ACADEMIC HONESTY MESSAGE

Dear Students,

As we begin a new academic year, the Department of Accounting and Information Systems faculty, staff, and administrators welcome the opportunity to support you in your professional development. Personal integrity is a foundation for a successful career in both the accounting and information systems professions. Therefore, as a community, we must commit ourselves to upholding the highest standards of integrity in every aspect of our work together, as is required in your chosen professions.

In striving for excellence in your academic work, consider honesty to be a part of your grade. In creating a network among your peers, think about how your actions may be judged by future employers who could easily learn of the manner in which you handled both the opportunities and pressures to cheat in your schoolwork. Would that recruiter, senior manager, or partner be willing to risk their own and the firm’s reputation and protection from liability to take a chance on an applicant who has been known to participate in cheating or academic fraud?

We understand the pressures created by the rigorous academic standards of our programs; those standards are in danger of being diminished in employers’ views by students’ cheating. When your peers tell you that cheating is necessary to survive, remember that it could mean the end of your career before it even begins. Remind each other that cheating could lead to firms no longer wanting to recruit at CSUN. Students at East Coast business schools and throughout the U.S. are eager to begin careers in Southern California, and would have a better chance in getting that first job if CSUN’s programs become tarnished by academic fraud.

The Accounting and Information Systems faculty have put in place strategies to further restrict the opportunities for cheating. Our renewed vigilance in preventing cheating includes a commitment to rigorously enforce penalties for such actions, including but not limited to barring access to the EY Center for Careers in Accounting and Information Systems and recruiting activities such as firm tours and campus interviews, as well as assigning grade penalties. Faculty members have been instructed to report all suspected cheating activities to me as Department Chair. As students, you can help by changing the conversation which has been leading to academic fraud.

Together, we can uphold our high standards and strengthen our community as we commit to academic honesty; building a solid foundation for your future careers as we do so.

Best wishes,

The Department of Accounting and Information Systems

David Nazarian College of Business and Economics

California State University, Northridge