A Michigan State University professor has been suspended in a real-life “Breaking Bad”-like scenario — after students alarmed at his “erratic” behavior found out he’d served jail time for running a meth lab.
Brendan Doyle was busted in March 2020 for running a clandestine lab while he was then a professor at Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, Louisiana, the Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office said at the time.
He pleaded guilty to running the lab for the unlawful manufacture of a controlled dangerous substance and was sentenced to 180 days behind bars, but only served 90, according to FOX 17.
However, his Walter White-like past escaped background checks when MSU hired him this fall to teach an anatomy and physiology course in the Kinesiology department, MSU rep Dan Olson told the student-run paper, The State News.
It only emerged when students grew so alarmed at his behavior that they started looking him up — eventually finding his mugshot and articles about him online.
“He was just erratic and he just seemed, like, impatient,” sophomore Mackenzie Albee told Fox 17.
On the first day of class, he had a “yelling outburst,” in which he told “students to shut up” — and then had “another outburst” on the second day, Albee told the student paper.
That was the last time Albee said she saw her new professor. He would go on to cancel the next three classes last minute, saying he had a “stomach flu,” according to emails obtained by The State News.
Still, it took them time to find information on their professor because he was listed at MSU under “B. Michael Doyle,” different than the listed “Brendan Doyle” from his arrest.
“Everyone was really shocked, but everyone also already knew he was a little crazy from the first two classes — he had those angry outbursts,” Albee told Fox 17.
“Everyone was in shock and just disappointed with the university.”
After bringing their concerns to department heads, the students were told in an email that their class would be temporarily canceled “due to a health-related issue of the instructor,” according to The News.
Kinesiology department Chair Panteleimon Ekkakakis then emailed students to say they were made aware of Doyle’s arrest on Aug. 15 — before the school year started.
However, Ekkakakis told The News that had been a typo and was supposed to have been Sept. 15.
Ekkakakis also told students the classes would resume with a new professor, saying: “I want to apologize for the disruption and the highly atypical start to your fall semester.”
It remains unclear how much he was making as a professor at the Big 10 school and whether he is being paid during his suspension.
One Redditor described the incident as having “shades of ‘Breaking Bad,’” a show in which Bryan Cranston plays a high school chemistry teacher who starts a meth lab out of an RV.
The Post has reached out to MSU administrators for comment.
