Carrie Pfeiffer-Fiala, 45, was a Ph.D candidate in education at Kent State and was one dissertation away from finishing her degree last fall when she got caught up in allegations of cheating. Now, she’s suing the school for two counts of breach of contract, one count of negligent supervision, one count of defamation, and one count of unjust enrichment. In the suit filed earlier this month, she’s asking the Ohio Court of Claims to reinstate her at Kent State or be given the degree, along with at least $25,000 in damages.
Last fall, Pfeiffer-Fiala turned in a 55-page draft of the first chapter of her dissertation that her professor deemed plagiarized. She explained to the professor “that she knew that citations were incomplete in the draft; plaintiff was not taking credit, and that any citation omissions were inadvertent would be addressed in the editing process and subsequent iterations towards a final submission… Defendant chose to knowingly, recklessly, or negligently disregard this knowledge and arbitrarily and/or maliciously accuse plaintiff of plagiarism even though both parties knew the document to be merely an incomplete first draft submission.”
At an “academic hearing panel” in January, she presented “evidence of her innocence” but the panel “did not look at and ignored a majority” of it, the suit says. She was found to have plagiarized, lost her appeal to the school and withdraw. The school didn’t follow the proper plagiarism guidelines causing her to miss out on the degree she had spent $50,000 to get, it says.
Pfeiffer-Fiala has a long C.V. listing her two other degrees from Kent State and dozens of her contributions in academic journals as well as her teaching career at the university and as an adjunct professor at Cleveland State, according to her website.
Read the suit here:
Kent State plagiarism lawsuit (PDF)
Kent State plagiarism lawsuit (Text)
This article appears in Nov 13-19, 2013.
Ooops….I see a black eye coming for my Alma Mater….
This article states that “Pfeiffer-Fiala has a long C.V. listing her two other degrees from Kent State and dozens of her contributions in academic journals . . .” and cites her website. Well, she lists one published article (for which she was the third of three authors) and one co-authored chapter in an edited book. She has never published as the sole author or as the lead author.
As for her contention that the plagiarized material was a draft: What does that mean in the context of submitting dissertation work to the professor? If the professor had accepted Chapter 1 as is, who’s to say whether she would have “addressed” the plagiarism later in the dissertation process?
This is yet one more example of cheaters not taking responsibility for their own actions. What to do when confronted with the crime? Sue!
I hope she wins. That’s ridiculous – it’s a first draft. Wow. Not having every citation is common in this stage. What a jerk professor. So glad I went to schools where the professors weren’t out to get a student like that.
Um, so it’s okay to completely rip off someone else, as long as you cite them in the end? When I wrote papers (Galileo was in my class with me), I was under the impression you cited your sources right away. You know, because in order to write the paper, you take information from your sources. If you didn’t need the sources to write the paper, then you have no need for citation!
If you read the complaint you will see that she was submitting a draft of only the first two chapters for review and revision to her committee. On average, a dissertation has over 20 iterations and the 55 page document would have been reduced by half once the actual study was done, the rest of the chapters, and the revisions. This whole story demonstrates how some professors at Kent State treat students with such disrespect-a simple conversation between student and professor could have solved the problem. But, why bother? Everyone knows a tenured professor is guaranteed a job no matter how incompetent. I hope she wins!
It was a draft meant to be edited before submission! Having been a High School teacher for 30 years, it seems as if the professor was out to get her. Knowing that she had been at Kent State for several years earning degrees, it should have been handled in a much better way.
I HOPE SHE WINS!
If you have ever written a work for higher education you would know its a process. Stage one= rough draft! Which, includes addressing the literature already published as well as what you intend to do that differs from what has already been done, this is exactly what she did and apparently got in trouble for. It’s an absurd claim that she plagiarized? What is the point of submitting a rough draft if it expected to be a complete and finished paper..seems the professor is a bit jealous someone else could get their PhD.
Of course, all of you who support Carrie’s lawsuit know that she would have fixed the plagiarism in subsequent revisions. Sure! I don’t find any indication that she told her professor that the so-called draft contained the words of other authors without appropriate quotation devices. Face the reality . . . humans cheat.