CSU Faculty Voice: More on Our Plagiarizing Provost's Dissertation

Thursday, January 30, 2014

More on Our Plagiarizing Provost's Dissertation

In an attempt to give a fuller picture of what a fraud Angela Henderson perpetrated on the academic community, I now present another exploration of her plagiarized dissertation. Although much has been made of the TurnItIn program as the source of the information I used to construct my original plagiarism report and to check Henderson’s references, that particular venue provided little assistance. Instead, the vast majority of the plagiarized passages I discovered came from a simple google inquiry into relevant sentences along with occasional downloading of specific articles and searching them for keywords and verbatim passages. Although I am confident I could unearth more plagiarized passages, here is what I have discovered to this point.

Henderson’s dissertation includes 37 pages of text that is primarily based on external literature. Of those 37 pages, 28 pages, or 75.7 percent include plagiarized material at least a sentence long. On pages 2-3 and 11-22, Henderson’s dissertation features 21 plagiarized passages on 9 of the 14 pages. Henderson, however, was just getting warmed up on these pages. The 21 pages from 25-45 include a breathtaking 61 separate plagiarized passages on 19 pages. Thus, the total plagiarism I have discovered in the dissertation amounts to 82 separate passages on the aforementioned 28 pages. As an example, here is a segment from the material I reported to UIC. This comes from page 26 of Henderson's dissertation and the plagiarism continues onto page 27. The plagiarized portions are highlighted in yellow:

Henderson lifts this material from the following article: Eva S. Lefkowitz, "Things Have Gotten Better": Developmental Changes Among Emerging Adults After the Transition to University," Journal of Adolescent Research 20:40 (2005): 40-63. Available online here: http://jar.sagepub.com/content/20/1/40.full.pdf+html. The first passage comes from page 54, the second from page 60:

It took only a simple search to reveal the existence of the article in question and the inclusion of the plagiarized passages in the Lefkowitz piece. As I have said before, truly the kind of plagiarism one might expect from a second-year undergraduate.

1 comment:

Professor PanchoJan 30, 2014, 12:57:00 PM
It is easy to detect such plagiarism. I always know when my students are committing such fraud. Ms. Henderson's dissertation committee chair, committee members and, especially, Mr. Watson should be ashamed and embarrassed and sanctioned severely for their aiding and abetting of this fraud.
ReplyDelete
Replies

Add comment

Thanks to Haki Madhabuti

"1. He/she must be a scholar of national note, with significant peer review publications and books in his or her field. There must be no doubt as to his/her standing in the community of scholars. This would also include a history of the candidate’s participation in the appropriate professional organizations.

2. He/she must have served with distinction as the administrative head of a major unit within an institution of higher learning or at the important position of Provost and/or Dean. Of course, prior service at the presidential level is preferred.

3. He/she must have a documented history of raising significant monies from the private and public sectors. At most major and research one universities it is not unusual to expect the president to come with a plan to raise in excess of half a billion dollars or more in the first few years.

4. The prospective president must have a consensus buy-in from the faculty, students, administration and staff, therefore, arriving with a unity mandate to lead by joining a University community that has bought into his or her vision for the future."

From an open letter to the CSU Community, 2009.