Ask a Counsellor

Information about volunteering

Submission: Hi, I need to get in touch with MRU counseling to talk about volunteering.

Thanks for visiting the SCS website and our blog page. I suspect you already know that volunteering has become recognized as an important component of students’ time in post-secondary. It offers a chance to develop skills, personal qualities, and knowledge that is valued on applications for jobs and grad school. Not only that, it can be a meaningful, satisfying, and fun experience that helps students find their passion and life paths. Although your submission sounded like a personal request, the purpose of the Ask A Counsellor Blog is to share questions and answers with others. Since I’m sure others would benefit from this information, here it is on this website.

Student Counselling Services does not have volunteer positions at this time, but there are numerous opportunities on our campus. To review these, the best resource is the Career Services volunteering page http://www.mtroyal.ca/EmploymentCareers/CareerServices/Students/vol_experience.htm

There are opportunities to volunteer both locally and abroad, and there are additional links that give you more information about volunteerism.

I was going to include another local website, but see that more have sprung up since I last searched this topic. So I encourage you to search the terms “volunteer Calgary” and you will be able to see many more sites that attempt to link people to organizations looking for volunteers.

To get a more personal response or support, students can make appointments with counsellors by calling 403 440-6362 or by dropping in to see us Wellness Services (U216). For general queries, you can ask at our reception desk or you can email studentcounselling@mtroyal.ca.

I hope this helps not only you, but other readers.

All the best,

Mirjam Knapik, Ph.D., R. Psych.

MRU Student Counselling Services.

Cheating: Report or not?

Question: A student claimed an assignment worth 2.5% as his own, and I know it wasn’t his. He told me a few days before that he did not have a chance to do the assignment, and yet, he claimed someone else’s work as his own. After he claimed the paper and sat back down, I asked him if that was his since he told me he didn’t do it. He confessed to me that it wasn’t his but he didn’t want to lose marks for not doing the assignment. The question is, should I tell my prof that that assignment isn’t his? Or should I let it go because I have no proof?

Thank you for your question. It sounds like a tricky situation and a difficult decision regarding what to do next. As counsellors, we are famous (infamous maybe?) for not giving specific advice but instead encouraging people to consider as many options as possible and then choosing what is best for them. There is a variety of information we can consider when making a decision about what actions fit best for us including: what we THINK about the situation, what we FEEL about the options available to us, and the VALUES we hold that might guide the decisions we make. Here are some questions you can consider that could help you decide what to do:

First, what do you think/feel/value about plagiarism? Is it something that bothers you or something you think/feel/value needs to be addressed in some way? Would it make a difference if the assignment was worth 25% instead of 2.5%? I wonder how it might feel if this student gets a higher grade than you at the end of the semester?

Second, what do you think/feel/value about bringing this to your professor’s attention? I wonder how the decision to share this information with a professor or not might impact you. How might you think/feel to release information that might impact this student? What would you think/feel about keeping the information about the plagiarism to yourself? Would the impact on you change over the next few days or weeks? I also wonder if knowing about the plagiarism and sharing or not sharing might impact the relationship with this other student.

Third, I wonder how the decision to share this information with a professor or not might impact your class. I was not sure from your description whether the work belonged to another student in the class but if it did, I wonder what the impact might be on the person who did complete the assignment?

Finally, I wonder how the decision to share this information with a professor or not might impact this student. I wonder what you might think/feel/value about talking to the student directly about this issue and assessing how they would feel about coming clean themselves? Is it possible that the professor might figure out that this assignment was not written by the student in another way? Sometimes it can be difficult to make a decision if we are unsure what the impact would be. You can access information from the Mount Royal website about what would happen if a professor became aware of plagiarism: http://www.mtroyal.ca/CampusServices/CampusResources/StudentConduct/TipsforStudents/

I invite you to use the information from your answers to the above questions to create a pros and cons list of reporting the plagiarism or not reporting it. It might feel like a clear decision after looking at the list or you might feel like you’re trying to pick the “best of the worst” option. Either way, you may feel like you have spent time exploring the options and made an informed decision.

If you’re still feeling stuck, feel free to attend a session with one of our counsellors to explore this situation in more detail.

Take care,

Jennifer McCormick, M.Sc., R.Psych.