N.C. State Employee Denounced University Before His Suicide

At 4:30 a.m. Nov. 20, Marshall Brain II, founder of the popular HowStuffWorks website and longtime director of North Carolina State University’s Engineering Entrepreneurs Program, sent an email to those he called friends and colleagues. He wrote that—contrary to what his manager had announced—he wasn’t retiring from the university; he’d been forced out.

Less than three hours later, according to his death certificate, Brain shot himself in his office on campus. He was 63.

He had a wife, four children and a dog named Summer, according to his obituary. “He would do anything for his family, including building a duck pond with an excavator because his future wife said she wanted ducks, or jumping in the car to drive hours to deliver a set of keys to his daughter who had left them at home,” the obit says.

In addition to teaching, Brain published more than a dozen books, hosted a National Geographic television show and appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show. According to his obit, his future aspirations included hiking the Appalachian Trail and building a helicopter with money he’d squirreled away.

No one may ever fully know why Brain killed himself—his lengthy Nov. 20 email didn’t say he was going to take that step, and suicide is complex and may be caused by many factors. But in that email, provided to Inside Higher Ed by a former student who is mourning his loss, Brain said he felt “betrayed” by N.C. State leaders and alleged that higher-ups had retaliated against him.

“I love NC State: the institution, the students and the people here,” Brain wrote. “This love has grown over the course of 46 years. Therefore, to experience this level of dishonesty and betrayal from the administration of NCSU is unbearable.”

The full picture of what Brain said to higher-ups isn’t clear; Inside Higher Ed is waiting for the university to answer an open records request filed Nov. 27, the day after the Technician student newspaper first reported Brain’s death and the email he sent that day. But in that email, Brain started his story with a complaint about something seemingly mundane: a department head springing a plan on him to put a new faculty member’s office in his program’s space.

What followed was “degrading, humiliating, unjust, depressing,” Brain wrote. He said university higher-ups “destroyed” his career for reporting wrongdoing. “I did what the university told me to do,” he said of reporting malfeasance, “and then these administrators ruined my life for it.”

‘She Excommunicated Me’

Brain included in his email what he said was a copy of a July message he received from Veena Misra, head of the electrical and computer engineering (ECE) department.

“Dear Marshall, I want to discuss an urgent space need with you for ECE which is very time sensitive,” Misra wrote. “The Goodnight Chair of Quantum Computing is arriving in August. We are in desperate need of an office for him.”

Misra wrote that there was no other room in Engineering Building II and “we have no other options at this time.” So she wanted to put the new faculty member in the meeting space for Brain’s Engineering Entrepreneurs Program, she said.

Brain told recipients of his Nov. 20 email that there were other options to house the incoming person. “I do not want to give up this space because it hurts my ability to do my job,” he wrote.

“Over the course of a month there were several emails and meetings on this topic,” Brain wrote. “It became obvious that this entire exercise was being done in bad faith, with multiple incidents of lying, incompetence, hypocrisy, information hiding, etc. At the end of the process, there was a particularly uncomfortable moment, and therefore I decided to write up my concerns and send them to Dr. Misra as a way to document the problems leading to this moment.”

He didn’t describe what the “uncomfortable moment” was. But he wrote that “Misra (and an accomplice) committed wrongdoing” and that he told them both so privately.

“Misra exploded in fury,” Brain said. “What came back was a sickening nuclear bomb of retaliation the likes of which could not be believed. She excommunicated me from my department for reporting my concerns to her.”

Brain said he then reported this to the university through its EthicsPoint system.

Misra told Inside Higher Ed in emails Friday that “we are saddened by the loss of Marshall Brain, and our thoughts are with his family and friends.” She said, “I cannot comment on what Marshall has ascribed,” and did not provide a requested phone interview.

According to Brain’s message, a few weeks after his ethics report, he received an email from another department head: Srinath Ekkad, who leads mechanical and aerospace engineering (MAE). Ekkad wrote that starting next academic year, MAE students would no longer “pursue” Brain’s program.

‘Out of the Blue’

In the email, dated Sept. 5, Ekkad wrote, “We have been mulling our curriculum and its impact on our MAE students for the past year or so.” Ekkad said Brain’s program didn’t align with plans for learning outcomes that he seemed to imply were related to accreditation, but he didn’t specify the issues. Ekkad said the decision was made by the “MAE team.” And he cc’d the College of Engineering dean, as well as Brain’s manager, Stephen Markham, the executive director of Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

In his Nov. 20 message, Brain provided his lengthy Sept. 9 response to Ekkad and the other higher-ups he had copied. “In a single email that arrives completely out of the blue, you are instantly killing the longstanding and beneficial relationship between” the MAE department and the Engineering Entrepreneurs Program, Brain wrote. He asked for reconsideration.

