Jennifer Ivory-Tatum received her Doctor of Education (Ed.D.) degree from the University of Illinois in 2001. The dissertation was accepted in April 2001.
Starting in early 2024, we were made aware of potential academic dishonesty in Dr. Ivory-Tatum’s dissertation. In February through April 2024, we examined her dissertation and compared the language with cited articles. Finding close matches in language to cited articles, we examined more closely some of the written language contained in the dissertation and found additional examples of copied language, both with and without quotations and/or citation.
In all, we found over 50 examples of copied language. In all of the cases, Dr. Ivory-Tatum did not attribute the words as direct quotations by using quotation marks or citing page numbers. In over a dozen cases, there was no citation whatsoever of the original author, which most would consider an even “more serious” form of plagiarism. These examples largely centered around Chapters 1 and 2 (see a marked up copy of Chapter 2 with all instances of copied and unquoted or uncited language highlighted HERE), the Introduction and Review of Literature, with a couple instances in Chapter 3 (Methodology), while the conduct and analysis of the research in Chapter 4 appears original.
(For additional details and feedback based on common questions/criticisms related to plagiarism allegations, please click HERE.)
The quantity and scale of plagiarism (as defined by The University of Illinois and the College of Education) is significant. In many of the cases, the language was copied wholesale or with only a couple alterations to words, not enough to classify it as “paraphrase” — often the copied language included entire blocks or paragraphs of text, with no indication of direct quotation. Even more significant, some of the copied language included the copying of citations of other work, suggesting a copying of other authors’ summaries and reviews of other literature rather than conducting a comprehensive, independent review.
The documentation below contains screenshots of side-by-side sources; on the left is the relevant excerpt (with page references) of Dr. Ivory-Tatum’s dissertation, with an article that was published prior to the dissertation that contains identical language on the right. Colored highlighting indicates the copied language (and sometimes we used multiple colors to help readers find each section of copied text in longer passages). A citation of the copied article is included as well. Due to copyright restrictions, we unfortunately cannot share the source articles in their entirety nor can we share the dissertation (excerpt/preview copy is available at ProQuest HERE). In many cases, local and university libraries will have access to the journals and books cited.
(Visitors can see this first example for themselves using free-access previews to both the dissertation (scroll to p. 1 of the dissertation, located at the 13th page of the 24-page preview) and the Dorothy Rich article (first 2 blocks of text on the one-page preview)
