MORGANTOWN -- The West Virginia University Board of Governors is giving its full support to President Mike Garrison, who says he takes responsibility for "failures" that led to a master's degree scandal involving the governor's daughter.
"The Board of Governors is fully confident in the abilities of the president to implement these revisions so as to ensure this situation does not occur again," the board, chaired by attorney Stephen Goodwin, said in a statement.
Garrison said at a news conference Monday that he has no plans to resign, and said he was not involved in last year's decision to retroactively award Mylan Inc. executive Heather Bresch her executive master's of business administration degree.
"This is a very serious issue," he said. "I don't want to minimalize it. I will not trivialize it. But I'll tell you, we will move forward."
Garrison did not rule out further disciplinary action, saying that is something he will take up with the board.
Yet that may not satisfy all critics.
At a meeting of the Faculty Senate Executive Committee, math professor Sherman Riemenschneider said he decided in January to resign as chairman of his department in protest of the administration's handling of the situation.
Though Provost Gerald Lang and business school Dean R. Stephen Sears have said they will resign June 30, Riemenschneider called for a senate censure of Garrison, as well as a demand for his resignation.
"I will not be part of an administration that includes Garrison, Lang and Goodwin," he said. "I want to disassociate myself from that."
Other faculty members, however, urged a different strategy.
Political science professor Kevin Leyden urged the senate to create panels to "focus on addressing the concerns faculty have with the administration and the future of West Virginia University."
"Act on the evidence, not hearsay, not speculation, not revenge of any sort," he urged.
The committee agreed to convene a special meeting of the full Faculty Senate on May 5 to discuss the situation. Several motions are expected to be on the table, both supporting Garrison and calling for further disciplinary actions.
Lang announced his resignation Sunday. Sears, dean since 2005, then told Lang he also will step down.
Last week, an investigating panel issued a critical, 95-page report that concluded both men were among several administrators who acted inappropriately and applied "severely flawed" judgment in awarding Bresch a degree the panel said she did not earn. Her transcript was amended, with courses and grades added, after records discrepancies were discovered.
The panel determined there was no academic foundation for concluding she had earned the degree in 1998. Administrators relied too heavily on verbal assertions and caved to political pressure, whether real or perceived, the panel said.
Bresch, daughter of Gov. Joe Manchin, works for one of the university's key donors, Milan Puskar, and is longtime friends with Garrison.
Before coming to WVU, Sears was senior executive associate dean of Rawls College of Business Administration at Texas Tech University, where he taught finance. He has also worked at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Sears said Monday he was preparing a written statement that would be submitted in the next day or two. Lang issued his over the weekend.
"I am very sorry that my one action in ratifying a dean's decision in a single situation has had a negative impact on the institution," Lang wrote.
Faculty Senate Chairman Steve Kite said Lang and Sears "did the right thing" by resigning. Many faculty members have been disturbed by their insistence that their action was "a judgment call" they would likely have made again.
Kite praised Lang's leadership and single-mindedness over the 32 years Lang has been with the university but said his strength ultimately became his flaw.
Whether the resignations go far enough may be up to the full 114-member Faculty Senate.
Kite cautioned the faculty to take time to contemplate the situation and read the full report, rather than just media reports.
"A rush to judgment," he noted, "is what got us into this situation."
It's also important to note the panel's report found no systemic flaws at WVU and the Bresch matter appears to be an isolated incident, Kite said. Still, WVU will hire an outside consultant to help it design new systems that ensure a similar scandal never occurs again.
Garrison, a politically connected attorney who worked for former Democratic Gov. Bob Wise, was appointed to his position in April 2007 over the objections of some faculty. The Faculty Senate endorsed the other finalist, former dean and current Kansas State University Provost M. Duane Nellis.
Pressure for Garrison to respond decisively to the panel's report had mounted in recent days with newspaper editorials, letters to the editor and more.
On Monday, Republican Party Chairman Doug McKinney and GOP gubernatorial candidate Russ Weeks echoed the call for all eight who attended the key Oct. 15 decision-making meeting to resign. They took particular aim at Garrison, though the report did not accuse him of any direct interference or wrongdoing.
"When you fill the presidency of the state's major university with a purely political appointment, it is not surprising when political scandals are the result," said McKinney, a WVU graduate. "The only way to put this behind us and begin to heal is for a clean sweep of everyone involved in this travesty."
But Goodwin said the latest attacks on Garrison are just a rehashing of last year's contentious presidential search process, which he defended as "fair, open and honest."
As for faculty demands, he said: "What I'm suggesting that they do is let their decision be guided by those who have looked at this most closely, the panel."
Garrison said he never asked anyone to award "any credit, grades or degree in this case or in any other case."
"Like every member of the university community," he said, "I reject the idea that we should award any degree or credit not earned by the student."
Bresch, meanwhile, has said she will not challenge the panel's decision and did not comment on the resignations.
Her boss, Mylan CEO Robert J. Coury, issued a statement saying his board of directors "has never wavered in its confidence in and commitment" to Bresch.
Lang, meanwhile, said he hopes his departure will be enough to end the furor.
For 13 years, he has been the university's top academic officer, earning total compensation in 2007 of $243,448, according to the state auditor's office. For 19 years before that, he was a dean, assistant dean and faculty member.
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