Colorado Technical University.

Detection status: Turnitin Originality Verification (similarity) runs automatically on Virtual Campus submissions and in Draft Coach, per the University Catalog and CTU's Writing Support Center; CTU's Provost statement on generative AI says CTU is ‘not sanctioning the use of third-party tools for use or detection’; no Turnitin AI-writing indicator is documented as enabled or disabled
Office in these sources: No central academic-integrity office is named in these sources — the University Catalog routes academic-honesty findings through the instructor, ‘the appropriate academic official for the particular program or campus’ and ‘the appropriate Appeals Board’; conduct-dismissal appeals go to the Office of the Ombudsman, StudentGrievance@coloradotech.edu · no phone or postal address stated in these sources · Academic Honesty and Integrity (2026 University Catalog)
Ombuds or advocacy office: Office of the Ombudsman — “can provide an impartial review of the students concerns” per the CTU Student Handbook · CTUombudsman@coloradotech.edu · grievance filings and conduct-dismissal appeals: StudentGrievance@coloradotech.edu · no phone stated in these sources · Student Handbook — Ombudsman’s Office & Student Grievance Process. Scope as CTU states it: the Catalog's Student Grievance Procedure states that it does not apply to student grievances “regarding academic honesty or other conduct warnings” or to “grades or grade appeals”, and the same office is the intake for conduct-dismissal appeals under the Student Conduct policy — it is a review-and-mediation office, not a body that decides an academic-honesty case.
Sources last checked: Sep 5, 2026

Reproduced from the institution’s own pages quoted below — potentially relevant official sources, not a determination of which one governs any case.

Colorado Technical University's published sources on AI detection and academic integrity, quoted in brief and linked below. These are potentially relevant official sources, not a determination of which one governs any case — the CTU University Catalog's Academic Honesty and Integrity policy, Originality Policy and Student Conduct policy are the governing texts; the CTU Student Handbook, which carries the Honor Code, describes itself as “a companion to the University Catalog, but does not replace it”; the Provost's statement on generative AI is published on the CTU Writing Support Center guide rather than in the Catalog; and individual courses may add rules, since the Handbook says “each faculty member will provide specific course expectations”. Confirm applicability with the institution. Any dates or deadlines are quoted from the sources, not a deadline calculation performed for you.

01Detection status

What is documented — and what isn't

CTU names its tool in the University Catalog itself. The Originality Policy, in the Catalog's Classroom Policies section (2026 CTU University Catalog; no page date shown; retrieved Sep 5, 2026), states:

"In order to uphold these values in the classroom, CTU utilizes the TurnitIn® Originality Verification Tool. This tool assists faculty, students, & staff by ensuring that all student work adheres to the University’s Academic Integrity policy."

The same policy describes the tool's limits and how much weight its number carries:

"While the TurnitIn® Originality Verification Tool does not detect plagiarism, it does assist in the investigation and verification of overall integrity of the material provided by the student." "Note: Exclusive use of the similarity score % as criteria for identifying possible violations of academic integrity is prohibited. All students are to be assessed based on the content and contextual use of sources."

Where it runs, and who sees it, is documented on CTU's own LibGuides — the CTU Writing Support Center's "Originality Verification (OV)" page (careered.libguides.com/ctu, page footer "Copyright © 2024 Colorado Technical University"; last updated Sep 1, 2026; retrieved Sep 5, 2026 by browser read):

"When a discussion board post is submitted into the Virtual Campus, it is automatically uploaded to the Turnitin database, and a Similarity Score will begin to be generated. Once you upload a file to the submissions area, it will be run through Turnitin and a Similarity Score will begin to be generated." "It is important to note that CTU does not define an appropriate percentage for the Originality Verification (OV) Report. The evaluation of the Originality Verification Report is an academic process that takes into account the evidence within the context of the specific assignment. It is at the faculty member’s discretion how the report is interpreted."

