Cal Poly Kept Paying Dismissed Official : Education: Henry Whang, a friend of the school’s president, was hired to promote the university in Asia. His efforts came to naught, but he continued to receive his salary.

Two months after Bob Suzuki took over as president of Cal Poly Pomona in July, 1991, a public school truant officer who socialized with the president was hired to promote the university in Asia and recruit students.

Henry H. (Huchil) Whang and his wife, Jennifer, who was hired some months later, were paid more than $175,000 in salary and travel expenses at a time when Cal Poly Pomona was laying off faculty and canceling academic classes.

Suzuki wanted the Whangs to raise funds, bring Asian businesspeople over for lucrative seminars at Cal Poly, set up partnerships with influential firms and recruit students for Cal Poly’s English as a Second Language classes, which with their relatively high tuition have been moneymakers for the university.

But one year after the Whangs arrived, Cal Poly had raised only $20,000. Whang had arranged one campus seminar. And the university’s ESL classes had fewer foreign students than before he came. On top of that, the university was smarting from a poorly attended South Korean conference that even Whang, its organizer, described as “disappointing.”

Whang was terminated shortly after the September, 1992, conference and says that he and his wife no longer have dinners or travel with the Suzukis, as they once did. But The Times has learned that the cash-strapped university continued paying Whang’s salary for five months until his contract expired in February of this year.

In interviews with the Times, Suzuki declined comment on why the relationship was terminated or what he thought of Whang’s performance in the university job.

By all accounts, Suzuki initially believed that Whang could make important contacts and bring Asian students and business leaders in contact with the university.

Suzuki said that despite their social relationship, he did not know what Henry Whang, 51, did for a living before coming to Cal Poly Pomona. In any case, Suzuki says he did not hire Whang; he merely introduced him to his aides, including the dean of continuing education, who ran the ESL program. Suzuki said the dean, Van Garner, was so impressed that he insisted Whang be hired.

Garner agrees with Suzuki’s account.

But four of the five Cal Poly vice presidents during the time of Whang’s hiring dispute Suzuki’s account. Those four have since left the university for other academic posts.

Top college administrators recommended against hiring Whang because he was unqualified, the former vice presidents said, but Suzuki ordered the Walnut resident hired and gave him free rein to travel and spend money.

“I had no idea who Henry Whang even was, and I conveyed our objections to Suzuki,” said Bruce Grube, Cal Poly’s former provost and academic vice president, who left to become provost at the University of Southern Colorado. Grube said both he and Garner felt uncomfortable about Whang’s qualifications, which mostly consisted of 15 years as a truant officer with the Los Angeles Unified School District. “The president was just dead set on having this guy. We were basically told to hire him.”

In his interviews with The Times, Suzuki denied this, saying he merely introduced Whang to his top lieutenants as someone who should be “considered” and “tried out” for a job.

“When I made suggestions, that’s exactly what they were,” Suzuki said. “They might have misinterpreted what I was saying.”

But Ruben Arminana, the former Cal Poly vice president for finance and development who is now president of Sonoma State University in Northern California, backs up Grube’s claim. Arminana said that “Van Garner told me the president had asked him to hire Whang.”

“I’m not sure we knew exactly what Whang was going to do,” Arminana added. “There was no job description. There was no search. He was hired . . . because the president had an idea what he wanted to do and had someone he believed could do it.”

Garner denies that Suzuki ordered him to hire Whang. But he told The Times he was not completely aware of Whang’s previous job experience before working for Cal Poly. Garner said he believed Whang was an “upper-level administrator” with the Los Angeles public schools, but said he did not remember Whang’s background or his qualifications.

Records indicate that Whang worked as a truant officer from 1977 to 1992, one of 185 such employees in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

An LAUSD spokesman said Whang took a one-year illness leave in fall 1991--just as he was hired by the university. Whang told The Times he had injured his back. But during that time he flew around the world as Cal Poly’s acting director of Asian development. He resigned formally from LAUSD in June, 1992.

