don’t say the f word

This from Dennis O’Neil at the Louisville Cardinal, the U of L student newspaper:

“I can imagine someone looking at my resume,
seeing the words “U of L” and asking themselves
'isn’t that the place where they are just giving Ph.D.’s away?’”

On June 20, 2008, federal investigators marched into the College of Education and Human Development, emerging hours later with boxes of information pertaining to the activities of former CEHD Dean Robert Felner. Felner is now under federal investigation for allegedly misappropriating approximately $694,000 of the college’s federal grant money.

This was just the first of many dark days the University of Louisville would see.

Nearly four months later, the charges haven’t stopped. This past week, it was discovered through university records that John Deasy, then a California school superintendent, was awarded a doctorate in philosophy from U of L in 2004 after having only studied there for nine credit hours. This violates a university policy that says all doctoral candidates must study at U of L for at least two years, including one in full residency.

Felner was the advisor on Deasy’s dissertation committee and had received a $375,000 contract from Deasy in 2002 for a research center that he was running.

U of L President James Ramsey formed a committee Wednesday to investigate the allegations against Deasy. The six member committee will be led by Interim Dean of Graduate School William Pierce, who said the committee’s objective is to investigate this incident and then submit a report to Ramsey.

“We set up the committee quickly and have been told to move as quickly as possible,” Pierce said. “This situation might be clean and there is no reason to
believe there are a lot of these types of problems in the university.” Pierce was quick to point out the severity of these charges though, stating that they “strike at the heart and soul of the university.”

“If people don’t believe in us, we’re dead,” Pierce said. “We now have 100,000 people with diplomas from U of L asking themselves, ‘is this devalued?’ and I’m one of them.” ...