Published: May 10, 2008 12:30 am            

Goodwin will cede WVU board chairmanship

MORGANTOWN — The chairman of the West Virginia University Board of Governors said Friday that while he won’t quit the board before his appointment ends in 2010, he will hand over the leadership position when that term ends in July.

Attorney Stephen P. Goodwin issued a brief statement Friday to quiet speculation on the matter, acknowledging his decision grew from the controversy surrounding an unearned master’s degree that WVU administrators wrongly awarded to the governor’s daughter last fall.

“There can be no doubt that these are difficult times for West Virginia University and important issues need to be addressed,” he said in the statement. “I am confident that the correct decisions will be made, and this great institution will continue to prosper as we move forward.”

Goodwin has been under attack by some faculty members and alumni, along with WVU President Mike Garrison, over the degree scandal involving Mylan Inc. executive Heather Bresch.

Earlier this week, the Faculty Senate overwhelmingly demanded that Garrison resign for his administration’s mishandling of the matter. Provost Gerald Lang and business school Dean R. Stephen Sears have already resigned their administrative posts to return to teaching.

An independent panel concluded last month that administrators changed Bresch’s transcript, adding grades and courses to award her an executive master’s of business administration degree that she had not earned but was claiming on her resume.

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.

Though the report did not cite evidence that Garrison directly interfered in the decision-making process last fall, it concluded the presence of key staff in an October meeting created “palpable” pressure to go along.

Several faculty members, angry that the board hired Garrison last year despite a dearth of academic credentials, have also called on Goodwin to resign.

“I don’t anticipate it will satisfy my critics,” Goodwin said. “I just don’t want it to be the story. I want to take it out of the equation.”

Goodwin said his family has been supportive of his work at WVU, but he is tired of seeing their names drawn into news coverage of the scandal.

Last week, Goodwin enflamed critics with a comment to the student newspaper, The Daily Athenaeum, in which he refused to resign. Nor is the faculty in charge of the administration of the university, he told the newspaper.

“We’re not playing ’who can pound their chest the hardest,”’ he said. “The law prescribes how the university is administered. It is by the Board of Governors. If they don’t like that, the only way to change that is to change the law.”

That is what some faculty, students and alumni are now hoping to do: A group called Mountaineers for Integrity and Responsibility, or MIR, hopes to persuade legislators and others that systemic change is needed to restore WVU’s academic integrity, including new procedures for selecting the president and provost.

        

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