Published: May 07, 2008 01:04 am            

WVU president: ‘A lot of work left to do’

Garrison vows ‘to keep moving forward’ in wake of Faculty Senate’s call to resign

MORGANTOWN — West Virginia University’s Faculty Senate had a clear and resounding message for President Mike Garrison: It’s time to do what’s right for the school’s reputation and resign.

Garrison, dogged for months by a degree scandal involving the governor’s daughter, respectfully disagrees.

“We’ve got a lot of work left to do at the university,” he told The Associated Press late Monday evening, hours after the Faculty Senate declared no confidence and demanded he resign with a 77-19 vote. “I intend to keep moving forward.”

The senate’s nonbinding motion demands that Garrison step down, or that the WVU Board of Governors require his resignation. Neither is likely to happen; Garrison has the support of the board, its chairman Steve Goodwin and Gov. Joe Manchin, who appointed most of its members.

Garrison said he still plans to implement the recommendations of the independent panel that concluded last month WVU administrators gave Mylan Inc. executive Heather Bresch an executive master’s of business administration degree she didn’t earn.

While he understands the feelings of nearly two dozen senators who spoke against him, Garrison said he remains committed to the tasks he was hired for, from raising salaries to strengthening research endeavors.

“If you look at the results, when we’ve worked with faculty we’ve had great results,” he said, pointing to an enrollment surge of 480 students over this time last year and acceptance letters from 160 students in the last week, while the controversy was at its peak. Private giving, he said, is also ahead of last year.

“All of our indicators point to strength and forward movement,” he said. “It’s not exactly fair to just point to one thing without talking about all those other things.”

Though at least one major donor has vowed to withhold planned gifts, Garrison said he is not concerned about a long-term impact on donations. He also disputed the assertion of former Faculty Senate chairman Christopher Wilkinson, who said during Monday’s debate that the “quiet phase” of the university’s capital fundraising campaign has been suspended.

“That is absolutely not based in fact,” Garrison said.

Bill Nevin, spokesman for the WVU Foundation Inc., did not immediately return a telephone message about the dispute Tuesday morning. The foundation is the school’s private fundraising entity.

Faculty outrage has grown since the Bresch report was released April 23, despite the resignations of Provost Gerald Lang and business school Dean R. Stephen Sears.

Several Garrison aides, including chief of staff Craig Walker, participated in the October meeting where Sears, Lang and others decided to add courses and grades to Bresch’s transcript, then retroactively award her a 1998 executive master’s of business administration degree that investigators said she did not earn.

To Sophia Blaydes, a representative for retired faculty, that is more than error: She called it a fraud and an academic crime. Another professor suggested the faculty demand a criminal investigation into the falsification of records.

By remaining in his post now, said professor Boyd Edwards, Garrison shows “he cares more about himself than about WVU.”

“As a researcher and an academic,” added Virginia Kleist, chair-elect of the senate, “it is clear to me there is no compromise. ... It takes an institution a lifetime to earn a reputation, but only a moment to lose it.”

Peter Kalis, a Pittsburgh lawyer and member of WVU’s Academy of Distinguished Alumni, praised the faculty for showing “great moral courage.”

“For President Garrison to cling to his job under these circumstances is classless, shameless and disgraceful,” Kalis said Tuesday. “I ordinarily would suggest that he put the university’s interests ahead of his own and Mr. Goodwin’s, but I now understand that is not in his character.”

Though the panel’s report did not cite evidence that Garrison directly interfered in the Bresch matter, it concluded the presence of key staff created “palpable” pressure to go along.

Garrison and Bresch are longtime friends, and Garrison once worked as a Mylan lobbyist. And Mylan’s chairman, Milan “Mike” Puskar, has given tens of millions to the university.

Math professor Sherman Riemenschneider, who sponsored the resignation motion, said Walker’s presence in that meeting was enough.

“The number two man does not act on his own,” he said. “He understands his role and his responsibilities to the number one man. He needs no words.”

And while Garrison may have the best of intentions, engineering professor Larry Hornak said he is nonetheless a product of West Virginia politics. That background, he said, will taint any accomplishment.

“Whether political or not, all actions of the current administration will now be viewed through the prism of political calculation,” Hornak said.

Garrison, who worked under former Democratic Gov. Bob Wise, was a 38-year-old lawyer with much stronger political credentials than academic ones when he was tapped for the presidency in 2007.

Among his few defenders was senate Chairman Steve Kite, who urged colleagues to guard against speculation and suspicion. He praised Garrison for trying to create openness and giving the faculty more of a voice in governance.

Professor Larry Banta said the only pressure Garrison applied was to get an answer quickly; he did not specify what that answer to Bresch should be.

The faculty may have one more say on Garrison’s fate.

The University Assembly, a much larger body that includes all tenured and tenure-track faculty, plans to hold a rare special meeting May 14. More information about that meeting was not immediately available Tuesday.

        

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