Middle Tennessee State University.

What MTSU's own documents say about how cases proceed

Who may be present

“The right to be accompanied by an advisor. An advisor may not actively or directly participate in the hearing, but may only consult with the student.” The same policy adds: “The hearing will not be open to the public.” — Policy 312 Academic Misconduct, §IV.G.5.b and §IV.G.7 (effective March 19, 2024, last reviewed March 2024; retrieved Aug 27, 2026). Policy 312 states nothing about whether a meeting or hearing may be recorded, by the university or by the student, and no separate MTSU page addressing recording in academic-misconduct proceedings was located in this review · 312 Academic Misconduct

What follows on the record

“Whenever there is a finding or admission of responsibility under this policy, these records will be maintained by the Vice Provost for Faculty and Strategic Initiatives permanently.” — Policy 312 Academic Misconduct, §VIII Records Maintenance (effective March 19, 2024; retrieved Aug 27, 2026). Policy 312 contains no transcript-notation provision: the only registrar-facing sentence in it attaches to one sanction, revocation — “Any final revocation of admission, degree, or credential shall be reported to the University Registrar by the Director” (§V.5.g). Nothing was located in this review stating whether a finding is disclosed to graduate programs, employers, or licensing boards, though §IV.D provides that for graduate students “the decision will also be provided to the student's graduate program director” · 312 Academic Misconduct

The two questions an adviser raises first, answered from this institution's own published documents — or recorded as not stated in them.

Policy 312 Academic Misconduct is board-approved and served as plain text on MTSU's own policy site. It was captured in full and read for the provisions below (effective March 19, 2024; revisions June 5, 2017 original, August 15, 2019, March 19, 2024; retrieved Aug 27, 2026):

Source: 312 Academic Misconduct — University Policies. Two structural features of that document are worth reading in the original rather than summarized. Where suspension or expulsion may be considered, §IV.F.1 provides that the student “must be given the option of a hearing held pursuant to the Uniform Administrative Procedures Act,” with any waiver in writing, and §VII routes such a case through Policy 110. And the two grounds on which an appeal may be filed are stated narrowly, as procedural error that denied a fundamentally fair hearing, or new evidence that could not previously have been discovered by the exercise of due diligence.

The office's own public description of what a referred student receives is on the Academic Integrity page of Faculty and Strategic Initiatives (no on-page date displayed; retrieved Aug 27, 2026): it states that the Academic and Faculty Support Specialist sends the student an email directing them to pick up a letter, that the letter requires the student to meet with the Vice Provost for Faculty and Strategic Initiatives, and that “[b]y ignoring the letter, students forfeit their opportunity to be involved in the investigatory process.” Source: Academic Integrity — Faculty and Strategic Initiatives. That page and Policy 312 describe the same process in different words — the page names a meeting with the Vice Provost, the policy names a meeting with the Director of Academic Integrity, a designee of the Vice Provost — and both are reproduced here as MTSU currently publishes them, without a determination of which controls.

What any of this means for a particular case is for the institution and its process to determine.

Revision history of this page

2026-08-27 — Page created. All quotations retrieved this date from the mtsu.edu pages linked beside them. Source dates as published: Policy 312 effective March 19, 2024 (revisions June 5, 2017 original; August 15, 2019; March 19, 2024; last reviewed March 2024); Policy 323 effective June 17, 2025; Walker Library guide Last Updated Apr 29, 2026. The Faculty and Strategic Initiatives pages, the Canvas FAQs and the Jones College of Business AI Resources page display no date of their own; each is cited by retrieval date only. Every source on this page was captured as plain text on a direct fetch; no client-rendered or challenge-protected page was encountered, and nothing here rests on a browser read.

