Integrity in Three Keys: A Catholic Approach to Integrity in Higher Education

Academic Integrity offices in higher education are often seen as the "plagiarism police." While this perception reflects the disciplinary role of such offices, the area of academic integrity also allows for broad and incisive consideration of the nature of institutions of higher education and moral aspects of the work students perform at these institutions. In this reflection I track—in my role as Academic Integrity Director at a Jesuit university—my own meditations on and struggles with understanding and articulating the role of Academic Integrity offices in higher education. In the midst of sometimes distressing circumstances, I discern pathways to hope, which I present in three "keys": Benedictine, Thomistic, and Existential.