Mike Garrison was a young man in a hurry -- in a hurry to achieve, in a hurry to advance, in a hurry to leave a mark on his native state.

He was remarkably successful.

At age 22, he became student body president of West Virginia University. A year later, in 1992, he graduated cum laude, became an administrative assistant to U.S. Sen. Robert C. Byrd, then left to study at Oxford University.

In 1996, at age 27, he graduated from the WVU law school, then spent five years at law firms in Clarksburg and Charleston.

By 2001, Mr. Garrison moved into state government, first as cabinet secretary for the state Department of Tax and Revenue and then ascending to the job of Gov. Bob Wise's chief of staff. He spent two years in the Wise administration before returning to law in 2003 as managing member of Spilman Thomas & Battle's Morgantown office.

He kept ties to state government and education as a member of West Virginia's Higher Education Policy Commission and the state's Promise Scholarship board.

He also taught political science at WVU and served on its Alumni Association Board of Directors before being named the university's president in 2007, at age 38.

Well-connected, well-liked and well-entrenched in the circles that mattered, Mr. Garrison was poised to make an impact on generations of West Virginians, which makes his fall all the more dramatic, all the more poignant, all the more tragic.

That trajectory went off course yesterday when Mr. Garrison submitted his resignation as WVU president.

"From a personal standpoint, nobody likes to resign from a position they always wanted. Nobody likes to step away from what they enjoy doing," said Dallas Branch, WVU associate professor of sport management and a supporter of Mr. Garrison.

"He's hurt, but he's a strong guy. He'll bounce back from this, and so will his family. In some respects I'm relieved for him and his family because they have endured a lot."

Mr. Garrison, a first-generation college graduate and native of Fairmont, W.Va., took the helm of his alma mater and its nearly 30,000 students in September.

At 39, he is 20 years younger than the national average for a sitting college or university president. He was 10 years younger than his predecessor, David C. Hardesty Jr., was when Mr. Hardesty became WVU's 21st president in 1995.

Yet what bothered some on and off campus the most about Mr. Garrison -- even before his selection -- wasn't his youth or his inexperience in campus management. Rather, it was his ties to statehouse politics in Charleston, W.Va., and a resulting perception that his candidacy for the job amounted to a political coronation.

Among those suggesting the search was tainted were individuals within the state's news media and Charleston-based U.S. Circuit Judge Robert B. King, a director of the WVU Alumni Association whose sister was a university dean and a search committee member.

"We are mildly amused at the charade of a process going on at West Virginia University in their latest presidential 'search,'" stated an editorial at the time on HuntingtonNews.net, an independent online newspaper.

"The real dilemma for WVU and for the state is that state politics is trumping genuinely distinguished higher education experience as embodied by the other two candidates."

Those candidates, both career academics, were Daniel O. Bernstine, then 59, president of Portland State University in Oregon, and M. Duane Nellis, then 52, provost at Kansas State University and a former WVU dean.

A number of search committee members, including Stephen Goodwin, chairman of the WVU Board of Governors, defended the process, even as WVU's faculty senate voted overwhelmingly against Mr. Garrison.

Acrimony is hardly new to presidential searches at WVU, Mr. Goodwin said at the time. He noted that even Mr. Hardesty -- whose tenure saw significant gains in enrollment, fund raising and research -- faced opposition. There were campus protests over Mr. Hardesty's inauguration and a lawsuit alleging the search panel was improperly constituted.

Mr. Garrison, too, dismissed the criticisms in an interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on April 13, 2007, the day the board of governors awarded him a three-year contract and a salary of $255,000.

"West Virginia is a small place," he said. "It's not saying much to say you might know someone or have worked with someone."

The vote that day was 16-1, with the lone dissent coming from the board's faculty representative, Michael Lastinger. Mr. Garrison said he planned to reach out to those who had called him unqualified.

By the time he took office, WVU's enrollment already had surpassed 29,700 students, putting it within striking range of its 2010 goal of becoming a university of 30,000 students. Officials cited rising SAT scores and higher grades among its first-year students as indicators of WVU's academic ascent.

Presidents are judged to a significant degree on fund raising, and in October, Mr. Garrison got some welcome news in that area when Ben Statler, a former coal executive, confirmed that he and his wife, Jo, were giving WVU $25 million. It was the largest individual gift in the university's 140-year history.

But things soon got rocky for the new president. In mid-December, the departure of football coach Rich Rodriguez for the University of Michigan drew the ire of many alumni and sports boosters.

Days later, questions surfaced publicly about a matter that would more deeply shake the administration -- the decision to retroactively grant Mylan Inc. executive Heather Bresch an M.B.A.

Current and previous members of WVU's Board of Governors have close business ties to Mylan and to Milan Puskar, the Cecil-based company's chairman and WVU's biggest benefactor, as does Mr. Garrison. Mr. Garrison was a high school classmate of Ms. Bresch. He also had served as a lobbyist for Mylan, putting him in the position of having Ms. Bresch as his supervisor.

Mr. Branch, the WVU professor, said overlooked in the Ms. Bresch controversy were the president's accomplishments.

"Four things stand out," said Mr. Branch, who has taught at WVU for 20 years. "From day one, he reached out to the very faculty who spoke in the worst terms possible when he was appointed. He reached out to faculty and staff across the campus. He started dialogue with them on the first day. He promised he would do that."

Additionally, he said, Mr. Garrison brought $35 million to WVU for faculty research and started a child care center "that had been talked about for 30 years."

And finally, Mr. Garrison recently announced a pay raise for faculty and staff of 7.3 percent, the largest Mr. Branch can recall. "He has delivered everything that he promised and then some, but it's been overshadowed," Mr. Branch said.

That view was seconded by Dale Nitzschke, president emeritus of Southeast Missouri State University and a former president of Marshall University.

"From a distance, I thought he was working very diligently, very effectively, very intelligently," Mr. Nitzschke said.