The West Virginia University M.B.A. controversy concerns the granting of an Executive Master of Business Administration degree (EMBA) by West Virginia University to Mylan pharmaceutical company executive Heather Bresch in 2007. An independent panel later concluded that the university changed its records, and granted the degree despite incomplete graduation requirements. West Virginia University's president Michael Garrison, its provost Gerald Lang, and its business school dean R. Stephen Sears, resigned as a result of the investigation, and the university's general counsel and the president's communications officer relinquished those roles.
On October 2, 2007 Heather Bresch, the daughter of then-governor (and subsequently United States Senator) Joe Manchin of West Virginia, was promoted to chief operating officer at Mylan, a Cecil Township, Pennsylvania-based generic drug maker.[1]
