Richard Muma says WSU’s internal review finds ‘technical oversights’ not plagiarism
BY: TIM CARPENTER
Kansas Reflector
TOPEKA — Wichita State University president Richard Muma said Monday a university inquiry revealed up to 5% of his dissertation lacked full attribution to original scholars and that corrections would be made to the research document that helped him earn a doctorate.
On Monday, Kansas Reflector published a story pointing to the WSU president’s reuse in his 2004 dissertation of text written by more than 20 scholars, but lacking quotation marks to properly identify words of the original authors. More than 10 faculty members at different colleges and universities said Muma’s borrowing of verbatim sentences and paragraphs without full credit met the definition of plagiarism.
In a letter sent Monday to Wichita State faculty, staff and students, Muma said that when contacted weeks ago by Kansas Reflector he directed WSU’s provost and the university’s research officer to lead an investigation of his 88-page dissertation. The president’s letter said a plagiarism expert selected by WSU, who wasn’t publicly identified, took part in the review.
Muma said the university’s analysis confirmed attribution in his dissertation “should have included the use of quotation marks around reuse of text.”
“I was advised that the amount of affected text consists of less than 5% of my entire dissertation,” Muma’s letter said. “These are technical oversights … and I am taking steps to make corrections.”
Muma didn’t include a copy of the internal review in the message to WSU students, staff and faculty, but the president’s letter said the analysis led by his administrative subordinates showed “technical omissions” in the dissertation that didn’t “rise to the level of misconduct.”
The letter said that as far as Muma was concerned “the matter was closed.” The president didn’t set a deadline for submitting the corrected dissertation to University of Missouri at St. Louis.
Muma’s letter incorrectly asserted Kansas Reflector didn’t share information with WSU before publication about allegations of academic misconduct. In advance of publication, WSU had sufficient information from the Reflector to release a statement on Muma’s behalf saying research, analysis and conclusions in the dissertation were “entirely original” and all reference material “properly cited.”
In five chapters of Muma’s dissertation, which included findings of an opinion survey of health educators and professionals, Kansas Reflector identified approximately 55 passages of inadequately attributed material.
“That’s a problem in my eyes,” Jonathan Bailey, founder of Plagiarism Today and a copyright and plagiarism consultant in New Orleans told the Reflector. “When you copy and paste wholesale like that, you’re not proving you have the knowledge and understanding. This person did a shortcut.”
Muma, who has been on the WSU faculty for 28 years, was named president in 2020 by the Kansas Board of Regents. The nine-member board has jurisdiction over Wichita State and five other public state universities.
Blake Flanders, president and CEO of the Board of Regents, issued a statement acknowledging Wichita State’s confidential inquiry.
“When he became aware of the allegations about his work, President Muma reached out to me and communicated that he would follow the appropriate procedures that Wichita State has in place to ensure academic integrity,” Flanders said. “As he noted, an independent review conducted by an expert concluded that there was no academic misconduct in his doctoral dissertation. We have no further comment.”
Prior to publication of the Reflector’s story, Board of Regents’ spokesperson Matt Keith said Flanders didn’t want to be interviewed on the subject of academic misconduct by university faculty because it would be wrong “to speculate on how the board might act in hypothetical situations.”
The Board of Regents has no systemwide policy on plagiarism. Members of the board defer to the state universities in terms of policy on academic misconduct.
The next monthly meeting of the Board of Regents will be conducted Oct. 16-17 on the Wichita State campus. It will occur in conjunction with the Oct. 16 observance of International Day of Action for Academic Integrity.
Before hired at Wichita State, Muma earned a master’s degree in community health from University of Texas Health Science Center-Houston. He was a tenured professor at WSU when awarded the doctorate from UMSL.