School of Management lecturer Duane Lefevre resigned last week after admitting to using Craigslist to hire someone to assist him in grading papers, BU officials said.
SMG Dean Kenneth Freeman said in an email that Lefevre, a professor of marketing, submitted his resignation after he was asked to confirm details about the advertisement.
“Mr. Lefevre acknowledged that he had posted an ad on Craigslist and hired someone to help grade his papers,” Freeman said.
Lefevre taught four undergraduate courses this semester, including two marketing core classes and two management as a system classes. Freeman said no student’s privacy was compromised by Lefevre’s actions as far as he is aware.
Lefevre’s “help wanted” ad on Craigslist sought someone to review each of his students’ five page papers, offering a base fee of $15 and an additional $50 for “superior work,” according to a Nov. 30 article published in CommonWealth magazine. The ad said the papers, which would focus on six companies within a designated industry and their profitability, would require the assistant to check for accuracy and overall quality.
“Verify the data is accurate based on the attachments to the paper, assess the accuracy of the analysis, note if there are more suitable ways to assess profitability for that particular industry, assess the quality and flow of the writing, assess the look and feel of the document, provide 10-15 bulleted points of feedback per paper,” the ad, which was re-published in CommonWealth, said.
BU Spokesman Colin Riley said officials were surprised when they first heard about the inquiry. Faculty, staff and students are expected to complete the work assigned to them by themselves.
“It’s implied when you’re an instructor that you’re going to oversee the grading, the papers and the interactions with the students,” Riley said in a phone interview.
Lefevre, who was contacted by The Daily Free Press at his residence, was unavailable for comment at this time.
However, Lefevre told CommonWealth last week that he sought someone to help him in grading student papers, similar to working with a teaching assistant.
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Marketing, and everything else taught in SMG (and SHA) (and COM) should be limited to for-profit trade schools, so who really cares anyway?
Josh, both an interesting and misplaced opinion. I think this is a teachable moment. The School of Management has high ethical standards for both its professors and students. This is a good display of zero tolerance for deviations from our principles.
The people working to pay the $55k tuition care, Josh. This constitutes theft.
He is on rate my professor with very positive, recent reviews. Is he still teaching at BU or somewhere else?