West Virginia U. Faculty Demands President’s Resignation

Faculty members at West Virginia University have voted no confidence in Michael S. Garrison, the university’s president, and are calling for him to step down “for the good of the institution,” Paul Fain reports on The Chronicle’s Web site.

Demands for the president’s resignation come 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, Fain writes.

The university’s provost and the dean of the business school resigned from their posts as a result of the scandal, “although both remain on the faculty, and Ms. Bresch’s degree was revoked,” he notes.

While an investigative panel’s report found that President Garrison was not personally involved in the matter, the president says he accepts “full and total responsibility for failures that led to the award of unearned credits and grades to a former student,” but has no plans to resign, writes Fain. He notes that “only the university’s Board of Governors can fire the president, and so far its members have expressed unanimous support for Mr. Garrison.”