A former University of North Texas tenured professor was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison Monday after pleading guilty to federal public corruption charges in the Eastern District Court in Sherman.

James Glass

James Jarrett Glass, 63, who now lists his address as Katy, also must pay more than $109,000 restitution.

He could have been sentenced to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 in addition to restitution.

A UNT police investigation, in cooperation with an FBI probe, revealed last year that Glass funneled more than $463,000 into his private businesses by using telephone systems, employees and computers he had access to as director of the UNT Survey Research Center from 1993 to 2006.

Glass retired in the midst of the investigation. The case against him mostly centered on his use of UNT employees to do work for his private companies and his use of his position at UNT to obtain contracts for those companies.

He created a letterhead-only company with a post office box number for an address and his university telephone number as a contact number.

He also was part of another company that mirrored the re­search center work and benefited from his use of university re­sources.

The Survey Research Center, an arm of the UNT College of Public Affairs and Community Service, conducts surveys via telephone, mail, Internet and focus groups for state and local governments, nonprofit agencies and private businesses.

The center’s staff includes professional researchers and student employees.

UNT Police Chief Richard Dieter said he believes the sentence was appropriate to the crime.

He’s glad that Glass accepted responsibility for the crime, Dieter said.

Because Glass diverted business from the re­search cen­ter while using its re­sources to ac­complish the job, it is difficult to put a finite number on the loss to the university.

“You look at all these numbers; trying to compute the actual loss is hard to do,” Dieter said. “From the police perspective, we believe that the sentence is appropriate and the restitution addresses the potential losses that the university was able to determine. It addresses the conflict of interest and his use of the university’s resources inappropriately.”

DONNA FIELDER can be reached at 940-566-6885. Her e-mail address is dfielder@dentonrc.com .