He lamented that he and Seth Hollar, the associate director of the Engineering Entrepreneurs Program and an assistant teaching professor in Ekkad’s department, had been excluded from the conversations leading up to the decision. Brain told Ekkad and the others that there had been no complaints or warnings about his program in the past year, when the discussions were apparently taking place. He requested transcripts of the discussions that Ekkad said had occurred with “many of our students.”

Brain also said he hadn’t heard of any accreditation concerns and asked why Ekkad would hide such issues if they existed. And he questioned Ekkad’s ethics, wondering whether he was criticizing the Engineering Entrepreneurs program to other department heads. (In a narrative written after Brain’s death, Hollar said it was this email that started the events that ended in Brain’s ouster.)

In the email he sent the day of his death, Brain alleged that Ekkad began retaliating the same day that Brain pushed back on the decision to end the relationship between MAE and the Engineering Entrepreneurs Program. “Even worse, he began enlisting the help of others to retaliate, all the way up to the provost’s office,” Brain wrote.

Ekkad wrote in an email Friday that “we are saddened by the loss of Marshall Brain. Our thoughts and condolences are with his family and friends.” He said, “I recognize the impact he has made on our students over the years.” He didn’t provide a requested phone interview.

‘You Are Far Over the Line’

A week after Sept. 9, according to Brain’s account, he received a message from his manager, Markham, that makes vague reference to Brain’s alleged misbehavior and mentions discipline.

“Marshall—my colleague, my confidant, my adviser, my friend—you are over the line,” Markham wrote, according to Brain. “While I have tremendous respect for you—you are far over the line of acceptable behavior and you do not acknowledge your destructive behavior. You are not the lone crusader standing up for a righteous cause—you are tearing yourself, and the program, down. I anticipate that you may disagree with this and that is your prerogative, but I must now respond to your repeated, unacceptable behavior. To be clear I am pursuing disciplinary action. I wish with all my heart this was different.”

Brain included an undated message from Markham in which Markham asked him to submit a letter of resignation or face “immediate separation” if he continued to push back. “To avoid an immediate separation you must not engage in the argument,” Markham wrote, according to Brain. “If we agree to an amicable separation and you begin to argue later it will trigger an immediate separation.”

Hollar told Inside Higher Ed that Brain was untenured. Brain said he was given no chance to appeal. One of the last things he wrote in his Nov. 20 email—before briefly listing some disagreements he had with the university in years past—was “To Dr. Markham: You should have supported me, not retaliated against me. Really, everyone who received Dr. Ekkad’s email should have supported me.”

Markham didn’t respond to requests for comment Friday. A university spokesperson did not provide an interview Friday about the situation or answer most emailed questions.

Brain wrote that he had reported wrongdoing eight times but found that “NCSU department heads respond with tantrums and retaliation rather than addressing the problems being reported. Then they use the administration of NCSU (all the way up to the provost) to destroy anyone who tries to report a department head for wrongdoing.”

In his written thoughts on the tragedy, Hollar said, “As bad as the university reacted to Marshall and his emails which resulted in his termination, it would be unfair to directly blame the university for Marshall’s death.” He added, “Don’t get me wrong, the university should acknowledge its role in how things played out. In an analogy, if Marshall’s sadness before these events could be described as a small dormant flame, the university’s actions certainly provided the tinder that turned it into a conflagration.”

Brandon Kashani, the former student of Brain’s who shared his Nov. 20 email, said he was with Brain the weekend before his death. Kashani said Brain was heartbroken over what N.C. State had done to him and had been keeping the saga to himself. Kashani said Brain was the reason he started his own company, a technology platform for zoos, museums and more to showcase their offerings. Brain met with him every week, connected him with people, drove with him to meet his first customer and more. Kashani said numerous entrepreneurs wouldn’t be where they are without Brain.

Kashani is pushing for Markham’s ouster and for a university investigation. “Now it’s been a month with zero public response from the university,” Kashani said.

If you or someone you know are in crisis or considering suicide and need help, call the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by dialing 9-8-8, or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741.