UNC asked to repair academic integrity

After undergoing a series of reviews of its Department of African and Afro-American Studies throughout the past two years, the University has been told by its accrediting agency that more action needs to be taken.

In a letter dated Jan. 15, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges asked the University to provide proof that it has taken sufficient action to address the breaches in academic integrity exposed in those reviews.

According to the letter, UNC was not meeting the agency’s standards in four areas — academic policies, support services, student records and definition of credit hours.

The letter states the University must demonstrate its efforts to comply with those standards and to rectify the academic integrity of degrees awarded to students given credit for courses in the department that were exposed as fraudulent or irregular. It asks that UNC submit its first report by April 15.

Belle Wheelan, the agency’s president and the author of the letter, said in an interview that there are a number of ways UNC could prove that it has made the necessary reparations.

“Ideally, they would invite students back to either retake the class for which they were given credit for, or to do the same level of work we would ask them to do in that course or a substitute course,” Wheelan said.

She said determining which students would have to come back to complete supplementary courses would be up to the University.

The December report by former Gov. Jim Martin and Baker Tilly Virchow Krause LLC identified more than 200 course sections with irregularities dating back to 1997.

“Right now, the allegations were that it was happening in a particular course by a particular faculty member most specifically for athletes, so that narrows the population down,” she said.

“But the institution would have to figure that one out.”

Chancellor Holden Thorp said the University is open to several different methods of solving the issue, and he will discuss those methods when the agency sends a special committee to UNC in April.

He said it is important that students not be penalized for the deficiencies.

“One thing we might talk about is how to make it up to the students that didn’t have classes — maybe one or maybe more — that met the standards that we would have liked,” he said.

“We’ll talk about various ways we might deal with that.”

Thorp said many changes have already been made to make sure nothing of this nature happens again, and they were reported on favorably in the December report.

Thorp said the results of the Martin Report were not yet available when the agency’s board met — which was around Dec. 10.

“We will share with them what we’ve done, and we’ll listen to any ideas they have,” Thorp said.
“And then we’ll talk with them about further steps we could take.”

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