I received the following response from Don Sprowl, executive vice president for academic affairs and chief academic officer at Indiana Wesleyan University, in response to a question about the allegation that Interim Little Rock School Superintendent Dexter Suggs had plagiarized the dissertation Suggs wrote in receiving an Ed.D. degree from the Marion, Ind., school.
We have been made aware of the allegations regarding Dr. Dexter Suggs. Federal law prevents me from discussing the academic records of any individual student so I may not make comment on any IWU response to the allegations. All that we do as a university is founded on and depends upon academic integrity so Indiana Wesleyan University takes all matters relating to academic integrity very seriously.
If you have further questions that I am allowed to answer please feel free to ask.
I asked if awareness of a plagiarism allegation against an IWU graduate would necessarily prompt an investigation of such an allegation. The response:
I’m not allowed to comment on the particulars of any given case. In the general circumstance of academic honesty questions, a process of discovery would clarify the facts of the case which would then be addressed according to university policy.
PS — I note that Indiana Wesleyan’s resource page on its website includes several links to free plagiarism checkers.