CANONSBURG, Pa. -- Though a career-defining work opportunity kept her out of the classroom, the daughter of West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin insists she earned her master's degree from West Virginia University fairly, earning work-experience credit for her final four courses in 1998.

For the first time since the validity of her executive master's of business administration degree was drawn into question last fall, Heather Bresch late Tuesday defended herself and her politically influential friends and family from allegations they pulled strings to award her a degree she didn't earn.

"There are plenty of suggestions that powerful forces were at work, orchestrating all of this on my behalf in October of '07 to secure my degree. Nothing could be further from the truth,'' Bresch told The Associated Press in a conference room at Mylan Inc. headquarters in Canonsburg, where Bresch is chief operating officer.

"I secured my degree in '98 when my father wasn't governor, when (Mylan chairman) Mike Puskar hadn't given millions and Mike Garrison wasn't (WVU) president.''

A panel appointed by WVU and featuring independent educators from New York, Missouri and Pennsylvania has been investigating how discrepancies about Bresch's degree were handled by school administrators in October. It has yet to release its conclusions.

"What administrative processes and what errors have made that issue more complex are not in my control,'' said Bresch, a 16-year employee of Mylan.

Bresch said she testified before the investigating panel Sunday, laying out her actions a decade ago and then last fall after learning the university had been unable to verify her credentials for a newspaper inquiry triggered by her promotion to COO.

She said she cleared the work-experience-for-credit arrangement with Paul Speaker, the former head of WVU's EMBA program.

Speaker also testified before the panel. He declined to discuss Bresch in particular Tuesday night, citing federal privacy laws that protect student records.

"I need to wait and see what is publicly revealed by the university,'' he said. "I would love to be able to address things directly, but I'm kind of hampered by that.''

However, he said he cannot recall any instance in the history of the EMBA program when work experience substituted for course work.

"If you look through the annals of anything at the university, you will not find a single course for which experience would replace the course,'' he said. "If you were a CPA, you had to take our accounting. If you were an attorney, you had to take our business law. And it was very strict.''

Students worked in teams, he said, "and we felt the obligation of the individual to the team and to the whole class was very important.''

Mylan CEO Robert J. Coury told the AP that Bresch's position is secure regardless of the WVU investigation because her work speaks for itself. She helped the company grow from one with $100 million in sales and 300 employees to one with more than $5 billion in sales and 11,000 employees.

Nor does Bresch apologize for her connections: Puskar is a benefactor of both her father and WVU, donating $20 million to the school in 2003. She went to high school and college and served on the WVU Board of Governors with Garrison, who did some lobbying for Mylan in his previous political career.

CANONSBURG, Pa. -- Though a career-defining work opportunity kept her out of the classroom, the daughter of West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin insists she earned her master's degree from West Virginia University fairly, earning work-experience credit for her final four courses in 1998.

For the first time since the validity of her executive master's of business administration degree was drawn into question last fall, Heather Bresch late Tuesday defended herself and her politically influential friends and family from allegations they pulled strings to award her a degree she didn't earn.

"There are plenty of suggestions that powerful forces were at work, orchestrating all of this on my behalf in October of '07 to secure my degree. Nothing could be further from the truth,'' Bresch told The Associated Press in a conference room at Mylan Inc. headquarters in Canonsburg, where Bresch is chief operating officer.

"I secured my degree in '98 when my father wasn't governor, when (Mylan chairman) Mike Puskar hadn't given millions and Mike Garrison wasn't (WVU) president.''

A panel appointed by WVU and featuring independent educators from New York, Missouri and Pennsylvania has been investigating how discrepancies about Bresch's degree were handled by school administrators in October. It has yet to release its conclusions.

"What administrative processes and what errors have made that issue more complex are not in my control,'' said Bresch, a 16-year employee of Mylan.

Bresch said she testified before the investigating panel Sunday, laying out her actions a decade ago and then last fall after learning the university had been unable to verify her credentials for a newspaper inquiry triggered by her promotion to COO.