2026-08-27 — Detection sweep, recorded so a later reviewer can tell a thorough negative from an unasked question. Searched on MTSU's own domains: Turnitin (including SimCheck and Originality product names), Copyleaks, iThenticate, GPTZero, Originality.ai, Winston AI, Crossplag, ZeroGPT, Packback, Grammarly Authorship, Honorlock, Proctorio, Respondus, Examity. Categories searched: the LMS integration listing on the Canvas project site, the provost-level academic-integrity and referral pages, university Policies 312 and 323, the Walker Library instructor and student AI guides, and college-level IT services pages. Came back empty: any MTSU statement that Turnitin's AI-writing indicator is enabled or disabled; any statement of what weight a detection result carries as evidence; Copyleaks, iThenticate, and every other named vendor except Turnitin and Respondus. Found: Turnitin, documented centrally as plagiarism checking only and named as plagiarism-referral documentation; Respondus, in a Fall 2026 pilot described as proctoring with no AI-writing claim; and the Jones College of Business list of free third-party AI detectors, recorded on this page with its provenance stated rather than as an institutional deployment. No graduate or dissertation-specific text-matching pipeline was located.

2026-08-27 — Deliberate omissions. A student-press report attributing to an MTSU Director of Academic Integrity a practice of declining detector-only cases was not used: no first-party MTSU page states it, and this page does not reproduce claims about an institution that the institution does not publish. The Walker Library guide's anti-detector wording is quoted only with its own statement of provenance attached, since the guide identifies itself as an adaptation of a University of Arizona Libraries guide; it is not presented as MTSU's position. Third-party tracker claims about MTSU's detector status were not consulted as authority. The Jones College of Business page also carries an extensive list of AI writing tools and articles; only its detector section and its own caution are quoted, since the rest bears on teaching resources rather than on how a student's work is examined.

2026-08-27 — Two matters recorded as unresolved rather than smoothed over. First, MTSU publishes no email address for the Academic and Faculty Support Specialist, the person to whom referrals and questions are directed, on either the Academic Integrity page or the referral page; the only email published in the office's contact block belongs to Faculty and Strategic Initiatives, and this page lists it as that rather than substituting it. Second, the Academic Integrity page describes the required meeting as being with the Vice Provost for Faculty and Strategic Initiatives while Policy 312 assigns it to the Director of Academic Integrity, defined in the policy as a designee of the Vice Provost; both are reproduced as published, with no determination of which controls. Reviewer: Carrie Schluter (review confirmed 2026-08-27). Internet Archive captures: to be added.

2026-08-28 — Sources re-fetched and compared this date; every quotation intact and no page revised. Retrieved and checked: the Canvas FAQ (the “Banner … Panopto … Turnitin (plagiarism checks)” line intact), the Referring an Academic Integrity Case page (the Turnitin-report-as-plagiarism-documentation line intact; Academic and Faculty Support Specialist, CAB 218, (615) 898-2715; Faculty and Strategic Initiatives, 111 Cope Administration Building, (615) 898-5941, Angie.Price@mtsu.edu), the Jones College of Business AI Resources page (the “not something that we can rely on as faculty” passage and the “Generative AI Detectors” section heading and disclaimer intact), the Walker Library detector page (the “Many educators don't support the use of AI writing detectors” heading, the Vanderbilt disabling link, and the University of Arizona adaptation statement intact; Last Updated Apr 29, 2026), Policy 323 (effective June 17, 2025; the faculty-discretion, default-prohibition and Policy-312 violation quotations intact), Policy 312 (still effective March 19, 2024 with revisions June 5, 2017, August 15, 2019 and March 19, 2024, last reviewed March 2024; every advisor, hearing, notice, preponderance, appeal and records-retention quotation intact), and the office Academic Integrity page (the “By ignoring the letter …” quotation intact; the office continues to name Beth Dye as the Academic and Faculty Support Specialist, matching the docket).

2026-08-28 — Detection status unchanged. No first-party MTSU statement enabling, disabling or describing the status of Turnitin's AI-writing indicator was located, and no other institutionally deployed AI-writing detector was found; the sweep again returned only Turnitin (documented as plagiarism checking and named as plagiarism-referral documentation) and Respondus (Fall 2026 proctoring pilot), with the Jones College of Business page remaining the only MTSU page that directs faculty to third-party AI detectors while stating its own caution about them. This is the state documented at build rather than a change, so no editorial action is implied. Internet Archive captures still pending: Save Page Now was blocked from this run environment this date.

Spot an error or an outdated quotation? hello@gatheredwork.com — corrections are made on the record, in this log.