That guide also states: "Turnitin does not detect or determine plagiarism; it just detects matching text and provides a report for review." The same pipeline covers doctoral work: the CTU Doctoral Resource Center's "Similarity Index and Plagiarism" page (last updated Sep 4, 2026; retrieved Sep 5, 2026) repeats the description for assignments and discussion posts submitted to the Virtual Campus, and lists "Submitting AI-generated content as your own work without citation or instructor approval." among its common forms of plagiarism. No separate dissertation-stage tool such as iThenticate was located; the Doctor of Management program page (2026 Catalog) describes approval by a Research Supervisor, University Reviewer and dissertation committee without naming a similarity tool. A student-side draft checker, Turnitin's Draft Coach add-in in Office 365, is documented on the Writing Support Center's "Grammar Tools" page (last updated Sep 1, 2026): "Draft Coach can also provide the same similarity report you receive when you submit an assignment, up to three times per document."

On AI-writing detection specifically, CTU's own words come from its Chief Academic Officer and Provost. "CTU's Official Statement on the use of Generative AI", signed by Kathleen L. Schnier, Ph.D., is published on the Writing Support Center's "Using Generative AI" guide (statement undated; page last updated Sep 1, 2026; retrieved Sep 5, 2026). Two sentences bear directly on detection:

"Because CTU is still examining GAI tools, we are not sanctioning the use of third-party tools for use or detection." "To ensure transparency, we want our Academic Community to know we are currently working on trainings for faculty to use GAI in their work along with better ways to uphold university Academic Integrity when GAI is used or presumed to be used by students. Our Student Code of Conduct committee is also working on enhancing policies and procedures used when GAI is not used in a responsible or ethical manner."

The guide's "Previous Statements" tab preserves an "August 2023 Position Statement": "CTU is not banning the use of Generative AI tools, rather the university position is to allow the ethical use of the tools, including student use of the tool as a source, if cited properly." — with the note that "the university position on Generative AI tools may change at any point."

No page in this review states whether Turnitin's AI-writing indicator is enabled on CTU submissions; every CTU description of Turnitin above is of its similarity report. Two CTU-published items touch the question without settling it. The Pinnacle, "an open-access, peer-reviewed, scholarly journal published by Colorado Technical University", carries "A Comparative Study of the Accuracy of Turn-It-In’s Artificial Intelligence Detector in CTU Doctoral Assignments" (Charles P. Kost II, EdD; Volume 2, Issue 1, March 2024; retrieved Sep 5, 2026), whose abstract reports running 48 CTU Doctoral Studies papers through Turnitin for "similarity and AI-generated content" scores and concludes: "The results demonstrate that TII’s confidence level may not be as accurate as claimed and that the detection of AI-generated content requires further testing before being used to determine if an act of academic dishonesty took place." The journal's own About page says the views expressed "are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Colorado Technical University" — it is faculty research, not a deployment statement. Separately, the Doctoral Resource Center's Lunch & Learn archive (last updated Sep 4, 2026) lists sessions titled "AI in the Classroom: Turnitin and Draft Coach" (February 2026 and June 2026); the recordings and slides are external files and were not captured, so only the titles are recorded here.

Named-vendor sweep across coloradotech.edu, smartcatalogiq.coloradotech.edu (Catalog and Student Handbook) and the careered.libguides.com/ctu guides found no reference to Copyleaks, GPTZero, Originality.ai, Winston AI, Crossplag, ZeroGPT, Packback, Unicheck, SafeAssign or Grammarly Authorship, and no reference to Honorlock, Proctorio, Respondus or Examity; iThenticate appears only inside the Kost article page. Category sweep — the Student Handbook's Learning Modalities pages (Intellipath adaptive learning, the Student Software Agreement), the doctoral/dissertation pipeline, the Writing Support, Doctoral Resource and Student Success centers, and searches for proctoring on every CTU host — turned up only Turnitin Originality Verification and Draft Coach. That negative result is stated at the scope actually searched: CTU's own domains, this session, not a claim that no such tool exists anywhere at CTU.

Sources: Originality Policy (2026 Catalog) · Originality Verification (OV) — CTU Writing Support Center · Similarity Index and Plagiarism — CTU Doctoral Resource Center · Grammar Tools (Draft Coach) · Using Generative AI — CTU statement · The Pinnacle — Kost (2024) · Lunch & Learn Series · Doctor of Management (2026 Catalog).

