Former San Diego State senior associate athletic director Jana Doggett has been cleared of an allegation that she improperly gained her degree at the university, the North County Times learned Monday.

University president Stephen Weber declined to confirm Doggett was the target of the investigation, citing privacy issues.

"We had an allegation with regards to one of our employees. That's exactly right," Weber said. "We've looked into it."

Weber said that the investigation revealed there had been no wrongdoing.

"This is one where we had access to the records," Weber said Monday after the Mountain West Conference Board of Directors meeting. "We reviewed those records and we don't find any abnormalities in those records.

"We don't see any evidence that there was an improper earning of a degree here."

Weber said the university was prepared to continue looking into the matter, but found no reason to dig deeper.

"At the moment, not only don't we see any (problems) in the records, we don't know what we would track down because we don't see any abnormality to pursue," Weber said.

Doggett was fired on May 22, the same day athletic director Rick Bay resigned under pressure as part of the fallout from the California State University Chancellor's Office audit that outlined irregularities in the athletic department.

Weber also said there has been progress in examining allegations that the athletic department misused the special admissions privileges intended for athletes. The CSU audit said there were nine students in 2000-01 and 14 in 2001-02 admitted to SDSU as student-athletes that otherwise wouldn't have been admitted to the school.

"Now we know the names of those athletes and now he have to go through the process of finding out whether in fact they were inappropriately admitted," Weber said.

"In the event that they were and even in the event that they were not, we have to revise and re-examine our policies and procedures to make sure that prerogative is not used for purposes other than those it was intended."

Weber's still aiming to have an interim athletic director in place by the end of this week.

Meanwhile, the MWC presidents met with NCAA president Myles Brand on Monday. The Board of Directors peppered Brand with questions regarding the MWC's hopes of becoming part of the Bowl Championship Series.

Utah president Bernie Machen said it was clear the NCAA has no plans to intervene in the BCS's treatment of individual conferences.

"It was a reality check for us," said Machen, the chairman of the Board of Directors. "It's clear that the NCAA is not going to be an intermediary or necessarily an advocate for non-BCS schools, which means non-BCS conferences like us are going to have to decide what if anything we're going to do about it."

Both Weber and Nevada-Las Vegas president Carol Harter said the issue involves more than money. They both point out that players are being denied the opportunity to play for a national championship.

"When you're dealing with equity and access issues, it's hard to believe people can say no," Harter said. "It's a nonlevel playing field for student-athletes and it's the only sport that we support where that's true."

The MWC is expected to announce today that it has lifted the moratorium on expansion that runs through June 30, 2004. The presidents discussed expansion Monday and plan to talk more extensively about the subject at today's final day of the three-day meetings.

Machen said that any decision will be unanimous. Part of the debate is whether the eight-team league is best served by remaining status quo or if additional schools would make the conference better.

"We will probably have an answer to that question (today)," Weber said.