, (Professor of Management and Global Business, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey and Founding President, Center for Academic Integrity) were keynoters at the Network for Academic Renewal Conference, “Educating for Personal and Social Responsibility: Deepening Student and Campus Commitments,” sponsored by the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AACU) in early October in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Their talk, “Creating a Culture of Integrity on Campus,” is available as a podcast.