Utah State University.
- Detection status
- Copyleaks, not Turnitin — USU states it has used Copyleaks “in place of Turnitin” since July 20, 2023; Copyleaks' AI Detection feature “is enabled by default” in Canvas SpeedGrader, sits outside the similarity score, and USU's own guidance tells instructors to treat it “as a data point and a conversation starter rather than proof the student cheated”; Proctorio documented for exam proctoring with no AI-writing-detection claim
- Office in these sources
- Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards · Taggart Student Center, 0175 Old Main Hill, Logan, UT 84322-0175 · 435-797-3137 · no general office email is published in these sources — the office's contact page lists individual staff addresses only · usu.edu — Student Conduct and Community Standards
- Ombuds or advocacy office
- None located on the institution's own pages in this review. Searched usu.edu for “ombuds,” “ombudsperson” and “student advocacy.” The only office USU titles with “ombuds” is the Provost's Ombudspersons role, which sits under Promotion and Tenure and serves faculty review committees, not students — usu.edu — Ombudspersons (Promotion and Tenure). The student-facing channel USU publishes is the USUSA Student Advocate and myVoice, which is run by student government: its own submission form states “I acknowledge that I understand this submission is being directed towards my Student Body Officers and may not be seen by USU staff or administration.” Contact as published: TSC 342 · studentadvocate.ususa@usu.edu · usu.edu — myVoice. USU does not describe it as confidential, neutral or independent, and it is not characterized as such here. Separately, the Student Code names “a USUSA Student Advocate” among the people who may serve as a student's advisor at a hearing, which is quoted in section 02.
- Sources last checked
- Aug 28, 2026
Reproduced from the institution's own pages quoted below — potentially relevant official sources, not a determination of which one governs any case.
Utah State's published sources on AI detection and academic integrity, quoted and linked below. The governing document is The Code of Policies and Procedures for Students at Utah State University — the Student Code — whose Article VI covers academic integrity and the Academic Integrity Violation Form sequence, whose Article V supplies the standard of proof, and whose Article VIII sets out the hearing and appeal procedure; USU's general catalog reproduces Article VI, Section 1 and marks that text “(revised September 2009).” The Student Code's own integrity definitions contain no artificial-intelligence language; a case involving AI reaches them through the existing categories. Course syllabi may add rules of their own. These are potentially relevant official sources, not a determination of which one governs any case — confirm applicability with the institution. Any dates are quoted from the sources, not a deadline calculation performed for you.
AI detection is in use at Utah State — through Copyleaks, which replaced Turnitin, and it is on by default
Utah State is the third institution on this site built on a Copyleaks architecture rather than a Turnitin one, after Western Governors and Utah Valley, and its own transition page says so plainly (no on-page date displayed; retrieved Aug 27, 2026):
Source: Turnitin to Copyleaks — usu.edu/teach/help-topics/teaching-softwares/copyleaks. The sentence quoted first is reproduced exactly as the page publishes it, including the repetition of “to Copyleaks” mid-sentence. Scope: coursework submitted through Canvas.
The overview page states where the tool sits and what USU tells instructors the AI output is worth (no on-page date displayed; retrieved Aug 27, 2026):
Source: Copyleaks Overview — usu.edu/teach/help-topics/teaching-softwares/copyleaks/overview (instructor-facing, quoted because it describes the process a student experiences). The phrase “it is an error that can only be accessed within the report” appears on the page as quoted; nothing is corrected or interpreted here.
The default setting and the visibility of the result are documented on a page of their own (no on-page date displayed; retrieved Aug 27, 2026):
Source: Accessing the AI Detection Feature — usu.edu/teach/help-topics/teaching-softwares/copyleaks. Who sees the results: instructors, through the AI Content tab in SpeedGrader; the page also describes instructors enabling or disabling the scan per assignment through the scan settings. Taken together with the overview page, USU documents a detector that is switched on unless an instructor turns it off, kept out of the number a student is most likely to hear about, and accompanied by the institution's own instruction not to treat it as proof.
