BISMARCK, N.D. — People who attended Dickinson State University seminars about Theodore Roosevelt, energy development and computer software and hospitality training were signed up as students without their knowledge, apparently to pad the school's enrollment figures, college workers said Wednesday.
The workers in Dickinson State's office of extended learning spoke on the first day of a hearing into whether the school's president, Richard McCallum, should be fired because of the imbroglio.
McCallum himself will testify during the hearing, which is expected to last through Friday, said his attorney, Benjamin Thomas.
It is being heard by a state administrative law judge, Bonny Fetch, who will give the state Board of Higher Education a recommendation on whether she thinks the evidence justifies McCallum's dismissal. The board will ultimately decide his fate.
McCallum has been suspended from his job with pay since August, when he refused demands by William Goetz, chancellor of the state's university system, to resign after an audit detailed the alleged enrollment fudging. McCallum is paid $176,782 annually.
Dickinson State counted 2,482 students during its fall 2010 semester, when the problem arose.
Michel Hillman, the North Dakota university system's vice chancellor for academic affairs, said Wednesday the number was inflated by 186 students, or 7 percent. Most were given academic credit for attending three seminars at the college that lasted only a few days.
One of the new "students" was the North Dakota Senate's majority leader, Sen. Rich Wardner, R-Dickinson. Hillman said some Belfield High School students were also part of the total because they mistakenly received college credit for some coursework.
Luring students has become more difficult for the southwestern North Dakota school because of an energy boom in its home region. Prospective students are instead opting for lucrative jobs in the oil fields.
Hillman said the seminars and training sessions were not designed to confer academic credit on their participants, who were registered as students without their knowledge and given "A'' grades. The courses did not undergo the academic review that is necessary to offer classes for which a student may earn credits toward a degree, he said.
Thomas, in an opening statement at the hearing, said there was no evidence McCallum ordered anyone to falsify enrollment.
McCallum was ambushed in August with the audit, shortly after he had been given a raise and a generally favorable evaluation from Goetz, Thomas said. The audit said McCallum was ultimately responsible for the enrollment problems, and that Dickinson State staff had been directed to "engage in unethical, suspect or wasteful activities."
Goetz attempted to force McCallum out by leaking the audit to the press, and the chancellor refused to allow McCallum to attempt to negotiate his own exit, Thomas said.
Three workers in Dickinson State's extended learning office, Joanne Fields, Kay Erickson and Stacy Wilkinson, said the practice of signing up seminar participants as students began last year.
The office was under pressure to help Dickinson State show a trend of rising enrollment, the women said. Fields said its former director, Marty Odermann-Gardner, would return from meetings with McCallum agitated and in tears, a state that Fields attributed to disagreements about enrollment reporting.
Odermann-Gardner, who resigned in September 2010, now lives in Colorado and has been told by her doctor not to testify in the case out of concern it will affect her health, said Michelle Donarski, a Dickinson State attorney who is presenting the case to justify McCallum's dismissal.
Thomas objected to some of the testimony from the three women, saying it was speculative or secondhand. When Odermann-Gardner applied for unemployment benefits after she left Dickinson State, she did not mention any stress caused by disputes over enrollment, Thomas said.
Hillman said the affair could affect Dickinson State's accreditation and subject it to fines from a federal agency that collects college enrollment data. Most of all, it damages the school's reputation, he said.
"By not having reliable, valid numbers that we as a system, and each campus, has provided to the Legislature, it's a serious problem with credibility," Hillman said. "If we gave them numbers that were inaccurate, how can they trust us in the future?"