In an interview, Whang said he still respects his friendship with Suzuki and his wife, although the two couples have not communicated. He also wants to leave the door open for further business opportunities with Cal Poly. Jennifer Whang said she misses going out to dinner with the Suzukis and that it hurts her to think of the gulf that now lies between them.

Whang said he warned Cal Poly officials when he took the job that it would take three to five years to establish a reputation for the university in Asia that would yield results. But the Korean-American--whose father was vice chairman of the Korean National Assembly--believes that his contacts and friendships in Korea qualified him to be a liaison in Asia, where family connections can be very important.

“Trying to get money out of someone’s pocket is very difficult,” Whang said. “Eventually I could draw some out, but sometime in the middle I was terminated, so what can I tell you. Now if someone goes to Asia and says, “I’m representing Cal Poly,” at least they won’t say, ‘What’s that?’ Cal Poly’s name is known now. It wasn’t when I started.”

Whang says officials of the continuing education department initially voiced concern at the money he was spending abroad--such as $300 dinners--but saw on their own trips to Asia how much hotels and restaurants cost.

Besides, Whang said of his Asian contacts, “A lot of these people were in very high places. I cannot take them to McDonald’s so obviously it gets very expensive. But the return was quite a bit, in terms of having friendships with Cal Poly.”

Whang may have family connections, but his resume indicates no background in fund raising, marketing, recruiting or university development, according to Cal Poly officials.

According to the resume, Whang served as provost of the 60-student World Mission Theological Seminary in Koreatown from 1990-91 and taught education part time at Cal State Los Angeles from 1986-88. He earned a doctorate in educational administration from the University of Wisconsin in 1971 and is an ordained Presbyterian minister.

Whang told The Times that before his LAUSD experience, he also worked for two years as a coordinator for the United Nations fund for population education, which took him to Third World countries around the globe.

Suzuki said his goal in creating the liaison job was to “internationalize” California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, which has a student body that is 41% white, 31.8% Asian, 19.6% Latino and 5.6% other ethnicities.

“We’re trying to save the future of our students,” Garner said. “If students don’t learn to deal with students from other cultures, they’re going to get obliterated. . . . There is a whole other side to this world and it’s called Asia, and this school is pretending that it doesn’t even exist.”

But months after Whang’s forced departure, a number of inconsistencies and questions still swirl around him and his role at the university.

For example, Cal Poly officials were hard-pressed to explain how Whang’s connections translated into concrete benefits for Cal Poly Pomona. Suzuki said Whang filed descriptions of his trips and what was accomplished on them. But the president couldn’t find the documents himself, and said the continuing education department had them. When questioned about the purported narratives, Garner referred a reporter to Suzuki.

The only details Garner provided are that Whang established a sister-school relationship with a South Korean university, recruited 15 Asian students, raised several thousand dollars in overseas donations and helped organize five seminars at Cal Poly for Asian businesspeople. Garner could not provide figures for whether the seminars made money.

Whang disputes Garner’s claim of five seminars, saying he organized only one.

One program that lost under Suzuki’s new plan was ESL. Shortly after Suzuki’s arrival, Cal Poly disbanded a successful language program run out of the school’s International Center that served 80 foreign students recruited largely through word of mouth and promotional materials mailed worldwide.

Suzuki established a similar ESL program in the continuing education department that charged foreign students $2,750 a quarter, almost twice the fee under the old program. Many students were unable to pay the stiff fees and left. The program now has fewer than 60 students.

Randall Burger, acting director of the new ESL program, said the international recruitment done by the Whangs brought in “a few students, but that figure began to dwindle and we began to concentrate again on local recruitment.”

Cal Poly officials could not provide figures to support a claim by Suzuki that the new ESL program under the continuing education department operates in the black. In fact, Garner said he agreed to pay large annual fees to the International Center for taking away its revenue-generating program, so that revenue now is lost to the ESL program. Officials say that payment was $124,000 last year and up to $240,000 this year.

The Suzukis and the Whangs met when Bob Suzuki was vice president for academic affairs at Cal State Northridge and Jennifer Whang, now 40, worked under him as a consultant for Asian recruitment in 1990 and ’91.

