Carnegie Mellon University hastily installed new leadership at its H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management yesterday following the sudden resignation of Dean Mark Wessel.

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Mr. Wessel resigned Thursday after the university discovered "an error in judgment involving the approval of excessive transfer credits and excessive units for independent study in lieu of course work" for a student who received a master's degree in 2004.

The university yesterday appointed Ramayya Krishnan, the William W. and Ruth F. Cooper Professor of Management Science and Information Systems, as acting dean.

President Jared Cohon formally accepted Mr. Wessel's resignation on Friday, and the university announced his departure and the circumstances surrounding it in a Friday afternoon e-mail to students and alumni.

The irregularities involving the 2004 degree were only brought to the administration's attention on Wednesday, said spokesman Ken Walters.

"We always take any issue regarding academic integrity very seriously," he said. "This is something where, when we find out something like this, we review it immediately."

Mark Wessel

Mr. Wessel joined the Heinz School in 1993, was appointed interim dean in February 2003 and has served as permanent dean since April 2004. His wife, Linda Babcock, is the James M. Walton Professor of Economics at the Heinz School.

Prior to working at Carnegie Mellon, he was an economist and financial analyst with the U.S. Department of Energy and a development specialist with the Mon Valley Initiative. He did not return a phone call to his home yesterday.

Faculty and staff of the Heinz School were informed of Mr. Wessel's resignation at a 4:30 p.m. meeting Friday. Mr. Wessel attended the meeting and was given a standing ovation.

Citing federal privacy laws, the university is not releasing the name of the student who received the 2004 degree, or exactly what type of master's degree the student received. Carnegie Mellon is now "reviewing the status" of the degree, according to the e-mail sent to students.

The improperly awarded degree "was brought to a faculty member's attention earlier this year," said Mr. Walters. The faculty member subsequently requested the student's records, noticed irregularities and notified President Cohon, he said.

University officials believe that it was an isolated incident but are reviewing records for degrees awarded in the last five years to determine whether any other degrees were awarded improperly, said Mr. Walters.

New student orientation was under way at the Heinz School yesterday, with a posted schedule in the lobby still listing Mr. Wessel as giving the welcome speech.

"It was a shock -- a big shock," said Chirantan Chatterjee, a fourth-year Ph.D. student. "I'm surprised because they are pretty meticulous about the rules and policies. It would be useful to know exactly what happened."

Mr. Wessel was a fixture in the corridors of Hamburg Hall, a popular, hands-on dean who greeted nearly every student by name, said Mr. Chatterjee.

The university's swift reaction gave Ryan Stokes, a master's student in public management, confidence that the situation would not mushroom into a scandal on the scale of the one earlier this year at West Virginia University.

There, officials including the president, provost and dean of the business school stepped down after a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette investigation revealed that administrators had improperly awarded a master's degree to the well-connected daughter of Gov. Joe Manchin.

"You can't help but make parallels between this and WVU," said Mr. Stokes. "I'm very impressed by how they seem to be dealing with this, nipping it in the bud."

"The honesty's a good thing," chimed in master's student Rohan Martin, standing next to Mr. Stokes.

But that speed rubbed at least one alumnus the wrong way. Steve Denson, a 1993 alumnus, received the e-mail Friday evening and was "e-mailing until the wee hours of the morning" with his classmates about Mr. Wessel.

Now a professor at Southern Methodist University, Mr. Denson worked at the Heinz School for several years after he graduated and regards Mr. Wessel as a mentor.

"You don't treat someone who has been loyal to you, given you this much of his life, blood, sweat and tears, in such a publicly demeaning way," he said, referring to the level of detail in the e-mail to students and alumni. "When somebody resigns, you let them resign -- you don't do it in a public forum like this."

Robert Strauss, a longtime professor of economics and public policy at the Heinz School, offered a theory for the speed and candor of Mr. Wessel's departure.

"This happened very quickly and I believe that the situation at WVU in which there was a diploma awarded outside the rules weighed heavily on the CMU administration," he said.