06/20/2025

Summer Series Pre-Blog 3: Working with Faculty

by Kelly Ahuna and Joseph Brown

The Summer Series of webinars continues the blog takeover with the third pre-webinar blog. The presenters for Workshop 3: Working with Faculty on June 27 discuss some key questions to get you thinking about their session.

What do you find most exciting/ challenging/ interesting about working with faculty in academic integrity work? Has your answer to that shifted over the years? If so, how? If not, why not?

KELLY: Faculty are really the defenders of academic integrity. Because they score student work, it is instructors who notice and respond to academic dishonesty. This is a big responsibility that is not commonly recognized in our triad of teaching, research, and community service responsibilities for faculty. As a result, I am happy to support any instructor as they go through this process. Addressing academic dishonesty can be lonely work, and it is not the work that any person hoped to do when they pursued teaching in higher education. I think the biggest challenge, especially at a large university, is getting all faculty on board with our policies and procedures. For a variety of reasons, some instructors either turn a blind eye to dishonesty concerns or handle them outside of required procedures. I think this harms our learning environment in many ways and detracts from any sense of “fairness” for students.

JOSEPH: Given all of the challenges we’ve faced in the last ten years to the learning environment, I am heartened by how much faculty care about student learning and the students as human beings. This involves a lot of different ways. I’ve been impressed with their attention to student work, which is, of course, how they assess learning, but also how they know when something is awry. In a world of faster/ easier/ shallower, it’s reassuring to see teachers committed to focusing on their students. I also just enjoy talking with them about their teaching and, in my small way, helping make their work at the university more manageable.  

What do you think folks new(er) to working with faculty in academic integrity work might have misconceptions about/ most need or want to know?

KELLY: I think folks new to working with faculty should remember that most faculty are in their roles because of their deep commitment to their field of study. Most are not experts in teaching and learning or assessment design. Those insights should guide our interactions as we support instructors in redesigning assessments or class procedures to better protect the integrity of student work, having difficult conversations with students about potential dishonesty, and submitting cases in accordance with our policies. We are on the same team!

JOSEPH: One of the advantages of coming to this position from an unconventional path to a faculty career was that I knew that the stereotypes about faculty were just that. After graduate school, I taught in a Title I alternative high school in Atlanta for a year and earned licensure via an alternative certification process. When I accepted my faculty position a year later, it was at a small agricultural college with a respectable Liberal Arts tradition and a burgeoning nursing program. It was a great place to start, but it was not the kind of place that allowed you to harbor illusions about being an English professor in Higher Ed. I have seen some professionals who come to integrity positions from other, sometimes more conventional, paths let those preconceptions dictate their interactions or relationships. For years, I worked partially in a student affairs unit that was, sadly, conditioned to see their interactions with faculty as antagonistic. I spent a lot of time helping my colleagues see how they had the same goals as faculty.  I would encourage new(er) folks to look for common values and goals. It doesn’t mean you will see eye-to-eye, but it means that you can find a way to work together. 

What are you most hoping folks will come to your webinar session prepared to talk about? 

KELLY: I hope folks read the “Cheaters Usually Do Win in the Classroom” article by Levinson and are prepared to talk about how not addressing academic dishonesty affects the university community and Higher Education overall. It takes the whole village to create a culture of integrity!

JOSEPH: I hope people will be genuinely curious about how to build relationships with faculty and do the whole social/ professional connection thing better. In teaching, they call this a “teachable spirit.” I like that. I hope they’ll be open to sharing moments when they built or nurtured a professional relationship with faculty. 

What are you most hoping folks will take away from your webinar session? Why?

KELLY: It can be overwhelming to think about how to deal with “faculty” on the topic of academic integrity when that group has so much variation by academic discipline, level (e.g., tenured vs. adjunct), and more. But there are ways to break into this and turn a seemingly impossible goal into smaller pieces. My hope is that this webinar will expose a myriad of ways gain traction here – through individual conversations with instructors, getting invited to a faculty meeting, word of mouth when someone has a good experience with you or your office, sending a campus-wide email on the International Day of Action for Academic Integrity, to name a few examples, we can chip away at establishing relationships and strengthening the culture of integrity on our campuses. 

JOSEPH: Everyone wants to think programmatically. They want the silver bullet event that will help them connect with faculty or academic leadership. What I’d hope people will leave with is an understanding of the value of small moments and little investments that build trust over time. That trust is the cornerstone of the work we do. 

Get ready for Workshop 3: Working with Faculty (Friday June 27 at 12pm EST)

Faculty play a pivotal role in promoting and enforcing academic integrity. Let’s discuss ways to cultivate instructors – and others –  as campus partners in our quest to create a culture of integrity.

Pre-reading for Workshop #3:

Levinson (2024), Cheaters Usually Do Win in the Classroom

Recommended further readings: 

Amigud & Pell (2020), When Academic Integrity Rules Should Not Apply

Coren (2011), Turning a Blind Eye

Harper & Prentice (2024), Responsible But Powerless