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UNM football: Controversial instructor dropped

By Michael Gisick
Tuesday, December 18, 2007

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HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. — Oranges hang from the trees just inside the gates of Sea Cliff on the Greens, a few hundred yards from the Pacific Ocean.

Day lilies and birds of paradise bloom by the guard shack, swaying in the breeze under mild December skies.

It seems a fitting place to find a retired school administrator who's made a second career teaching teachers, a woman whose voice mail message offers the hope that "you are having a good day, because I know I am!"

It's a strange place, though, to look for the figure at the center of an NCAA academic fraud investigation targeting the University of New Mexico football team.

A long way from controversy, it seems, and certainly a long way from Albuquerque.

But this, according to real estate records, is where Fern Zahlen lives.

Besides an offhand reference to Lobos head coach Rocky Long, who hasn't been accused of any wrongdoing, Zahlen's is the only name listed in the NCAA's notice of allegations against UNM, which was released in September.

Two former and one current Lobos assistant coaches accused of helping four recruits and a student athlete obtain sham credits through correspondence courses taught by Zahlen in 2004 and 2005 aren't named. Neither are the students.

But Zahlen, who hasn't returned numerous phone calls or e-mails from The Tribune during the past three months, is named again and again.

Then an instructor at Fresno Pacific University, a four-year school with a little more than 2,000 students, Zahlen enrolled four UNM recruits in correspondence courses for which they "never received or completed any course assignments but received credit," according to the NCAA allegations.

She also provided her husband's cell phone number as a contact for one of the students, the notice of allegations states.

UNM has until Jan. 7 to respond to the allegations by the NCAA, which oversees collegiate athletics.

Paul Krebs, UNM athletics director, declined to talk about Zahlen's connection with UNM, saying he couldn't comment until the school releases its response.

Greg Remington, a UNM spokesman, said that likely won't come until the Jan. 7 deadline.

Zahlen no longer works at Fresno Pacific. Her contract was not renewed after the school was contacted by the NCAA in late 2005, Fresno Pacific officials said.

Despite her involvement in the NCAA investigation, however, Zahlen has continued to work at several other higher-profile schools in Southern California.

State officials said there's no unified body that would investigate allegations of academic fraud against a college-level teacher.

"It's not like secondary education where they have to get a license," said Kevin Flanagan, a spokesman for the California Department of Consumer Affairs, which oversees aspects of the state's higher education system.

"It's pretty much up to the college whether they want to hire them or not. There's no independent state credentialing."

Zahlen, 70, works as a field supervisor for student teachers at California State University, Long Beach, where she has worked since 1998, in addition to duties with other schools.

Cal State Long Beach officials said they were unaware of the allegations involving Zahlen prior to being contacted by The Tribune, but declined further comment.

"CSULB is not a party to the NCAA-University of New Mexico investigation and has no opinion to offer at this time," Toni Berone, a vice president of university relations, said in an e-mail.

Zahlen does not currently teach any classes at the university, Berone said.

However, Zahlen remains a very active instructor a few miles up the freeway in Los Angeles, at Loyola Marymount University.

According to an online schedule of classes, Zahlen taught 11 courses through LMU's extension program this semester, including several that were scheduled during overlapping or identical times.

The classes, part of a professional development track for schoolteachers, range from courses on cultural diversity and bilingual education to physical education, nutrition, self-esteem and tobacco education.

On Dec. 6, officials at Loyola Marymount's hillside campus said those classes were all finished, though the schedule says five of them are set to run through the week of Dec. 10, while another isn't scheduled to wrap up until Dec. 22.

They said the classes were held in Orange County but refused to say exactly where, citing privacy rules.

Cherie Schenck, the extension program's director of professional development, said none of Zahlen's classes were designed for college credit, but rather to help teachers bolster their experience and gain pay raises.

"They're strictly for professional development," she said.

The same was supposed to have been true of the classes Zahlen taught at Fresno Pacific.

Peggi Kriegbaum, director of Fresno Pacific's Continuing Education Department, said Zahlen taught a menu of courses there similar to the ones she now teaches at LMU.

"The classes we offer are for educators," she said. "When the NCAA said she was teaching college students, we were flabbergasted."

She said Fresno Pacific had not conducted its own investigation into Zahlen's work at the school, but decided not to continue her contract because the school "didn't want to be associated with anything where there was even a whiff of impropriety."

She said Zahlen had presented the school with impressive credentials and solid course syllabuses.

"That's why we put our name behind them," Kriegbaum said. "Her courses were very popular, but as soon as we realized she was not being totally honest with us, we ended the relationship."

According to the NCAA's notice of allegations, the four prospective UNM student athletes who enrolled in Zahlen's classes at Fresno Pacific were then pursuing associate degrees at community colleges - two in Arizona, one in Texas and one in Mississippi, according to the NCAA.

Two of the students enrolled in Zahlen's elementary statistics course in the spring of 2004, one in an advanced composition and research class the same semester, and one in a statistics course in the fall of 2005. All were correspondence course, the allegations state.

A UNM assistant coach told three of the students that they would receive credit for the Fresno Pacific courses without having to complete any work, the allegations continue. Indeed, none of the four ever did any, according to the allegations.

"Once the young men provided payment, they never heard anything about the course until they received credit," the allegations state.

The student who was enrolled at UNM took an English composition class through Zahlen in the spring of 2004. He did complete course work, submitting it to Zahlen through a then-UNM athletics academic adviser, the allegations state.

Zahlen was the director of the Fountain Valley School District in California for 30 years, according to a bio on the Loyola Marymount Web site. A school district official said they couldn't immediately locate records related to Zahlen's time there but said Zahlen retired in the early 1990s.

Kriegbaum said Fresno Pacific now checks the birth dates of students enrolling in professional development courses in an effort to avoid a repeat.

Still, she said, technically anyone could enroll in the courses.

"The courses are not intended for degree purposes, but a school could accept the content for credit," she said. "Apparently, that's what happened."