A former ISU professor who denied allegations of mishandling more than $140,000 in grant money is planning to sue Iowa State and the State Auditor for defamation, he said.

Jerry Willis, former professor of curriculum and instruction and former director of the Center for Technology in Learning and Teaching, said the university and state auditor’s office were wrong in accusing him of misusing money from a grant for unauthorized expenses.

“They have so damaged my reputation with falsehoods that I really don’t see any option,” Willis said. “They did a press release that went all over the country that says Jerry Willis has done all of these terrible things.”

Kathy Dobbs, associate controller for Iowa State, said Willis had not contacted the university about a lawsuit as of Friday.

Willis said the investigation began when the purchasing department noticed computer parts were being charged to his purchasing card and sent to his home address. He said the parts were being used to build computers for a conference covered under one of his grants.

He said the parts were shipped to his home because he did not have enough storage space in his office. He then brought the parts as needed to campus for assembly.

“They jumped on that. Once they saw it, they investigated it,” Willis said. “But, of course, as it turned out, that wasn’t true. We were actually trying to get as much out of the money as we could. But, by that time, they had already invested a lot of time into the investigation, and maybe a lot of reputation into the investigation.”

Willis said he thinks the university may have continued the investigation after not finding anything in order to save face.

“To have done all that and not find anything, I’m suspicious that there might be this motivation at the end of this,” he said. “Once you don’t find anything at the end of all you’ve worked at, then you’ve got to find something.”

Willis said it is common for a university to ask for explanation of grant expenditures, but not to form an investigation.

“They’ve looked at any expenditure on the grant that may need to be questioned in any possible way, whereas normally the process would be to ask just how this was done,” he said.

Willis said one piece of information in the report has already been proven false.

ISU student Dmytro Smyrnov, was said to be Willis’ stepson in the report.

Smyrnov is not Willis’ stepson, which Willis said is an example of the auditor’s office not checking the information supplied to it by Iowa State.

State Auditor David Vaudt said an addendum to the report will be released this week that will clarify that Smyrnov is not Willis’ stepson.

Vaudt said the fact had been checked, but Smyrnov did appear to be Willis’ stepson because they had the same mailing address and a joint banking account.

Although it is possible that much of the money did apply to the grants, the report also addresses times in which the agreement of the grant was not followed, Vaudt said.

“The grant agreement required documentation, and that information has to stand on its own,” Vaudt said.

“The documentation has to support the purpose of the expenditure.”

Willis said the reason for the lack of documentation is normally the grant administrator is not the same as the account manager for the grant.

Willis said he did not have the money to employ an account manager.

Although he has been in charge of grants at other universities before coming to Iowa State, he said he has limited experience with accounting.