Victoria Malaney-Brown, Director of Academic Integrity

Now in its fifth year, Integrity Week offers panel discussions, workshops, discourse and networking opportunities centered around the fundamental values of academic integrity in research, teaching and learning. The 2024 program kicks off with an event on the Lerner ramps at noon on Monday, February 26, and runs through Friday, March 1.

Director of Academic Integrity Victoria Malaney-Brown originated the program in 2020, with the goal to facilitate conversations about integrity and ethics within the campus community, and to strengthen students’ commitment to six related values: courage, honesty, trust, fairness, respect and responsibility.

“But integrity is not only a value set that we want students to learn,” Malaney-Brown says. “We also want them to see that integrity is infused into the day-to-day decision-making that they’ll use once they leave Columbia and go into their professional careers and worlds.”

In the run-up to Integrity Week, Malaney-Brown shared more about this year’s program, the work she does and the importance of supporting student well-being.

What makes Integrity Week significant?

Integrity Week is meant to engage the community and to have dialogues around why integrity is important in our everyday conversations. It’s a collective action — academic integrity as a whole only becomes a foundational value when everybody participates. It’s students thinking about, ‘“How does this apply to my student life?” It’s faculty deciding, “How do I talk about integrity in the classroom so my students understand what it means in the courses I teach?” I think that [academic integrity] is something that Columbia has always had in its value system, but we haven’t really carved out time and space to show what it looks like in practice. And so Integrity Week is to help everybody figure out a way that they can be involved. No matter where you enter into the week, there’s something to engage with and think about.

Will you be doing anything new this year?

We’ll have a keynote speaker for the first time: Joel Rosenthal, president of Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. His address is called “Restoring Integrity in a Time of Distrust.” The work he does is really impressive; he’s involved with international dialogue, which is very timely. A lot of his focus will be discussing how to have conversations about ethical values even when those values are in conflict with the world around them. As our first Integrity Week keynote, I think this will bring the event to another level. It will be a Zoom livestream held in Lerner 401; it’s open to anyone, and we’re inviting parents and families as well.

We’ll also be talking about generative artificial intelligence. The University has always tried to figure out ways to get ahead of student questions and provide support, but AI is happening so quickly that we don’t have all the rules yet. This past fall, we added a policy about how the use of AI is being treated similarly to plagiarism. But there’s not been a ton of guidance, so I think it’s really important that this is part of the program.

You inaugurated the role of director of academic integrity; tell us about your work and how it’s evolved.

I started in January 2018. There had been cases of academic misconduct around that time; my position was created because Deans Valentini and Boyce wanted to develop preventative measures to help students learn from those cases. My work falls under Student and Family Support, which is part of the Office of the Dean. A lot of the things that I do are to support College and SEAS undergraduates, but the role has become larger than what I had started with.

I work closely with the associate dean for student and family support, Matthew Patashnick; I’m also connected with the assistant dean of student wellness, Stephanie King; the assistant director of student wellness, Krystal Diaz; and the director of family outreach, Veronica Bjorkman. Collectively, we’re a team that focuses on students and parents — their well-being, the things that we can do to support them when college is tough and difficult and hard.

Academic integrity has been an important factor at a lot of colleges and institutions; I’ve been able to be creative about developing a program that’s really Columbia specific, that works within the time and space that we’re in.

Offering a holistic sense of well-being and providing guidance around values feels like an integral part of the undergraduate experience right now.

Yes. We have such high-achieving students, students who really focus so much on their academics. What I try to do in my work is to tell them it’s OK to fail. That it’s OK to make mistakes.

So many of them have had a vision for how they expect their college experience to go. And when things become difficult, especially when they make a mistake with academic integrity in a classroom setting, it can be devastating. I’m the person who gets to be supportive and help them not only move forward past the mistake, but also focus on the strength and resilience piece of acknowledging and taking responsibility for it.

What are some other ways that you support students?

Most of my students have never had any issues or “trouble” in their lifetimes, so meeting with me is a very disconcerting time for them. I provide support, talk to them about reframing their focus of success, being better time managers, connecting with the Center for Student Advising for tutoring, helping them develop better relationships with faculty. And I direct students to the Center for Career Education — if someone really wants to pursue a specific career, I make those referrals so that they can think more broadly about that field or industry, beyond just what they learn in the classroom.

I’ve also created reflective prompts for students to write through their feelings and any shame they might feel. I have a series [of prompts] that connects to codes of ethics around particular professions; they can help students understand how they would need to conduct themselves in that profession, in a way that feels relevant to them.

Ultimately, I’m trying to teach students that it’s not just about being “book smart” — that there’s an academic strategy to being successful and engaging in the classroom. My philosophy is: When students are clear about where they want to go and the types of opportunities they want to pursue, they will attract those great opportunities and there will be an alignment with their value system. But when students are unclear about what they want, or they’re in distress and not telling their advisors or the people who care about their well-being, then they may not be in the right mindset to make good decisions.