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Thursday, October 11, 2007

Committee Composed of His Employees
Praises Boss to the Skies




'Glenn Poshard should correct citations he missed in two academic papers he wrote more than 20 years ago, but he will remain president of Southern Illinois University with the full support of the board of trustees.

That's the verdict from an announcement university officials made Thursday afternoon, following the board's review of plagiarism allegations lodged against a 1984 doctoral dissertation and a 1976 master's thesis Poshard wrote as a student at SIU Carbondale. The crux of the assertions came from the fact Poshard failed to use quotation marks around material cited from other sources in his paper. Poshard contends the way he wrote the paper was appropriate according to the professors who graded it and has said any uncited passages in his work was purely a mistake, not intentional.

SIU board of trustees chairman Roger Tedrick said the board wants Poshard to continue as president, despite recent calls for his resignation over the allegations.

"Dr. Poshard will remain our president with full board support. His integrity is unquestioned and his energy, passion and commitment to this university unsurpassed," Tedrick said. "He continues to be the right man to lead the SIU system."



SIUC Chancellor Fernando TreviƱo requested a seven-person faculty review committee investigate the anonymous plagiarism allegations against Poshard in September. Engineering professor and SIUC Faculty Senate President Ramanarayanan Viswanathan led the panel.

"This review must be understood in its historical context," Viswanathan said. "Our examination of some theses and dissertations completed in Dr. Poshard's department in the same general time period found that the citation style he used appears to have been commonly accepted by different committees in his college."

However, the style used then is not recommended today, Viswanathan added. The committee is recommending Poshard publicly recognize "incomplete citation errors" and correct them using currently acceptable practices.

Poshard said he would honor the committee's wishes.

"The members of this committee are individuals of integrity and credibility, and I appreciate their service to the university," Poshard said. "I have read the committee's report and I accept its recommendations. I take full responsibility for the inadvertent errors that I made 23 years ago."'