The proctoring stack is documented separately and makes no AI-writing claim. USU's Proctorio statement for faculty states (no on-page date displayed; retrieved Aug 27, 2026): “Utah State University does currently utilize an electronic proctoring system to promote secure and authentic assessment to comply with federal regulations, accreditation standards, and NCAA standards that require identity verification,” and, on access to what is recorded, “It is impossible for anyone at Proctorio or any of its affiliates to view exam recordings. They are only accessible to authorized users at USU.” The same page describes an opt-out to in-person or testing-centre proctoring. Source: Proctorio Statement — usu.edu/testing/academic/faculty/proctorio-statement. Scope: exam proctoring, not written-work detection.
Stating the absences at the scope actually searched: no AI-detection tool beyond Copyleaks was located as a USU deployment in this review across the named vendors — Turnitin and its SimCheck and Originality product names, Copyleaks, iThenticate, GPTZero, Originality.ai, Winston AI, Crossplag, ZeroGPT, Packback, Grammarly Authorship, Honorlock, Proctorio, Respondus and Examity — nor on USU's teaching-software help pages, its testing and proctoring pages, or the Student Conduct pages. Turnitin appears only as the tool Copyleaks replaced; no current USU page documents live Turnitin use. No separate graduate, thesis or dissertation originality-checking pipeline, and no iThenticate deployment, was located on the School of Graduate Studies pages or the electronic theses and dissertations pages searched in this review. And a claim that Proctorio's separate plagiarism-detection product is in use at USU was traced to the vendor's own marketing rather than to any USU page, so nothing is stated about it here. This absence is reported at the scope searched: an IT service catalogue and library research guides were not located as separate enumerating pages, so the negative result across those categories rests on the pages named above rather than on a dedicated inventory.
What Utah State's own documents say about how cases proceed
- Who may be present
- “To have an advisor of the student's own choice present at the hearing. An advisor may be a parent, legal guardian, a faculty member, a USUSA Student Advocate, an attorney, or other person.” The same article adds a wider role at the formal stage: “At formal adjudicatory hearings, students may have an advisor advocate for them.” — The Code of Policies and Procedures for Students at Utah State University, Article VIII §§1.A.3 and 1.A.9 (retrieved Aug 27, 2026) · usu.edu — Student Code. In the non-academic track Article V §5.D.1 states the right differently and more narrowly at the informal stage: students have “their right to have an advisor throughout the process who may, but need not be, an attorney,” and during the informal process “an advisor may only advise the student, and may not actively participate.” On recording: not stated in the sources reviewed. Articles V, VI and VIII of the Student Code were searched for any provision on recording a meeting or a hearing, and none addressing whether a student may record was located.
- What follows on the record
- “A penalty of disciplinary probation, suspension, expulsion, a designation with a course grade indicating an Honor System violation, or denial or revocation of degree shall be entered upon the student's transcript after the completion of the above processes.” On how long it stays, the Code sets a floor and a point of no return: the designation “remains on the student's transcript for a minimum of one year; provided however, that once the student's degree is posted to the transcript, the designation may not be removed thereafter.” — Student Code, Article VI §§6.B.2 and 3 (retrieved Aug 27, 2026) · usu.edu — Student Code. On disclosure, the Code addresses release both with and without consent: “Upon the specific written release of the student, the Vice President for Student Affairs shall make available a copy of the final Honor Board report… to a prospective/present employer, parent…, and other persons or entities… Such a report or summary statement will be disclosed, without the prior consent of the student, to another educational institution that has requested the record and at which the student seeks or intends to enroll.” On clearing the record, the Code states that probation and suspension designations “may be cleared” on a written request while a degree is not yet posted, and that “A student's record may not be cleared of an expulsion or revocation of a degree.” No provision addressing disclosure to licensing boards specifically was located.
The two questions an adviser raises first, answered from this institution's own published documents — or recorded as not stated in them.
A case at Utah State runs on a form and a series of seven-day intervals, and the Code states what happens if the student does not answer (retrieved Aug 27, 2026):
Source: Student Code, Article VI §§2 and 4 — usu.edu/student-conduct/student-code. The Code states that the Academic Integrity Violation Form generates an email to the student, the instructor, the dean of the college and the Vice President for Student Affairs, with the dean of the School of Graduate Studies added where applicable, and that where a student does not respond within seven days the intended sanction is applied and the finding of violation is not appealable. The grounds on which a student may take the matter further are limited by §4.C to the absence of a filed form, a dispute of fact, and new evidence within seven days; escalation runs to the dean within seven days of the student-instructor meeting, and a request for an Honor Board hearing within seven days of that.
