Mylan chairman defends COO
MORGANTOWN, W.Va.—Mylan Inc.'s chairman defended the integrity of Chief Operating Officer Heather Bresch and praised the governor's daughter Wednesday for helping create the West Virginia University program that generated her now-disputed master's degree.
Milan "Mike" Puskar is not only her employer, but also a major benefactor of Gov. Joe Manchin and of WVU, contributing $20 million to the school in 2003.
"I find it disheartening that a woman of Heather's integrity, character and extraordinary intellect has been attacked as she has been over the past four months," Puskar said in a statement to The Associated Press late Wednesday.
"It's particularly troublesome because, if not for Heather, it's likely we would not have an Executive MBA program at WVU," said Puskar, who seldom issues personal statements. "... She certainly helped pioneer the program 12 years ago, and it has since benefited the university, virtually hundreds of students and many businesses."
Meanwhile, WVU's chief academic officer said Wednesday that many departments allow students to use work experience to meet graduation credit requirements, either as electives or for the core curriculum.
Bresch told The Associated Press late Tuesday that an adviser had allowed her to substitute work experience for her final 10 credits in her 1998 executive master's business administration degree.
Typically, individual work-experience arrangements are made, supervised and evaluated by faculty and field supervisors, Provost Gerald Lang said. They may involve temporary placement with public or private organizations to help students develop professional competence.
How those deals are documented may vary from one department to another, said WVU spokeswoman Amy Neil.
Bresch, a 16-year employee of the generic drug maker based in Canonsburg, Pa., said she was a normal, part-time graduate student from the spring of 1996 until the fall of 1998. Then she had a career-making job opportunity, a complex California lawsuit that kept her out of the classroom for the final semester.
Bresch told The AP that program adviser Paul Speaker cleared the work-for-credit deal, and WVU told her that paper records from the program were destroyed a few years ago.
But Speaker, who could not discuss Bresch's case specifically because of federal privacy laws, said he cannot recall any instance in the history of the EMBA program when work experience substituted for course work.
A panel appointed by WVU is investigating how discrepancies about Bresch's degree were handled by school administrators last fall, but has yet to release its conclusions.
Bresch has significant political connections but denies using them to request a tinkering of her degree when its validity came into question. In addition to her other connections, she went to high school and college with WVU President Mike Garrison, who did some lobbying for Mylan in his previous political career.
Bresch, who says she suggested creation of the EMBA program to former WVU President Neil Bucklew, acknowledged she was admitted during its second year without completing the entire application process.
Though she had intended to enroll, Bresch said work on her father's first, unsuccessful campaign for governor kept her too busy to take the graduate school admission test. Speaker, however, told her she was welcome to enroll.
Bresch said she assumed he had the authority to make the offer, and she accepted.
Lang said most graduate programs at WVU require either the graduate record examination (GRE) or Miller Analogies Test (MAT) scores from all applicants, and some require both.
The EMBA's Web page says the GMAT is required.
