Southern Illinois University’s chancellor admitted “lifting” excerpts from a strategic plan for a Texas school where he worked and using them in the Carbondale school’s long-range blueprint, a panel has found.

The three-person panel comprised of members from various university departments and schools also is urging the Illinois school to review its anti-plagiarism policies.

SIU President Glenn Poshard says he accepted the findings he released Tuesday from the group he tapped in September to scrutinize similarities in Texas A&M;’s “Vision 2020” and the Carbondale school’s “Southern at 150” – and SIU chancellor Walter Wendler’s ties to both.

Poshard said that within days, he would create a nine-person committee to take up the review panel’s concerns and “have a dialogue across the system as to what constitutes plagiarism and intellectual dishonesty.”

“We have a lot of work to do, and we will do it,” Poshard said, declining to discuss Wendler’s role in the flap. “What we need to do is get about the business of fixing this situation that we don’t have the answers for right now.”

The panel’s five-page report made no disciplinary recommendation involving Wendler, stating that “nothing in this report should be interpreted as a judgment on Chancellor Wendler’s character or his dedication to the University.”

But the report says Wendler “sincerely believed he was acting ethically by lifting what he considered his intellectual property.” The panel also noted that in producing a document in an academic setting, the school’s top administrator should have made clear that parts of SIU’s strategic plan were from Texas A&M;’s document.

“…The head of a university should be especially sensitive to giving proper attribution,” the report read. “Failure to do so raises questions about the intellectual honesty of all involved with the final editing and drafting.”

Wendler on Tuesday called such an assessment “a bit unfair.”

“I don’t have to agree with everything in the report, and I probably don’t,” he said, like Poshard noting that Southern’s strategic plan remains valid. “I think what we’ve learned here is that everyone needs to be careful about what they do.”

A&M;’s plan, unveiled in 1999, aspires to make the College Station-based school among the nation’s 10 best public universities by 2020. SIU’s plan, “Southern at 150,” aims to make the school a top 75 public university by its 150th birthday in 2019. Wendler was Vision 2020’s coordinator at Texas A&M;, before becoming head of SIU in 2001.