On the standard applied and the notice before a hearing, the Code states: “preponderance of the evidence” (Article V §5.B), which Article VI §4.F.10 restates for the Honor Board as “more likely than not (i.e. a preponderance of evidence)”; and, at Article VIII §1.A.1.a, that a hearing “shall not be scheduled less than 10 days after the notice of hearing is mailed.” An appeal from a hearing board decision “must be made in writing to the Vice President for Student Affairs within 10 days from the date a copy of the hearing board's report is mailed or delivered to the student” (Article VIII §3.A). Source: usu.edu — Student Code.
On sanctions, Article VI §3 makes placement on academic integrity probation the stated response to a first offence, with probation, community service, suspension, expulsion, transcript designation, and denial or revocation of a degree available for repeated or more serious matters. On the definitions themselves, the general catalog reproduces the Code's Article VI, Section 1 — cheating, falsification and plagiarism — and marks the reproduced text “(revised September 2009)”; source: catalog.usu.edu — Academic Integrity. The catalog adds a footnote of its own: “*Self-plagiarism occurs when a student reuses work that the student already published or submitted for a class, without prior approval of the instructor.” A finding worth stating plainly, because it shapes how an AI case is charged: no artificial-intelligence language appears in the Student Code's academic-integrity definitions, and none was located in Articles V, VI or VIII. What any of this means for a particular case is for the institution and its process to determine.
Where the documents live
| Document | Location |
|---|---|
| The Code of Policies and Procedures for Students at Utah State University — Student Code, Articles V, VI and VIII: AIVF sequence, preponderance, advisor of choice, hearing notice, appeal windows, transcript designation, record clearing and disclosure | usu.edu/student-conduct/student-code |
| General Catalog — Academic Integrity (reproduces Article VI, Section 1, marked “revised September 2009”; adds the self-plagiarism footnote) | catalog.usu.edu — Academic Integrity |
| Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards (contact) | Taggart Student Center · 0175 Old Main Hill, Logan, UT 84322-0175 · 435-797-3137 · no general office email published; individual staff addresses only (from the office's pages, retrieved Aug 27, 2026) · usu.edu/student-conduct/contact |
| Turnitin to Copyleaks (the July 20, 2023 replacement; AI checks outside the originality score) | usu.edu/teach — Turnitin to Copyleaks |
| Copyleaks Overview (SpeedGrader integration; “a data point and a conversation starter rather than proof the student cheated”) | usu.edu/teach — Copyleaks Overview |
| Accessing the AI Detection Feature (“enabled by default”; what highlighted content does and does not indicate) | usu.edu/teach — Accessing AI Detection Feature |
| Proctorio Statement (exam proctoring; access to recordings; opt-out routes) | usu.edu/testing — Proctorio Statement |
| Ombudspersons, Office of the Provost (serves faculty promotion and tenure review; not a student office) | usu.edu/provost/promotion-and-tenure/ombudpersons |
| myVoice, USUSA Student Advocacy (student-government channel; its own form states submissions go to Student Body Officers and “may not be seen by USU staff or administration”) | TSC 342 · studentadvocate.ususa@usu.edu (from the office's pages, retrieved Aug 27, 2026) · usu.edu — myVoice |
| Transcript designation, record clearing and third-party disclosure (Student Code, Articles V §6 and VI §§3, 6) | usu.edu/student-conduct/student-code |
Organizing your own drafts and records to bring to any of this: the records checklist. Capturing the pages above as they read today, and keeping your own dated record beside them: what to do with these sources.
