President Abare releases new statement on misreported data

By Alexa Epitropoulos | gargoyle@flagler.edu

Continuing on a school-wide damage control campaign, President William Abare Jr. has released a lengthy statement revealing in more detail how the information about the misreported data came to light.

In the statement, released to students and faculty on Thursday morning, Abare names Craig Woelfel, Ph. D, assistant professor of English, as the professor who initially discovered the serious inconsistencies in misreported data.

Woelfel, who was recently appointed to director of the writing program at Flagler College, noticed the inaccurate data when he saw that remedial English students had higher scores on their SAT and ACT than the placement score for the class. It was then brought to the attention of Alan Woolfolk, vice president of academic affairs, who was notified on Feb. 7.

From there, Woelfel compared the scores of remedial English students with the registrar’s data of students when they were accepted into Flagler. When reviewing the original scores, Woelfel discovered scores had been inflated once students entered college.

Further investigation into the inflation was conducted by Will Miller, director of institutional research and effectiveness, who found that the data inflation was far more widespread than administrators originally thought.

In the statement, Abare echoes previous statements that students were not admitted to the school on a false premise or based on fabricated SAT and ACT scores, GPAs or class rankings.

“From what we have learned so far, the changes in test scores occurred after the students had been accepted for admission to the College and after they had been placed in their English composition and mathematics classes,” Abare said in the statement.

Abare also said the changed scores do not compromise academic records of students enrolled in Flagler.

The email, totaling more than 1700 words, is the first comprehensive statement that has been released since the news was first released to students on Feb. 17. It is also the first time that all professors and faculty members involved in the investigation have been named.

Full text of the statement available here.

More information to come.