Former graduate school dean Dennis O’Connor was deemed responsible in a fall graduate meeting for overallocating graduate student fellowships, an error creating a domino effect that has left the graduate school in a multimillion dollar deficit.
At a November Graduate Council meeting, O’Connor’s interim replacement and university President Dan Mote’s Chief of Staff, Ann Wylie, said O’Connor did not budget enough money to cover $400,000 of the fellowships offered last year.
No money was set aside for the second year — the 2005-06 academic school year — of the two-year fellowships. In addition to the fellowship stipend, the university must find a way to cover fellows’ tuition, causing a budget shortfall officials cannot yet assess but is believed to be in the range of several million dollars.
Multiple attempts to reach O’Connor were unsuccessful, and Wylie declined comment.
O’Connor, who was also the vice president for research, resigned last May. A wholesale split of the Division of Research and the graduate school followed, including new leadership for each. O’Connor remains on the university payroll as a biology professor.
The Diamondback reported Tuesday the revamped graduate school now faces up to “several million dollars” of debt.
Wylie told the Graduate Council — an oversight board made up of graduate faculty members — “the previous dean had allocated $400,000 beyond the amount that was actually available to allocate,” according to minutes from a November meeting.
A staff member familiar with the distribution of fellowships said a cut in fellowship spending could have averted the shortfall, but the deans of the university’s 13 colleges pressured O’Connor to continue steady funding.
“That whole next year budget shouldn’t have been awarded in its entirety,” said a staff member who worked in the fellowship office while O’Connor oversaw the graduate school and who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “There was nothing he could do. It was an argument he could have never won.”
The graduate school reduced its fellowship allocation from $4.6 million to $4.4 million, with the $200,000 to pay off a portion of the debt, according to the November meeting minutes. The graduate school wanted to fund dissertation fellowships — a new initiative — but cannot next year to pay off some of the debt.
“The losers will be the dissertation fellowships,” Wylie said in the November meeting.
In addition, the graduate school offered more fellowship funding than was available, and more students than they expected accepted the grants. The debt multiplies because the graduate school also has to pay for students’ tuition remission.
The graduate school borrowed the money from the university, which will take the next three years to pay. In the meantime, the graduate school will curtail its expenses.
The fellowship office was dismantled last February and shifted its responsibilities to the 13 colleges beginning last semester. The graduate school decides the allotment for each college, and the respective deans decide how many fellowships they distribute.
Gay Gullickson, associate dean of the graduate school, emphasized that while the graduate school faces several problems, students will benefit from the fellowships.
“It was no one’s intention to sink us into the hole,” she said.
At the time of O’Connor’s resignation, The Diamondback reported O’Connor and Mote had frequent clashes, resulting in tumultuous cabinet meetings and bruised egos. O’Connor came to the university after being forced to resign as chancellor of the University of Pittsburgh in 1995, where he was accused of overspending and upsetting faculty.
