The West Virginia University administrator responsible for retroactively awarding an MBA degree to Mylan Inc. executive Heather Bresch yesterday named a three-person panel to investigate whether he did anything wrong.

The investigators selected by Provost Gerald Lang include Dr. Bruce Flack, a high-ranking executive of the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission controlled by Democratic Gov. Joe Manchin, Ms. Bresch's father.

They also include computer science and electrical engineering professor Roy Nutter, who was quoted in a Charleston, W.Va., paper last week as saying he didn't expect a review of the matter would turn up any evidence of fraud or wrongdoing.

The third member of the panel is associate professor of foreign languages Michael Lastinger, who as a former member of WVU's Board of Governors cast the only vote against Mike Garrison's election as WVU president last year.

The trio will investigate how Mr. Lang and other university administrators determined that Ms. Bresch had completed requirements for an MBA degree in December 1998. The university granted the degree in October, nearly a decade after Ms. Bresch left the MBA program, despite records that showed she had completed only about half of the credits needed to earn the degree.

The appointment of the three-member panel was sparked by a Dec. 21 story by the Post-Gazette that raised questions about how the university went about granting the degree to Ms. Bresch, a longtime friend and former business associate of Mr. Garrison. Ms. Bresch's boss, Mylan Chairman Milan Puskar, is WVU's largest benefactor.

The story prompted calls for an independent, nonpartisan investigation of the matter. Mr. Lang's response falls well short of that, according to several WVU faculty members. They said even faculty members who would be more skeptical than Mr. Nutter or Mr. Lastinger of the university's decision would be intimidated by reporting their findings to their boss. The professors asked not to be identified, saying they feared retribution.

"It has to be outside people investigating this," said one faculty senate member.

A department chairman said an outside panel would give the investigation more credibility.

"If it's not an external review, no matter what the results are, they won't be credible," he said. "It's inappropriate to appoint an inside panel to judge your own culpability."

Mr. Lang has blamed the discrepancy on a failure of the College of Business and Economics to transfer record of 22 credits worth of Ms. Bresch's classroom work to the registrar's office, the university's official record keeper. Mr. Lang, who declined to be interviewed for the PG's December story, issued a brief e-mail statement at the time saying errors had been "appropriately corrected" and that there was "no reason to pursue the matter further."

The Post-Gazette found that officials retroactively added six classes, including grades, to Ms. Bresch's record. In addition, two classes that had been marked "incomplete" were changed to show letter grades.

However, Ms. Bresch's name does not appear on the class rosters for the classes added to her records, indicating she did not register for any of those courses, according to documents obtained by the newspaper.

In addition, professors listed as the instructors for five of the six classes told the Post-Gazette they were not consulted on the matter. The sixth professor could not be reached.

Mr. Garrison also declined interviews with the Post-Gazette.

In an interview with a local West Virginia television station last week, Mr. Garrison said he fully supported the decision to retroactively award Ms. Bresch an MBA. When asked whether WVU had any documentation to prove that Ms. Bresch earned the MBA, Mr. Garrison replied, "I don't know."

"I haven't looked at any documentation," he said. "The academic unit is the point on this issue."

Mr. Garrison also said he also supported the appointment of a panel to review the matter.

"If there is an issue, if there was an issue, we need to resolve it," he said, "based on the information we have."

"I hope we have the information available," he added. "I don't know that we do or not."

In sensitive cases where a university's actions have been called into question, some schools have looked not only beyond campus but into other states to find reviewers the public will perceive as both expert and independent. For instance, William G. Bowen, president of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and past president of Princeton University, was tapped in 2006 to co-chair a panel that examined Duke University's response to an alleged sexual assault involving lacrosse players.

Some observers said WVU would have done well to adopt a similar approach. They pointed to a wealth of retired college presidents, independent legal scholars and others who could help the university withstand any risk -- real or perceived -- that the process was tainted. They said such a posture is increasingly important in the post-Enron era and would be especially helpful in a situation that has tentacles stretching into the top layers of state government.

"I would go out of state for a majority of the panel," said Sheldon Steinbach, a higher education law specialist and retired general counsel with the Washington, D.C.-based American Council on Education. "You want someone with national standing and perspective who has no relationship to the individuals or the state of West Virginia."

Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers in Washington, D.C., said yesterday he had no reason to doubt the panel members' ability to be objective and called inclusion of two WVU professors as especially logical since faculty are the ultimate guardians of a school's academic integrity.

Still, he called it unfortunate that Mr. Lang and Mr. Nutter already have expressed views on the case prior to the committee beginning its work.

"It may well be that everything was done by the book [and] that there was nothing wrong, but a panel of three people, one of whom has already expressed his opinion, and all of whom are appointed by someone who has expressed a view ... it's problematic."

Mr. Nutter told the Charleston Daily Mail last week that he seriously doubted "that this occurred as it has been reported by the Pittsburgh paper."

"I am confident in our WVU administration to sort this out accurately and honestly," he said. "If there has been fraud, it will come out."

Steven Crow, president of the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association, the accrediting body for WVU, said he would be eager to see the results of the panel's findings.

"I am going to wait and see whether this group identifies any problems with what [the university] did or whether the university chooses to claim [that] there is nothing amiss," Mr. Crow said.

"Higher education in West Virginia is and always has been marked by state politics," he added. "It's no different than a lot of my states that I work with where the line between higher education and politics at times gets blurred."