The president of Indiana University of Pennsylvania says no policies were violated, but he won’t reveal why he removed the dean of the College of Health and Human Services after a Tribune-Review investigation and has pledged an outside review.

IUP’s Michael Driscoll would not speak to the Trib when the newspaper raised questions about more than $36,000 in taxpayer spending on travel by ex-dean Mark E. Correia over the past three years and on no-bid consulting work given to Correia’s wife in 2014 by another campus official.

A Trib investigative report revealed Driscoll hired Correia, 48, at IUP after the dean and his wife were involved in similar questionable spending at California State University, San Jose, according to an internal California higher education system audit obtained by the Trib.

Driscoll, 54, complained in a speech to IUP faculty Friday that the Trib’s probe and the “chatter” it triggered on campus had “distracted” officials from more important issues.

Driscoll apparently changed his mind from a Feb. 11 email he sent to faculty announcing that Correia would “transition” from dean to a new position of “special assistant to the provost for curriculum development” effective Feb. 19. Instead, he told faculty Friday, Correia will become a tenured professor in IUP’s Criminology and Criminal Justice Department.

The IUP president did not explain why Correia had been demoted. The only suggestion of a possible reason was a statement that he had scrapped deans in the past over “concerns I had with their ability to lead the college forward.”

Driscoll on Monday again declined interview requests from the Trib. Correia did not return messages left at the university.

Controversy has dogged Correia since he departed San Jose State in 2013 for IUP. An audit dated Sept. 16, 2014, into his management of the California school’s Justice Studies Department found that Correia misused funds on Apple electronics, flowers, theater tickets, massage sessions at nearby spas and even to pay parking tickets. He created “a conflict of interest by hiring a vendor … with whom he had a personal and financial relationship” and accepted additional compensation to oversee her work, investigators determined.

The vendor was Victoria Lynn Travis, according to investigative files leaked to the Trib. He later married Travis.

Eleven weeks after the 2014 audit surfaced, Travis — a student intern at a gas station pharmacy near a home Correia purchased in Arizona — became a subcontractor on an IUP technology project. IUP eventually spent $32,743.27 on her work when she was Correia’s wife, school records show.

That bill included $1,903.27 in charges to fly her to Pittsburgh International Airport from Arizona, rent her a car to travel to Indiana and pay for her lodging and meals at the couple’s house near IUP’s campus. She did not respond Monday to messages sent by the Trib to three of her known email accounts.

Receipts totaling $3,404 traced the April 2015 travel of Correia to a coffee conference in Seattle, plus a side trip to his alma mater, Washington State University. He was accompanied by a female professor who had developed a close friendship with him, according to multiple IUP instructors who talked to the Trib.

Correia signed her travel vouchers, and the trips were funded by a budget he oversaw, school records show. In the 2014 California audit, investigators found that Correia had spent public funds on a junior instructor there, too.

IUP spokeswoman Michelle Fryling has defended taxpayer spending on the Washington state trips because of the “potential development of specialty programs in hospitality and culinary studies.” But the school removed Correia from the junior instructor’s tenure review after professors in November complained that the then-dean’s relationship with her threatened to compromise an independent and objective retention process.

Correia’s fall from power at IUP came swiftly, according to documents linked to his recent contract extension.

In an offer letter dated Sept. 1, IUP Provost Timothy Moerland told Correia that he valued the dean’s leadership and “contributions, dedication and ability” as a “key member of the University’s Management Team,” adding that the Driscoll administration harbored “the utmost confidence in your ability to further advance the mission of the university.”

Correia inked the deal Sept. 4, extending his leadership of the college through June 30, 2017 — but he failed to last past February.

Moerland, 59, did not return Trib messages seeking comment Monday.

Pennsylvania Treasury Department’s employee database indicates Correia continues to draw a $170,461 yearly salary as dean.

IUP’s Fryling said that once demoted to professor, however, Correia will earn a rate set by the collective bargaining agreement, “which would be less than his salary as dean.”

The average annual compensation for the 3,903 professors in Pennsylvania’s State System of Higher Education is about $96,774, according to a Trib analysis.

Carl Prine is a Tribune-Review investigative reporter. Reach him at cprine@tribweb.com or 412-320-7826.