02Published process

What CTU's own documents say about how cases proceed

Who may be present: Not stated in the sources reviewed. The 2026 University Catalog's Academic Honesty and Integrity policy, its Student Conduct policy (including the Student Conduct Committee, Sanctions and Appeals sections), its Student Grievance Procedure and Recording Policy, and the Student Handbook's Appeals and Honor Code pages were read for an advisor, support person, note-taker or attorney provision; none names one for an academic-honesty or conduct proceeding. The Academic Honesty and Integrity policy says only that violations “are to be processed promptly, firmly, privately, and fairly by the instructor”. On recording, the Catalog's Recording Policy addresses academic events rather than conduct meetings: “Unauthorized student recording of classroom sessions or other academic-related events is strictly prohibited by CTU.” — and CTU itself “may record classroom sessions and other academic-related events (e.g., Live Chat, office hours, advising sessions, etc.)”. (2026 CTU University Catalog, no page dates shown; retrieved Sep 5, 2026.) · Academic Honesty and Integrity · Recording Policy
What follows on the record: “All instances are cumulative, permanently recorded, and tracked across a student’s tenure at all CTU campuses.” — 2026 University Catalog, Academic Honesty and Integrity (no page date shown; retrieved Sep 5, 2026). The same policy adds: “Academic Honesty violations are documented in the student’s file.” For conduct dismissals, the Student Conduct policy states: “All University determinations of appeals will be kept as a permanent record in the student's file.” — and its conduct list warns that where “significant misrepresentation or misattribution of material presented” is proven, “any degrees or credit awarded by the University based on the material will be revoked.” The Catalog's Records Retention Policy states that CTU “maintains a permanent record for each student for 50 years from the last date of the student's attendance.” No source reviewed states whether an academic-honesty finding is noted on the transcript, or whether it is disclosed to graduate programs, employers or licensing boards; the Grading policy speaks only of grades (“The failure will remain on the transcript.”). · Academic Honesty and Integrity · Student Conduct · Records Retention Policy · Grading

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

The Catalog's Academic Honesty and Integrity policy (2026 CTU University Catalog; no page date shown; retrieved Sep 5, 2026) places the first steps with the instructor and the decision with an academic official:

"Such violations are to be processed promptly, firmly, privately, and fairly by the instructor and may result in sanctions up to and including dismissal from the University. The instructor will promptly notify the University of the discovery of the incident." "The final determination of academic dishonesty will be decided by the appropriate academic official for the particular program or campus."

On notification and appeal, the same policy states: "The student will be notified by the appropriate University official and required to review the Academic Honesty Policy and Honor Code and affirm the CTU Honor Statement." and "The student may appeal any decision to the appropriate Appeals Board. The Appeals Board will render a final decision after appropriate investigation, which may include factors such as prior academic honesty violations, previous correspondence and warnings, and academic history. Decisions from the Appeals Board may have stipulations attached to outcomes." No appeal window, evidentiary standard, or meeting format is stated for this Appeals Board in the sources reviewed. The policy's resubmission clause, written to instructors and quoted because it describes what a student experiences, states: "If an instructor is not made aware of work being resubmitted, the instructor will treat the assignment as plagiarized and reserves the right to post an F (0) grade and submit it for review until proof of originality is provided, at which point the instructor will make a grade change determination."

The Catalog's Student Conduct policy (same edition; retrieved Sep 5, 2026) lists "Engaging in conduct that violates the University’s Academic Honesty and Integrity Policy" among the grounds for discipline. Under it, a charge "must be submitted in writing via staff or faculty" to the Student Conduct Committee "through the Provost/Chief Academic Officer (or their designee)"; the Committee "is made up of the Provost/Chief Academic Officer (or their designee) and other committee members representing various areas within the University." Sanctions are listed as Official Reprimand, Official Written Notice, Suspension and Dismissal, each with a copy placed in the student's file. Conduct dismissals may be appealed:

"A student may appeal a University decision in writing by completing the Conduct Dismissal Appeal form located on the Virtual Campus Resource page and submitting it to the Office of the Ombudsman (StudentGrievance@coloradotech.edu) within five (5) business days of receiving notice of the dismissal decision."

