Published: July 17, 2008 01:36 pm      

UPDATE — WVU official’s salary $50,000 less in new job

MORGANTOWN — A West Virginia University official who was reassigned after a degree scandal involving the governor’s daughter will earn $50,000 less than he did in his old job.

Bill Case began working at the WVU Health Sciences as health policy and research information director on Tuesday. Health Sciences spokeswoman Amy Johns said Case will earn $85,595. He earned $135,000 in his former job as President Mike Garrison’s chief communications officer. Garrison is stepping down Sept. 1.

Case and two other main staffers, chief of staff Craig Walker and WVU attorney Alex Macia, attended a key meeting last fall during which administrators decided to award Mylan Inc. executive Heather Bresch a degree that investigators later concluded she had not earned.

Case’s salary reduction is the largest so far among those who have changed jobs in WVU’s restructuring.

Provost Gerald Lang and business school dean R. Stephen Sears resigned within days of the investigators’ report, which condemned their decision to alter a transcript and retroactively grant a degree to Bresch. Both will return to teaching.

Lang’s pay was cut by $43,821, while Sears’ salary dropped $40,138.

School spokeswoman Amy Neil, hired last year as director of WVU News and Information Services, now works in marketing and communications, earning $5,000 less. Neil, who answered to Case and was spokeswoman during the scandal, has never been accused of any wrongdoing.

Bresch and her father, Gov. Joe Manchin, also have never been accused.

Meanwhile, interim President C. Peter Magrath met with about 20 academic leaders for several hours Wednesday, including interim business school dean William Trumbull, who called the meeting “a nice signal” to faculty.

The group discussed the search for a permanent president, salaries, staffing, research productivity and other topics.

“I think he was listening and understood what our concerns were,” Trumbull told The Dominion Post.