Johnson’s thesis was on biomimetics, a field that looks to nature — the way bees build a hive, for example — for clues to solve human problems. He and Dickinson shared an interest in the topic, he said.

Johnson, a Florida native who attended the UA from 2009 to 2012, said the plagiarism first caught his eye as he prepared to submit his master’s thesis for a review that would determine whether he’d graduate. He stumbled upon it, he said, while searching online for the thesis Dickinson had done for her own master’s degree, which he planned to compare to his to make sure he’d done it right.

Fearing his future could be jeopardized if he spoke up, he initially kept quiet, he said.

The document Johnson came across in his search was a “statement of interest” Dickinson posted online in 2010 to apply for a visiting professorship at an architecture school in London, UA records show.

Some of the wording was identical to Johnson’s thesis proposal. “At first it was hard to believe my eyes,” he recalled.

The UA ruled Dickinson plagiarized Johnson’s work in two of nine paragraphs of her London teaching proposal.