Much of the current literature on plagiarism focuses on students, attempting to understand how students view the concept of plagiarism, the best ways to prevent it, and the impact of collaboration on the concept of original authorship. In this article, we look at the role of plagiarism in 761 conference abstracts written by graduate students, early-to late-career faculty, and industry representatives, representing institutions from nearly 70 countries. These abstracts were submitted for participation in an international conference focused on the liberal arts hosted by our institution over the past four years. This study analyzes the corpus for patterns of plagiarism among professional academic writers. Our findings indicate that, while other demographic categories were not consistent indicators of text-matching, full professors were the most prevalent group to produce self-plagiarized abstracts. Overall, our study illuminates the significance of power dynamics in conferences' efforts to maintain academic integrity.

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Abstract-Globalization of our modern economies requires a workforce that can move easily between time zones and cultures. Professors cannot ignore the drastic impact globalization has and will place upon engineering students. In order to be prepared for a competitive job market and the actual requirements of many engineering positions, students need to understand the constraints and challenges of working with colleagues that may live and work in different cultures, countries, languages, and contexts. However, engineering education rarely offers students an opportunity to practice the realities of our digital and intercultural working environments. This paper outlines one way to offer engineering students with collaborative, international, and intercultural writing projects. Students from a technical writing course in the United States were paired with engineering students in Qatar to develop a set of instructions using multimedia methods. Students learned a great deal from the real-world experience of writing and creating a project across two continents.

Objectives: Cultural competence is a skill that is lauded and encouraged in today's business communication programs and in industry. The problem becomes, how and when do instructors introduce students to meaningful intercultural exchanges that produce the skills and awareness students will need in the future. The instructors in this study wanted a low-cost, student-center program or assignment to introduce students to intercultural communication through actual practice. The project needed to help students become more culturally aware and culturally competent. Methods: The authors of this study paired their students for a virtual cross-cultural exchange for a period of 8 weeks. Students from the United States of America (USA) and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) spent several weeks corresponding via the text messaging application, WhatsApp, in order to learn more about the other's culture and customs. Surveys intended to measure cultural awareness and cultural competence were taken by students prior to the start of the exchange and again at its conclusion. Results: The survey results show an increase in cultural awareness and cultural competence correlated to the cultural exchange project. Conclusions: Instructors can create low-cost, interactive opportunities for students to improve cultural awareness and competence through online conversations and cultural exchanges with students of various cultures in different locales and countries.

Recent scholarship argues for increased attention to students’ linguistic diversity and intercultural communication competence. Our study examined the experiences of 10 working engineers who had graduated from an English-medium international branch campus in the Arabian Gulf. An analysis of their interviews reveals the complex role of English as a business lingua franca (BELF) in workplace communication. Interviewees’ reflections about their university experience indicate that they had not previously understood the full rhetorical and communicative nature of BELF. We provide implications for instructors who wish to provide methods that center intercultural professional communication and decenter English as a standardized, static language.