By Cindi Lash, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. -- The West Virginia University faculty senate has challenged administrators to elaborate about deficiencies they said affected about 70 degrees awarded through the university's executive M.B.A. program.
Senate members yesterday voted 41-18, with one abstention, to demand a list showing how many credits short of the required number each student fell, without identifying the students by name.
Senators also called for administrators to identify years in which those degrees were awarded, to enable the faculty to determine if the problem is relatively recent or has gone on for years. The measure approved by senators did not include a deadline for administrators to produce the list.
Yesterday's vote came in response to a disclosure last Friday by embattled university President Mike Garrison and Jonathan Cumming, assistant vice president for graduate education, during a meeting of the WVU Board of Governors.
Mr. Garrison and Mr. Cumming told the board that an ongoing audit of the executive M.B.A. program has uncovered about 70 students, or about 10 percent of those who received degrees in recent years, who did not complete required course work.
That audit was commissioned in response to a controversy that has roiled the WVU campus for months over the awarding of an unearned executive M.B.A. degree to Mylan Inc. executive Heather Bresch. Ms. Bresch is a longtime friend of Mr. Garrison, who is a former Mylan lobbyist, and she is the daughter of West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin.
Mr. Garrison also told board members last week that business school records showed that Ms. Bresch earned 36 of 48 credits needed for the M.B.A. degree. That total is inconsistent with the findings of an investigative panel appointed in January after the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that Ms. Bresch was awarded the degree retroactively in October even though university records showed she was 22 credits shy of completing the 48-credit program when she left it in 1998.
The investigative panel concluded those records were accurate and that WVU administrators falsified Ms. Bresch's transcript. It put Mr. Garrison's top aides at the center of the decision to grant the degree to Ms. Bresch.
Mr. Garrison has denied a direct hand in granting the degree and has refused repeated calls for his resignation from students, donors, alumni and faculty members who twice have taken overwhelming votes of no confidence in his administration.
The board of governors last week said it believes Mr. Garrison did nothing to influence the awarding of the degree to Ms. Bresch. Board members plan to meet again Friday in Charleston, W.Va., to further review Mr. Garrison's audit and plan for correction.
During the lengthy faculty senate meeting and an earlier outdoor rally on campus yesterday, WVU professors expressed doubt that a widespread problem exists with the executive M.B.A. program.
Several faculty members questioned if the issues raised by Mr. Garrison last week were exaggerated in an effort to keep his job. They also criticized him for unfairly casting a pall over all executive M.B.A. graduates who had worked hard to honestly earn their degrees, and asked if degrees would be stripped from those found to have incomplete work.
"I think it's shocking," said Judy Sedgeman, a professor at the Health Sciences Center. "It behooves the senate to take some action, to take some responsibility to these students and graduates. There are 700 people whose degrees have been called into question."
Some faculty members also sought briefly to unseat outgoing senate Chairman J. Steven Kite, whose one-year term wrapped up yesterday, as their representative to the Board of Governors, after Mr. Kite declined to disclose how he would vote in a potential effort to oust Mr. Garrison. That effort was tabled after Mr. Kite and Professor Nigel Clark, who some faculty members sought to nominate instead to the board, raised concerns that a new appointee would not be approved by Mr. Manchin before Friday's board meeting.
More than 100 students, faculty and alumni renewed calls for Mr. Garrison's ouster during a two-hour rally yesterday outside WVU's student union.
Surrounded by hand-lettered posters and "Garrison Must Go" signs, speakers said the degree scandal and Mr. Garrison's continued presence are prompting prospective students to enroll elsewhere, talented faculty members to leave and alumni and research institutions to curb donations and grants.
"He has disgraced the students who acquire their degrees the old-fashioned way," said Mark Brazaitis, an associate professor and director of creative writing in the English department.
"He has humiliated the professors who rightfully view their contract with students as sacred. He has made a laughingstock of West Virginia University, which West Virginians across the state, and WVU graduates across the country, hold sacred," he said.
"Mike Garrison needs to resign. He needs to resign now."
WVU officials had no comment on the rally.
