Related: Faculty demands facts on other degrees

Members of a panel that investigated West Virginia University administrators' "seriously flawed" decision to grant a master's degree to Gov. Joe Manchin's daughter criticized WVU officials Monday for trying to link that mistake to dozens of others.

The panel found that WVU incorrectly granted Mylan Inc. executive Heather Bresch an executive master's of business administration degree in October.

WVU officials told the school's Board of Governors Friday that discrepancies have been found on about 70 such degrees - about 10 percent of the program's students since it was started.

But panel members said those situations are completely different from Bresch's case.

"The report refers specifically to some of those cases and concludes that none were anywhere near the scope or magnitude of the [Bresch] situation we examined," Michael Lastinger, a WVU associate professor of foreign languages, wrote in an e-mail Monday.

"Although relatively small anomalies were uncovered, the panel deemed the association of any other students with this situation to be uncalled for," Lastinger wrote. "I most forcefully stand behind that judgment."

According to President Mike Garrison's report to BOG members Friday, other students in Bresch's 1998 class graduated from the EMBA program with fewer than the required number of credit hours.

"To my mind, the attempt to rationalize in such manner this previously unimaginable case of transcript falsification is the most egregious failure of academic judgment and institutional leadership that I could possibly imagine," Lastinger wrote.

"I regret most profoundly that, despite already dire consequences of such failures, there remains among leaders still in place the willingness to sacrifice students, past, present, and future, to further agendas that are so fundamentally estranged from the essential missions of our university."

WVU computer science and electrical engineering professor Roy Nutter, the chairman of the investigative panel, also defended the report. So did panel members John Burkoff, a University of Pittsburgh law professor, and Pace University business professor Arthur Centonze.

Nutter pointed out that panel members said in the report that they were disconcerted at the continuing reliance - by former Provost Gerald Lang, former business school dean Stephen Sears and associate business school dean Cyril Logar - "on the argument that other WVU students were similarly situated to Ms. Bresch."

"[The] panel believes that continued repetition of this untrue allegation about B&E records inappropriately tars the degrees of the many other eMBA Program graduates at WVU," Nutter quoted from the report. "As to those graduates, the panel finds expressly that the errors that occurred in this case are not errors that are or were pervasive in the WVU eMBA Program."

Both Sears and Lang stepped down from their administrative posts after the panel's report was released, but will stay on as tenured faculty members and continue to earn six-figure salaries.

Related: Faculty demands facts on other degrees

Members of a panel that investigated West Virginia University administrators' "seriously flawed" decision to grant a master's degree to Gov. Joe Manchin's daughter criticized WVU officials Monday for trying to link that mistake to dozens of others.

The panel found that WVU incorrectly granted Mylan Inc. executive Heather Bresch an executive master's of business administration degree in October.

WVU officials told the school's Board of Governors Friday that discrepancies have been found on about 70 such degrees - about 10 percent of the program's students since it was started.

But panel members said those situations are completely different from Bresch's case.

"The report refers specifically to some of those cases and concludes that none were anywhere near the scope or magnitude of the [Bresch] situation we examined," Michael Lastinger, a WVU associate professor of foreign languages, wrote in an e-mail Monday.

"Although relatively small anomalies were uncovered, the panel deemed the association of any other students with this situation to be uncalled for," Lastinger wrote. "I most forcefully stand behind that judgment."

According to President Mike Garrison's report to BOG members Friday, other students in Bresch's 1998 class graduated from the EMBA program with fewer than the required number of credit hours.

"To my mind, the attempt to rationalize in such manner this previously unimaginable case of transcript falsification is the most egregious failure of academic judgment and institutional leadership that I could possibly imagine," Lastinger wrote.

"I regret most profoundly that, despite already dire consequences of such failures, there remains among leaders still in place the willingness to sacrifice students, past, present, and future, to further agendas that are so fundamentally estranged from the essential missions of our university."

WVU computer science and electrical engineering professor Roy Nutter, the chairman of the investigative panel, also defended the report. So did panel members John Burkoff, a University of Pittsburgh law professor, and Pace University business professor Arthur Centonze.

Nutter pointed out that panel members said in the report that they were disconcerted at the continuing reliance - by former Provost Gerald Lang, former business school dean Stephen Sears and associate business school dean Cyril Logar - "on the argument that other WVU students were similarly situated to Ms. Bresch."

"[The] panel believes that continued repetition of this untrue allegation about B&E records inappropriately tars the degrees of the many other eMBA Program graduates at WVU," Nutter quoted from the report. "As to those graduates, the panel finds expressly that the errors that occurred in this case are not errors that are or were pervasive in the WVU eMBA Program."

Both Sears and Lang stepped down from their administrative posts after the panel's report was released, but will stay on as tenured faculty members and continue to earn six-figure salaries.

The panel also audited the transcripts of all EMBA graduates in Bresch's class and some other EMBA students, including all whom panelists were told could have problems in their records.

Panelists discovered some minor problems. "The panel believes, however, that these problems are similar in nature and quantity to those encountered in like programs across the country," Nutter quoted from the report.

"These anomalies do not indicate the presence of any larger, systemic problem with the WVU eMBA program that might raise questions about the value of other WVU graduates' degrees."

"As you know, we reviewed a limited set of records, relevant to the issue we were investigating, and found no system-wide record-keeping problem at WVU, nor any recording situation similar in magnitude to the case of Ms. Bresch," Centonze wrote in an e-mail Monday evening. Burkoff also said that he stands by the panel's report.

The fifth panel member, University of Missouri-Columbia professor Lori Franz, could not be reached for comment Monday.

Jonathan Cumming, WVU vice president for graduate education, said Monday the WVU administration's audit will include a full examination of eMBA records that is more in-depth than the panel's audit.

"It's not intended to discount the external panel's finding, which was really focused on the Bresch degree," he said.

Cumming told the BOG most of the discrepancies involve incomplete grades given to students. He said the transcripts in question date from the late 1990s and early 2000, when the college switched from paper to electronic records.

Cumming said the audit would not affect any student's degree status.

Nutter wrote that the panel wasn't given names of other graduates, and wouldn't be surprised to find that some of the 70-odd cases were among those the panel investigated.

"I personally would not be at all surprised to find almost all of the names we investigated on this list as well," he said.

Despite calls from faculty, students, alumni and donors that he resign, Garrison has refused. The BOG said Friday that they found "no evidence whatsoever" that Garrison took any action to improperly influence the granting of the degree to Bresch.

While the independent panel found no evidence that Garrison directly interfered to get Bresch the degree, it said in its April 25 report that the presence of his key staff at the decision-making meeting created "palpable pressure."

To contact staff writer Davin White, use e-mail or call 348-1254.