EDWARDSVILLE, Ill. – The head of Southern Illinois University’s campus in the St. Louis suburb has apologized for not properly attributing portions of a speech he delivered during a commemoration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

In an e-mail to faculty and staff, Chancellor Vaughn Vandegrift said Friday the failure to attribute portion of the speech was “completely unintentional and not deliberate.”

“Nonetheless, I take full responsibility for them and offer my apology to the university community for this incident,” he wrote.

Vandegrift, chancellor for the past two years, attributed one quotation in his 600-word Martin Luther King Jr. Day welcoming address in February, while other portions of the text appeared to come from other writings, a Web site and a White House proclamation.

In February, Vandegrift’s counterpart at SIU’s main campus in Carbondale, Walter Wendler, acknowledged he unintentionally left out the source of an anecdote during his “State of the University” speech last year.

Wendler said he didn’t realize the quotes were someone else’s until a Chronicle of Higher Education reporter asked him about it for an article for the newsmagazine – a story largely about Chris Dussold, a professor fired from SIU-Edwardsville in 2004, ostensibly for plagiarizing a teaching statement.

Dussold is suing the school for wrongful termination, and a group of his backers has created Alumni and Faculty Against Corruption at SIU, dedicated to scouring speeches and writings of faculty and administrators for examples of improper attribution or outright copying.

A committee on Carbondale’s campus issued a report this spring with suggestions to combat student plagiarism, and the university has bought $21,000 in software that can help professors and students detect plagiarism.

In Vandegrift’s remarks about King at a February luncheon, he said, “For generations, African-Americans have strengthened our nation by urging reforms, overcoming obstacles, breaking down barriers.” Those words match a passage in a 2003 proclamation from President Bush.

Vandegrift’s speech also included excerpts from pages on the King Center Web site, and his description of the holiday’s history was similar to the description in a newsletter.