The policy continues: "Within three (3) business days, the Office of the Ombudsman will confirm receipt of the appeal and begin a thorough review of the claim and supporting evidence to be considered. The role of the Ombudsman's Office is to ensure compliant and consistent treatment occurred during the committee sanctioning process." The Ombudsman then presents the appeal to the Student Conduct Committee, which votes; the President or Provost/Chief Academic Officer (or designee) makes the final determination in writing, and "Students are only eligible to appeal a dismissal case a maximum of three times." The Catalog's separate Student Grievance Procedure carries a scope line that matters here: it states that it does not apply to student grievances "regarding academic honesty or other conduct warnings" or to "grades or grade appeals", which the Catalog says are addressed in its other sections. The Student Handbook's own page on the office states that "While the Office of the Ombudsman cannot overturn University decisions in matters of resolved complaints, they can provide an impartial review of the students concerns as well as the determination provided in effort to ensure fairness and compliant treatment." What any of this means for a particular case is for the institution and its process to determine.

03Source map

Where the documents live

Document	Location
Originality Policy — names the Turnitin Originality Verification Tool and the similarity-score rule (2026 CTU University Catalog, Classroom Policies)	smartcatalogiq.coloradotech.edu — Originality Policy
Academic Honesty and Integrity — governing policy: process, notification, Appeals Board, permanent record (2026 Catalog)	smartcatalogiq.coloradotech.edu — Academic Honesty and Integrity
Student Conduct — conduct grounds, Student Conduct Committee, Sanctions, Dismissal, Appeals (2026 Catalog)	smartcatalogiq.coloradotech.edu — Student Conduct
Student Grievance Procedure — scope exclusion for academic honesty and conduct; Office of the Ombudsman steps (2026 Catalog)	smartcatalogiq.coloradotech.edu — Student Grievance Procedure
General Information for Grievance Procedures — ten-business-day step windows (2026 Catalog)	smartcatalogiq.coloradotech.edu — General Information
Recording Policy — recording of academic events by CTU and by students (2026 Catalog)	smartcatalogiq.coloradotech.edu — Recording Policy
Records Retention Policy — 50-year permanent record (2026 Catalog)	smartcatalogiq.coloradotech.edu — Records Retention Policy
Grading — transcript treatment of failing grades (2026 Catalog)	smartcatalogiq.coloradotech.edu — Grading
CTU's Honor Code (CTU Student Handbook, 2024 edition)	smartcatalogiq.coloradotech.edu — Honor Code
Ombudsman’s Office & Student Grievance Process — office description and emails (Student Handbook, 2024)	smartcatalogiq.coloradotech.edu — Ombudsman’s Office
Appeals — conduct-dismissal appeal steps as stated in the Student Handbook (2024)	smartcatalogiq.coloradotech.edu — Appeals
The Student Handbook Versus The University Catalog — hierarchy statement (Student Handbook, 2024)	smartcatalogiq.coloradotech.edu — Handbook vs. Catalog
Using Generative AI — CTU's Official Statement on the use of Generative AI (Provost) and the August 2023 Position Statement (CTU Writing Support Center; last updated Sep 1, 2026)	careered.libguides.com/ctu/writing/genai
Originality Verification (OV) — how Turnitin runs in the Virtual Campus and who interprets the report (CTU Writing Support Center; last updated Sep 1, 2026)	careered.libguides.com/ctu/writing/ovscore
Similarity Index and Plagiarism — doctoral-scope Turnitin description and AI-related plagiarism list (CTU Doctoral Resource Center; last updated Sep 4, 2026)	careered.libguides.com/ctu/doctoral_students/ov
Grammar Tools — Turnitin Draft Coach (CTU Writing Support Center; last updated Sep 1, 2026)	careered.libguides.com/ctu/writing/tools
Lunch & Learn Series — "AI in the Classroom: Turnitin and Draft Coach" session titles (CTU Doctoral Resource Center; last updated Sep 4, 2026; recordings not captured)	careered.libguides.com/ctu/doctoral_students/lunchandlearn
The Pinnacle, Vol. 2 No. 1 (March 2024) — Kost, "A Comparative Study of the Accuracy of Turn-It-In’s Artificial Intelligence Detector in CTU Doctoral Assignments" (CTU-published journal; faculty research, not a deployment statement)	careered.libguides.com/ctu/journal/thepinnacle/v2n1Kost
Doctor of Management — dissertation approval chain (2026 Catalog)	smartcatalogiq.coloradotech.edu — Doctor of Management
Expectations — course-level expectations set by each faculty member (Student Handbook, 2024)	smartcatalogiq.coloradotech.edu — Expectations
The Pinnacle — About this Journal (publisher statement and author-views disclaimer; last updated Sep 1, 2026)	careered.libguides.com/ctu/journal/thepinnacle/about
Privacy Policy — Turnitin End-User License Agreement reference (coloradotech.edu; last updated December 31, 2025)	coloradotech.edu/privacy

