Updated: Feb. 13, 2025, at 11:12 a.m.
Graduate School of Political Management community members are hopeful its interim executive director will stabilize the school as officials work to permanently fill the position after a two-year vacancy.
GSPM, which is housed in the College of Professional Studies, named Angela McMillen Ayres as its interim executive director in November after a yearslong push from stakeholders to fill the position since its last director left in summer 2022 amid declining enrollment. During her term as interim director, which Ayres said will end in July, she plans to boost the school’s visibility, focus on increasing enrollment and lay the foundation for a permanent director to increase GSPM’s competition with similar programs at other schools.
The school’s enrollment has declined for the last eight-consecutive years, dropping 64 percent between 2017 and 2024 — from 424 to 152 students. GSPM enrollment dropped by nearly 20 percent from 2023 to 2024, according to GW’s enrollment dashboard.
“I hope we get this fabulous executive director who can come in and embody what our stakeholders are looking for and somebody who can work with the administration, work within the framework of the College of Professional Studies and work with our faculty and really get something,” Ayres said. “I mean, it’s already great but just get it hustling again.”
Ayres said that until she was appointed interim director, she sat on the GSPM Board of Advisors — a 17-person team that pays dues to the school and advocates on its behalf to GW and the public but has no decision-making power. The board had advised CPS Dean Liesl Riddle to fill the GSPM executive director role since former director Lara Brown departed in summer 2022.
In a meeting with the GSPM board in August 2023, Provost Chris Bracey recognized the school’s need for an executive director but said enrollment drops across the University meant that GW’s finances couldn’t permit a hiring at that time, Ayres said. She said Bracey has not spoken with the board about the funding for the current director search.
Members of the board said in 2024 that since 2022, they have worked to grow the school’s visibility and funding and recruit new faculty to fill gaps left by the lack of a director as plans to hire a replacement remained unclear. Riddle said last April that GSPM plans to hire a new director through “continued strategic efforts and pending increased enrollment.”
Jesse Comart, a member of the board since 2018, said it is “critical” for GSPM to have a director, and that the permanent hire should have an “acumen and stature” similar to Brown’s.
“I think that was helpful to have her there, and I think we lost that when she left,” Comart said. “I think that’s something that’s going to be a key piece of what we’re going to be looking for in a permanent director.”
Ayres said Riddle asked her to serve as interim director in November and charged her to oversee the permanent executive director search and prepare the role so the eventual hire can “hit the ground running.”
Ayres said she completed a stakeholder report for Riddle and Bracey, the product of her meeting with 24 GSPM community members, like faculty, students, staff, alumni and board members, to evaluate the future of the school, determine its biggest strengths, challenges and goals and their vision for GSPM’s permanent director.
She said stakeholders are looking for a permanent director who will be successful in fundraising and has practical political experience, a background in leadership or administrative roles and strong communication skills.
Ayres said while she is director, she wants to focus on enhancing GSPM’s marketing to find “likely students” through “micro-targeting” efforts, like recruiting congressional staffers through events on Capitol Hill and attending conferences, like the Conservative Political Action Conference, which will take place this month.
“If your enrollment is going down, then you need to take a step back and say, ‘What do we need to do to make it go up again?’” Ayres said. “And what we need to make it go up again is being more focused on who are our most likely students.”
Ayres said she is working with CPS Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Tobias Greiff to create a job description for the permanent executive director role, compiling information from stakeholder input on the qualities they want to see in the next executive director and previous job descriptions for the role.
She said the school will incorporate a job description from the 2011 executive director position description after the 2010 retirement of Christopher Arterton, the founding dean of GSPM, and a job description that Grieff and GSPM Career Services Director Margaret Gottlieb assembled in 2023 but later paused.
After Arterton retired, then-CPS Dean Kathleen Burke restarted the director search in early 2011 and dropped the position’s doctoral degree requirement after none of the candidates during the initial search fit the description, and faculty and alumni alleged a lack of stakeholder inclusion in the search process. CPS eventually hired former Rep. Mark Kennedy (R-MN) in early 2012, who served as GSPM director until 2016.
Ayres said GSPM has retained the executive search firm Isaacson, Miller — which completed the search for Kennedy in 2011 and 2012 — to help secure the school’s next director. She said the CPS Dean’s Council, chaired by GSPM Professor Matthew Dallek and composed of CPS faculty and a subcommittee including faculty, Riddle, herself and other advisers, will oversee the process.
She said the subcommittee will review applications, select candidates for interviews and make recommendations to the full Dean’s Council, which will present the nominees for the role to Riddle, who will make the final decision. Ayres said she will not be a candidate for the permanent director position.
Ayres said the school will have the role filled by the end of July, when her contract as interim executive director expires.
“We are doing it in a very methodical and thoughtful way so that we can come up with the best candidate to move GSPM forward,” she said.
Arterton, the school’s founding dean, said the GSPM director needs to have a blend of academic and political experience to manage all academic aspects of the role, like building out degree programs, while also attracting students interested in politics.
“Finding somebody who can do both and has exposure and bona fides, a reputation in both areas, I think is a hard task and will only be accomplished successfully if there is participation by stakeholders,” Arterton said.
Comart said the GSPM board “strongly recommended” that Ayres involve student and faculty input in the search process. It was “hugely important” to involve all GSPM stakeholders in the search because directly consulting with those groups is the only way to meet their wishes, he said.
“There’s no reason that GPSM shouldn’t be the preeminent practical political program in the country,” Comart said. “And I don’t think it’s seen that way today, and it should be, and I think we have a long way to get there, but we should be competing with the top schools both in D.C. and the country.”
Dallek, a professor of political management at GSPM, said he hopes the permanent director focuses on recruiting students, supporting the faculty and research they conduct, raising money and expanding GSPM’s scholarship pool. He added that he hopes the new director will effectively communicate to the board, CPS and the University.
“The person has got to be able to be really effective at talking to various stakeholders about the benefits of the school, why the school matters, what its purpose is and the role it plays in the sort of Washington academic and political ecosystem,” Dallek said.
The GSPM Student Association executive board said in a joint statement that it believes Ayres’ work as interim director will be “critical” to ensuring the school can continue to offer and develop “excellent” academic programs.
“With her vast experience and insight, we are looking forward to supporting her efforts in ensuring the school’s success in any way we can,” the statement reads.
This post has been updated to reflect the following:
This post has been updated to include a more specific timeframe for when former director Lara Brown left GSPM and when Provost Chris Bracey met with the school’s board of advisors.
