Published: April 22, 2008 11:26 pm      

Panel: Bresch didn’t earn degree from WVU

MORGANTOWN — West Virginia University retroactively awarded Gov. Joe Manchin’s daughter a master’s degree she didn’t earn, and administrators erred in ordering the change, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported Tuesday.

Investigators who have spent months studying the 1998 executive master’s of business administration degree given to Heather Bresch completed their work Monday, but WVU has yet to make the report public. The newspaper cited an unnamed source and did not quote from the document itself.

WVU officials would not immediately confirm the conclusion of the report, which is being reviewed before it is made public. Chairman Stephen Goodwin said the university’s Board of Governors was reviewing the report Tuesday afternoon.

The board has scheduled a meeting for 1 p.m. today in the Jerry West Mountaineer Room of the WVU Coliseum. Afterward, Goodwin said, the report will be released.

Bresch, chief operating officer of Canonsburg, Pa.-based Mylan Inc., declined comment Tuesday.

Investigating the disputed degree were WVU professors Roy Nutter and Michael Lastinger, and three outside educators: Art Centonze, a dean emeritus of Pace University in New York; Lori Franz, former provost at the University of Missouri-Columbia; and John Burkoff, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh.

Nutter issued a statement late Monday saying no member of the panel would comment on either the report or the process behind it.

The group began work in February, trying to determine not only whether Bresch had earned the required credits but also how the university responded when the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette questioned the validity of her degree last fall.

Bresch has political clout: The chairman of Mylan is a major benefactor of both her father and the university, and Bresch is a friend and former classmate of WVU President Mike Garrison, who also did lobbying work for Mylan in a prior position.

But Bresch has insisted she earned her degree fairly, substituting work experience for her final 10-credit semester with the blessing of then-program director Paul Speaker. She told the AP earlier this month that she remembers attending graduation and seeing her name in the program, but she could not produce either the program or a diploma.

Speaker, however, said he does not recall ever allowing outside work to replace classroom work and told the AP his requirements were very strict.