She said she cleared the work-experience-for-credit arrangement with Paul Speaker, the former head of WVU's EMBA program.

Speaker also testified before the panel. He declined to discuss Bresch in particular Tuesday night, citing federal privacy laws that protect student records.

"I need to wait and see what is publicly revealed by the university,'' he said. "I would love to be able to address things directly, but I'm kind of hampered by that.''

However, he said he cannot recall any instance in the history of the EMBA program when work experience substituted for course work.

"If you look through the annals of anything at the university, you will not find a single course for which experience would replace the course,'' he said. "If you were a CPA, you had to take our accounting. If you were an attorney, you had to take our business law. And it was very strict.''

Students worked in teams, he said, "and we felt the obligation of the individual to the team and to the whole class was very important.''

Mylan CEO Robert J. Coury told the AP that Bresch's position is secure regardless of the WVU investigation because her work speaks for itself. She helped the company grow from one with $100 million in sales and 300 employees to one with more than $5 billion in sales and 11,000 employees.

Nor does Bresch apologize for her connections: Puskar is a benefactor of both her father and WVU, donating $20 million to the school in 2003. She went to high school and college and served on the WVU Board of Governors with Garrison, who did some lobbying for Mylan in his previous political career.

She says it's laughable to suggest that 10 years ago, she could have predicted the confluence of events now surrounding her degree.

"Never did I just stop doing what I was supposed to do, hopeful that if it ever came up, my dad would be governor, I'd know the president of the university and Mike Puskar would have given $20 million,'' she said.

Bresch says she even had a hand in creating the EMBA program, meeting with former WVU President Neil Bucklew around 1993 to suggest that a part-time curriculum be created in Morgantown, W.Va., for busy executives like herself.

After a 1994 fundraising event by Mylan and other companies, that program was up and running. In its second year in 1996, Bresch became a student -- though she concedes it wasn't strictly by the book.

Though she had intended to enroll, Bresch said she had just finished work on her father's first, unsuccessful campaign for governor and had failed to take the graduate school admission test or submit all the required paperwork.

Still, she said Speaker told her she was welcome to enroll. Bresch said she seized the opportunity and was "fully enrolled and actively participating'' from the fall of 1996 through the spring of 1998.

In the summer of 1998, Mylan became embroiled in a complex corporate lawsuit involving a $50 million investment in a California firm called VivoRx. Bresch was given what she considered a career-defining chance to represent Mylan for the 18 months it ultimately took to complete the case. At the time, she says she was 10 credits shy of completing her degree.

Bresch says she and a co-worker who had just graduated the EMBA program met with Speaker that September to discuss whether she could get work-experience credit for the case.

"I cannot pretend to be someone who is caught up in details. I may not remember something I did yesterday. But what I do remember is something that is a defining moment,'' Bresch said. "This meeting I had with Dr. Speaker was a defining moment in my EMBA program because I was near completion, and I was asked to take on this opportunity. This truly was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.''

Bresch recalls leaving that meeting with assurances the work would satisfy the final credits, and when she went briefly to a graduation ceremony in December, her name was in the program.

She did not pick up a diploma, she said, just as she had never collected her undergraduate diploma in political science and international studies.

Nor did Speaker or anyone else in the College of Business and Economics ever inform her she had not met the requirements, Bresch said. When Bresch asked school officials last fall if there was a paper record of her credits, she was told that some old records had been destroyed the summer before, and that other students also had problems.

Bresch knows her situation looks bad but insists she sought and got no favors.

"Anybody who knows me knows how hard it's been for me personally to stay quiet through all the misrepresentations of me, my university, my state,'' she said. "The EMBA ... I did it purely for self-improvement, self-enhancement. It was never required for any of the jobs I've held to date, including the job I have now. I took it just to increase my own knowledge and to better myself. So this is a matter of personal integrity to me, not anything professional.''