West Virginia University on Friday said President Mike Garrison will resign effective Sept. 1, less than a year after his appointment to the post.
The announcement comes in the wake of an investigation that found the school improperly awarded an MBA to Heather Bresch, chief operating officer at Mylan Inc. (NYSE:MYL), a pharmaceutical manufacturer based near Pittsburgh, in Cecil Township.
Garrison said in a statement that he had been "personally and deeply affected" by the controversy. In April, an independent panel released a scathing assessment of West Virginia University's decision to retroactively award an executive MBA degree to Bresch.
"I have stayed at the university during this important time to do the job I was brought here to do," Garrison said in a statement. There has been too much discussion about the matter, he wrote, "And after careful reflection, I have determined I am the one person who is uniquely situated to stop this dialogue with my decision."
In a statement from the university's Board of Governors, the board thanked Garrison for his service.
"Sometimes this great university and that public trust are far more important than any one individual or any one issue. Mike Garrison demonstrated that by his unselfish action," the statement read.
The school announced in April that Provost Gerald E. Lang and R. Stephen Sears, dean of the college of business and economics, would resign June 30. Lang had been with the university for more than 30 years. He is also vice president of academic affairs. Sears was appointed dean at WVU in 2005. He plans to remain teaching at WVU after resigning his deanship.
The report by the independent panel said the school's administrators used "severely flawed" judgment in awarding a degree to Bresch, who is the daughter of West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin.
WVU administrators lacked documentation to prove Bresch's claims that she'd finished her final semester with work experience credits, relying too heavily on verbal assertions and caving to political pressure -- whether real or perceived, the panel said.
Source: Pittsburgh Business Times