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.

04Change log

Revision history of this page

2026-09-05 — Page created. Detection-inventory sweep run first: named-vendor sweep across coloradotech.edu, smartcatalogiq.coloradotech.edu (2026 University Catalog and 2024 Student Handbook) and CTU's LibGuides namespace at careered.libguides.com/ctu (the LibGuides site's own search, read after its results loaded) found Turnitin (Originality Verification / similarity, plus the Draft Coach add-in) and no reference to Copyleaks, GPTZero, Originality.ai, Winston AI, Crossplag, ZeroGPT, Packback, Unicheck, SafeAssign or Grammarly Authorship, and none to Honorlock, Proctorio, Respondus or Examity; iThenticate appeared only inside the Kost article page. Category sweep of the Student Handbook's Learning Modalities pages (Intellipath, Student Software Agreement), the doctoral/dissertation pipeline (Doctoral Resource Center, Doctor of Management program page, Lunch & Learn archive), the Writing Support, Doctoral Resource and Student Success centers, and proctoring searches on every CTU host found nothing further. Disqualification check run on that completed inventory: the Provost's generative-AI statement says CTU is "not sanctioning the use of third-party tools for use or detection", but this was not treated as a disqualification, because a real detection tool (Turnitin Originality Verification) is required by the Catalog and documented as running automatically on every Virtual Campus submission, and no page says it is disabled; the finding published is that CTU's documented tool is a similarity checker, that the AI-writing indicator's status is unstated, and that the Provost's sentence is CTU's only institutional word on AI detection. Captured first-party this date: the Catalog's Originality Policy, Academic Honesty and Integrity, Student Conduct, Student Grievance Procedure and its General Information page, Recording Policy, Records Retention Policy, Grading and Doctor of Management pages (plain fetch; Catalog pages carry no per-page date); the Student Handbook's Honor Code, Ombudsman's Office, Appeals and Handbook-vs-Catalog pages (plain fetch; 2024 edition, undated pages); and, by browser read because careered.libguides.com returns an empty body to plain fetches, the Writing Support Center's Using Generative AI, Originality Verification and Grammar Tools pages, the Doctoral Resource Center's Similarity Index and Lunch & Learn pages, and the Pinnacle Kost article page (each carrying a "Last Updated" footer, recorded in the source map). The coloradotech.edu Privacy Policy was read by browser because the main site serves an Incapsula challenge to plain fetches; its /turnitin-user-license-agreement address resolved to that policy. Not captured, title only: the Lunch & Learn "AI in the Classroom: Turnitin and Draft Coach" recordings and slides (external files) and the Kost article's full-text PDF. Deliberately omitted: a 2010 catalog-policies PDF on studentlogin.coloradotech.edu (superseded), the Catalog's Grade Policies (grades, not integrity findings), and the coloradotech.edu general contact numbers (not an integrity-office line). No central academic-integrity office, phone or evidentiary standard is published in the sources reviewed, and no provision names who may accompany a student; each absence is stated on the page at the scope searched. The Office of the Ombudsman is listed with CTU's own descriptor and with the Catalog's scope line excluding academic-honesty matters from the grievance procedure. Colorado Technical University is a private institution: this page quotes brief excerpts and links originals; it republishes nothing in full. Internet Archive captures: to be added. Reviewer: Carrie Schluter (review confirmed 2026-09-05).

2026-09-13 — Editorial review. Carrie Schluter read this page in full against its recorded first-party sources and found no change required. Reviewer: Carrie Schluter (review confirmed 2026-09-13).

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