Suzuki met Henry Whang while planning a business trip to Korea during that time. He says Whang helped him arrange an itinerary and set up meetings with influential Korean officials. The Whangs and the Suzukis then traveled together to Korea, where Whang provided introductions to key people. CSUN paid Henry Whang’s travel expenses.

Suzuki became president of Cal Poly Pomona on Monday, July 15, 1991. By that Friday, Henry Whang had already organized a news conference for Suzuki to meet with the Asian media. Cal Poly officials say Whang was not paid for this work.

Whang was hired as a consultant in continuing education on Sept. 18, 1991, earning $3,000 a month for half-time work. University records show that Whang made his first request for a cash advance a month later. Garner approved Whang’s request for $18,360 from continuing education funds for a business trip to Korea on Oct. 29, 1991.

So began a pattern that continued a full year. Whang would obtain a sizable cash advance and take two- and three-week business trips to Asia.

The Whangs received total cash advances of about $85,000 for seven trips during the 11 months from October, 1991, to September, 1992, according to university documents obtained by John Engelke, editor of an alternative campus newspaper.

Cal Poly officials claim the Whangs spent $60,000 and returned the rest, although Garner refused to provide the documents to support that.

Whang was promoted to acting director of Asian development on March 2, 1992, at a $60,960 annual salary. Jennifer Whang was hired on April 8 as a consultant and promoted into a permanent position as “overseas specialist” on July 1, with the specific job of recruiting students from Asia.

Cal Poly officials have refused to say exactly how much Jennifer Whang made, but documents from the university personnel office indicate her position paid between $34,108 and $41,160 annually. On top of that, she made a commission, but university officials declined to say for what.

The amount spent on salary and expenses for the Whangs “sends a very wrong signal about where our priorities lie,” said Richard Santillan, president of the Cal Poly Pomona chapter of the California Teachers Assn.

At the same time, Cal Poly Pomona has laid off or failed to rehire 82 lecturers and six faculty members, Santillan said. This has forced the loss of 630 classes, about 10% of the university’s total academic offerings, Santillan said.

Suzuki and Garner defended the money spent on the Whangs, saying that the continuing education department pays for itself with money earned from programs such as extension classes and ESL. That money is kept separate from the state money used to pay teacher salaries and could not have been used directly to prevent layoffs.

But administrators concede the university can use continuing education money for campus maintenance, equipment and other campuswide needs.

The Whangs’ swan song at Cal Poly was a Seoul conference on solid waste management they organized and co-hosted with a Korean firm called Waters Co. Ltd. Henry Whang said he persuaded the firm’s owner, a friend, to pay the $20,000 to $30,000 expenses to fly a contingent of administrators from Cal Poly to Seoul. But the conference drew few participants, despite a university press release that said more than 200 would attend.

Suzuki said the conference drew 80 to 100 participants and generated extensive TV coverage in Korea, but one person present pegged attendance at 40 to 50 tops. Ed Barnes, Cal Poly’s waste management expert and former director of the Landlab project who spoke at the conference, said opening ceremonies had to be delayed for an hour and a half because so few people were present--and that most of those were dignitaries, not enrollees.

Shortly thereafter, “when all the politicians left, the attendance dropped way way down, to one handful, two handfuls,” Barnes said.

Suzuki said he cannot discuss why Whang was put on paid leave Oct. 5 or why Jennifer Whang resigned that same day. Former top administrators said Suzuki was incensed by the low turnout at the conference.

Meanwhile, Whang denies he was fired, saying he left “to pursue other things”--even though he continued to draw a salary.

On Oct. 30, less than a month after the Whangs parted ways with Cal Poly, Jennifer Whang incorporated a firm out of her Walnut home called Alpha Waters Co., which distributes water purification devices.

Henry Whang said his wife’s firm is a subsidiary of the Korean firm that co-sponsored the failed conference. He added that his wife has since decided to drop the project because international business involves too much red tape.