The state Ethics Commission has begun an inquiry into WVU administrators' actions during a degree scandal involving Heather Bresch, Gov. Joe Manchin's daughter.

WVU spokeswoman Becky Lofstead said the commission has started a preliminary inquiry into university officials' decision to retroactively grant Bresch, a Mylan Inc. executive, a master's degree nearly 10 years after she was to have graduated.

Lew Brewer, the commission's executive director, said he could not confirm that an inquiry is underway.

The commission was created in 1989 to implement and enforce a code of ethical conduct enacted by the Legislature for public servants. Commissioners can implement fines and issue subpoenas in the course of an official investigation, Brewer said.

"Just as President [Michael] Garrison has said from the onset, WVU is open to and will cooperate fully with any inquiries on the degree matter," Lofstead said.

In a report released in April, a five-member panel investigating the controversy found business school administrators pulled grades from "thin air" for courses Bresch never registered or paid for.

The panel also concluded that high-ranking WVU administrators lacked documentation to prove Bresch's claims that she substituted work experience for her final credit hours, relied too heavily on verbal assertions and caved to political pressure.

The report placed much of the blame on Provost Gerald Lang and business school Dean Stephen Sears. Both men resigned from their positions, but will continue to teach at WVU and earn six-figure salaries.

In his interview with the panel, EMBA program director Jerry Blakely said Sears told him in October "to prepare a document to get [Bresch] graduated."

So Blakely listed several courses that he knew Bresch did not take on her transcript. In other cases, he changed "incompletes" to letter grades - even in one course he led.

Garrison said in his report to the board earlier last month he would refer the matter of the added grades to an internal panel that investigates academic misconduct.

"Academic misconduct" is defined as "fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, or other practices that seriously deviate from those that are commonly accepted within the scholarly community." It does not include "honest error or honest differences of opinion."

Possible punishment could range from a letter of reprimand to salary reduction, suspension or termination.

WVU Staff Council President Terry Nebel said he was pleased to hear of the Ethics Commission probe, but he would have liked to have seen an inquiry much earlier from the Legislature's Commission on Special Investigations.

"Had this investigation been conducted as soon as this issue hit the press, perhaps President Garrison would still have a future at WVU and WV could have avoided the intense amount of negative press," Nebel wrote in a letter on behalf of WVU Staff Council to members of the Legislature and Manchin.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Russ Weeks said he is "encouraged" by the probe and believes "everyone involved needs to be held accountable, both inside and outside of WVU."

"When the daughter of the governor is improperly awarded a degree she did not earn, signed off on by individuals overseen by a Board of Governors mostly appointed by that same governor, under 'palpable pressure' from individuals with strong connections to the governor, there's only one place to find all the answers, and that's in Charleston, not Morgantown," Weeks said.

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