A math professor at Penn State's Wilkes-Barre campus received official notice yesterday that he has been fired.

Mohamad Nouri, who earned tenure from Penn State in 1991, got a letter from university President Graham Spanier informing him that he was terminated effective immediately.

He has until 5 p.m. today to turn in his keys and identification and until 5 p.m. Monday to clean out his office.

The university's Standing Joint Committee on Tenure last week released a report in Nouri's case recommending his termination based on allegations of plagiarism. The committee held a one-day hearing on the matter at the end of February.

He was accused of using another professor's work at a 2001 conference in Iran; of plagiarizing the work of two of his undergraduate students; of copying a manuscript from two articles published by other scholars; and of plagiarizing materials in a book he was writing.

Nouri, who began working at Penn State in 1988, denied all the allegations.

Instead, he claimed he was being punished for filing and winning a $16,000 decision in a 1999 federal civil rights claim against the university.

All of the plagiarism charges were brought by Penn State's attorney, James Horne, who says he discovered them while preparing to defend the university in a second civil case filed by Nouri, which the professor ultimately lost.

None of the parties whose work was allegedly copied ever complained.

Nouri's attorney, Edward A. Slavin Jr., has sent a letter to Spanier asking for a meeting. In the letter, Slavin claims the hearing in Nouri's case lacked due process and that Spanier did not properly review the evidence before making his decision.