Revision history of this page
2026-08-27 — Page created. All quotations captured this date, first-party, from the usu.edu and catalog.usu.edu pages linked beside them; every source quoted here was fetched and read as text rather than summarized. Source dates as the sources give them: the general catalog marks its reproduction of Article VI, Section 1 “(revised September 2009)”; the Copyleaks help pages, the Proctorio statement, the Student Code page and the student-conduct contact page display no on-page date, which is stated beside each quotation. Two verbatim oddities in USU's own text are reproduced rather than corrected and are recorded here so a later reviewer does not read them as transcription errors: the transition page's sentence “using Copyleaks in place of Turnitin to Copyleaks for plagiarism detection,” and the overview page's “Rather, it is an error that can only be accessed within the report.” Detection sweep recorded for a later reviewer. Named-vendor sweep — Turnitin (including SimCheck and Originality), Copyleaks, iThenticate, GPTZero, Originality.ai, Winston AI, Crossplag, ZeroGPT, Packback, Grammarly Authorship, Honorlock, Proctorio, Respondus, Examity: Copyleaks found and documented as the deployed detector, integrated into Canvas SpeedGrader with AI detection enabled by default; Proctorio found as exam proctoring with no AI-writing claim; Turnitin found only as the tool Copyleaks replaced, with no current USU page documenting live use; iThenticate, GPTZero, Originality.ai, Winston AI, Crossplag, ZeroGPT, Packback, Grammarly Authorship, Honorlock, Respondus and Examity: nothing located. Category sweep — USU's teaching-software help pages, which are where the Canvas integration is documented; the testing and proctoring pages; the Student Conduct pages and Student Code; the School of Graduate Studies and electronic theses and dissertations pages, on which no separate originality-checking pipeline and no iThenticate were located. Scope limit stated rather than implied: no distinct IT service catalogue, Canvas external-tool list or library research guide was located as a separate enumerating page, so the negative result across those categories rests on the pages named here rather than on a dedicated inventory. Disqualification check run on the completed inventory: Utah State has not disabled or recommended against AI detection across the board — the feature is documented as enabled by default and USU publishes a page titled for accessing it, while the cautions located (“false positives are possible, and more likely with students for whom English is a second language”; “a data point and a conversation starter rather than proof the student cheated”; “this is not concrete evidence”) go to weight rather than availability. Deliberate omissions: a vendor marketing claim that Proctorio's plagiarism-detection product is in use at USU was traced to proctorio.com rather than to any USU page and is not carried forward; a student-newspaper account of a USUSA “Ombudsman Committee” is a third-party source describing a student-government body and is not treated as a first-party ombuds office. Nothing paraphrase-pending — every quotation on this page was captured as text; the Provost's ombudspersons page was read only in part before exceeding what could be captured, and nothing is quoted from it, only its placement under Promotion and Tenure is stated. Absences recorded as findings: no artificial-intelligence language anywhere in the Student Code's academic-integrity definitions; no provision on whether a student may record a meeting or hearing; no general office email for Student Conduct; no provision on disclosure to licensing boards; and no independent, confidential student ombuds office, the closest published channel being a student-government advocacy route USU does not describe as confidential or independent. Automated research pass. 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 Turnitin-to-Copyleaks transition page (the July 20, 2023 replacement sentence, including the “to Copyleaks” repetition, and the AI-checks-outside-the-originality-score lines intact), the Copyleaks Overview page (the SpeedGrader integration, the “it is an error that can only be accessed within the report” oddity, and the “data point and a conversation starter rather than proof the student cheated” caution intact), the Accessing the AI Detection Feature page (“The AI Detection feature is enabled by default” and the highlighted-content caution intact), the Proctorio Statement (the identity-verification sentence and the “It is impossible for anyone at Proctorio or any of its affiliates to view exam recordings” line intact), Student Code Articles V, VI and VIII (the AIVF seven-day sequence, preponderance, the advisor-of-choice and formal-advocacy provisions, the ten-day hearing notice and appeal window, and the transcript-designation, one-year-floor, record-clearing and third-party-disclosure provisions all verbatim), the General Catalog Academic Integrity page (still reproducing Article VI, Section 1 marked “revised September 2009,” with the self-plagiarism footnote), and the myVoice page (the “may not be seen by USU staff or administration” acknowledgement and studentadvocate.ususa@usu.edu, TSC 342, intact). Office contact re-confirmed — Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards, Taggart Student Center, 435-797-3137.
2026-08-28 — Detection status unchanged. Copyleaks remains the deployed detector, with AI detection enabled by default in Canvas SpeedGrader and kept out of the similarity score; Proctorio remains exam proctoring with no AI-writing claim; Turnitin remains named only as the tool Copyleaks replaced; and the named-vendor sweep again returned nothing for iThenticate, GPTZero, Originality.ai, Winston AI, Crossplag, ZeroGPT, Packback, Grammarly Authorship, Honorlock, Respondus and Examity. Step-2 disqualification check: clear pass, unchanged — the feature is on by default while USU's cautions go to the weight of a result rather than its availability. 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.