In September 1998, Dr. Hal Schmitt, director of industrial programs and technology transfer in UT’s Research Office, and Dr. Susan Mettlen, vice chancellor for information infrastructure, created a UT-Industry partnership that involved Bechtel Jacobs Development Company and Prosolvia AB in the establishment of an advanced visualization and virtual reality center. Bechtel Jacobs Development Company was established by the Bechtel-Jacobs partnership to implement community economic development programs. (The company had won a five-year contract [1997] to manage the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Environmental Management and Integration efforts.) Mettlen and Schmitt promised that the center would create one hundred new jobs in the area within a year’s time, as well as act as a magnet to bring related high technology businesses to the area, generating more than $26 million worth of jobs over its life.
Prosolvia AB, headquartered in Goteborg Sweden and with US headquarters in Michigan, was a world leader in virtual technology and operated some 20 virtual technology centers. Bechtel Jacobs would provide a $1.1 million grant to UT provide software for the research center, and Prosolvia would own the center and provide the hardware—in a facility to be located on the newly developing waterfront close to UT. Prosolvia was to use the center principally for training and development purposes, and UT would use it for research.
In 2005 a UT internal audit levied charges of conflict of interest at both Mettlen and Schmitt, leading to her resignation and his retirement. The audit held that because they needed someone to direct the start-up funds for the center during its inception, Prosolvia hired Hal Schmitt, creating a conflict of interest. Mettlen, who had no authority to do so, directed the expenditure of the working capital. Both Mettlen and Schmitt sought extra pay from UT for their work on the center, and both requests were denied. Mettlen, the report alleged, then arranged to have herself paid through a Missouri firm that was to design marketing materials for the center. Mettlen contended that, tired of not being paid for the work she was doing, she turned her materials over to Arrow Professional Services, which was to do Prosolvia’s Internet-based marketing for the Missouri marketing firm. Because APS insisted upon being paid in advance, she said, she wrote a personal check for $16,000 and was simply being repaid by the marketing firm, not paid.
She resigned to take a position as vice president for information science and technology at the University of Dentistry and Medicine of New Jersey. Prosolvia filed for bankruptcy protection, and plans for the center were abandoned.