Officials will present a report on the University and Medical Faculty Associate’s fiscal year 2024 financial results at a Faculty Senate meeting Friday.
Chief Financial Officer Bruno Fernandes will introduce the report detailing financial results from the 2024 fiscal year. The MFA — a nonprofit organization that includes faculty from the School of Medicine & Health Sciences and physicians from GW Hospital — accrued more than $190 million in debt at the end of fiscal year 2023 and lost $80 million in the previous two fiscal years.
At a Faculty Senate meeting in October 2023, Fernandes said the MFA likely won’t break even by the end of fiscal year 2024 but would lose another $30 million to $50 million within FY2024 walking back on previous break even projections. Former interim University President Mark Wrighton retracted officials’ projection that the MFA would break even by the end of FY2023 in January 2023, making Fernandes’ announcement the second consecutive year that officials have backpedaled on their forecast of the MFA’s finances.
The FY2024 financial report comes after Bill Elliott moved from interim to permanent CEO of the MFA in October and former CFO Robin Nichols stepped down in August. Officials have not named a replacement for Nichols.
Faculty Senators passed a resolution in February asking for the Board of Trustees to examine the MFA’s financial situation and the University’s “underfunded areas,” and said there was a lack of transparency from the MFA’s “overly optimistic” financial reports in previous years. Faculty Senators called for additional transparency from University President Ellen Granberg, Provost Chris Bracey and Fernandes in the resolution, asking they release a report that shares both the impacts and opportunity costs of the financial loss of the MFA by March 1, 2024 and then by Feb. 1 each following calendar year.
Sarah Wagner, co-chair of the Educational Policy and Technology Committee, will introduce a report updating faculty on the committee’s Blackboard Ally Pilot Initiative made in collaboration with Student Government Association and the Disabled Students’ Collective and will also report on the committee’s strategic framework recommendations.
The Blackboard Ally Pilot Initiative plans to increase accessibility on the website by rating uploaded documents based on accessibility for students, according to the report.
The Educational Policy and Technology Committee will also review a report from its Strategic Planning Subcommittee. Committee co-chairs Wagner and Irene Foster made three recommendations regarding the University’s strategic framework plan in a letter to Granberg, Provost Bracey, Faculty Senate Executive Committee Chair Ilana Feldman and members of the strategic framework’s Innovation and Steering committees. The letter recommends the University identify a year to establish a six year graduation goal of 90 percent, set “clear, nearer-term” benchmarks for first to second year and first to third year retention rates and that the University prioritize “new initiatives” using the retention and graduation metrics.
Vice Provost for Academic Affairs Rumana Riffat will introduce a progress report from the Faculty Salary Equity Committee. The report states an ad hoc committee, formed at the beginning of the summer, has met a “couple of times” and has reviewed the committee’s methodology and is “considering” additional factors in their analysis on faculty salaries.
The report’s methodology from the Office of the Provost on how it reviews faculty salaries includes factors, like department, rank or time in rank, according to the report. There are two statistical models that are used for the analysis using September 2024 salary data, one “inclusive” of all “regular” faculty and another that excludes faculty hired with tenure, according to the report.
Granberg, Bracey and Feldman will also share reports.
