President of West Virginia U. to Resign

After repeated calls for his resignation, Michael S. Garrison, president of West Virginia University, has announced that he will step down, effective September 1. Garrison has been at the center of a controversy over a degree that was improperly awarded to a politically connected figure. Read The Chronicle’s story here.

In May faculty members at the university voted no confidence in Garrison and called for him to step down “for the good of the institution.”

Demands for his resignation came in the wake of a recent scandal in which the university retroactively awarded an M.B.A. to the state governor’s daughter, Heather M. Bresch, even though she had not completed enough credits to earn the degree.