West Virginia University's top academic officer will announce his resignation today following a scathing report criticizing the role he and other top administrators played in awarding Mylan Inc. executive Heather Bresch a graduate degree that she did not earn.

Separately, a prominent WVU alumnus is asking for the resignations of WVU President Michael Garrison and Steven Goodwin, the Morgantown attorney who is chairman of WVU's board of governors. Mr. Goodwin was a proponent of Mr. Garrison's appointment as president last year, a selection the faculty roundly criticized.

"Other members of the board should consider doing the same," Peter J. Kalis, a Rhodes scholar and chairman of Pittsburgh law firm Kirkpatrick & Lockhart/Gates, wrote in a note to Steve Douglas, head of WVU's alumni association.

Provost Gerald Lang distributed a memo to deans yesterday saying he will resign, effective June 30. His decision comes as the faculty senate takes up a motion calling for the censure of Mr. Lang and Mr. Garrison, a longtime friend and former business associate of Ms. Bresch, who is the daughter of West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin.

"I am very sorry that my one action in ratifying a dean's decision in a single situation has had a negative impact on the institution," Mr. Lang said in a memo to be distributed to faculty members today.

A five-person panel appointed by Mr. Lang concluded last week that WVU officials made a hasty, "seriously flawed" decision in awarding a master of business administration degree retroactively to Ms. Bresch, reflecting "failures of process and failures of leadership" at the state's flagship university.

Ms. Bresch is chief operating officer of Mylan. Her boss, Chairman Milan Puskar, co-founder of the Cecil generic drug company, is WVU's biggest benefactor.

"The politicization of the university and the abject absence of standards reflected in this episode cheapen all of our degrees," Mr. Kalis wrote. "These particular failures go beyond mere negligence. ... They reveal extraordinary defects in character shared by Messrs. Goodwin, Garrison and Lang."

WVU officials decided to award the degree retroactively, in October, after the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette made a routine call to the registrar to confirm Ms. Bresch's academic credentials. On Oct. 11, the newspaper was told the university had no record of her completing the degree.

Panel members said Mr. Garrison's office "reacted immediately" after Ms. Bresch called him and Craig Walker, Mr. Garrison's chief of staff, to dispute the registrar's statement. She stated she had earned the degree in December 1998.

Records provided to the Post-Gazette under the Freedom of Information Act indicate Ms. Bresch and Mr. Walker exchanged nine telephone calls between Oct. 11 and Oct. 15, when Mr. Lang approved business school Dean R. Steven Sears' recommendation to award the degree.

The same day, WVU spokeswoman Amy Neil said officials had reviewed Ms. Bresch's records and found she had completed the required 48 credit hours.

WVU records reviewed by the Post-Gazette indicated, however, that Ms. Bresch was 22 credits shy of completing the degree.

The panel found those records trustworthy. They said WVU officials falsified Ms. Bresch's transcript by adding courses to her record that she did not take and by entering grades "simply pulled from thin air."

WVU mathematics professor Sherman Riemenschneider said last week he intended to introduce a motion for a vote of no confidence in Mr. Garrison and Mr. Lang when the faculty senate's executive committee meets today to set the agenda for the full meeting May 12.

Mr. Lang joined WVU in 1976 as an assistant professor of biology and became a full professor eight years later. He later served as dean of WVU's Eberly College of Arts and Sciences and has been provost for 13 years.

Following release of the report, Mr. Lang said he would make the same decision he made in October. He and Mr. Garrison have been criticized by faculty and alumni for not showing enough contrition over how they acted.

"I love this place and would never intentionally take an action that would reflect negatively upon it," Mr. Lang said in his e-mail to deans. "I hope this decision will begin the healing process and focus attention onto the future."