On Mondays and Wednesdays, professorial lecturer Eli McCarthy teaches an Introduction to Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution course in Duques Hall. But on Tuesdays and Thursdays, he fraternizes with GW’s crosstown rival on the hilltop.
Since he started teaching in Foggy Bottom in 2017, McCarthy has split his time between GW and Georgetown University, lecturing on topics like nonviolent communication, justice and peace studies. While he declined to comment on which school truly has his heart, he is partial to the educational software at one of the schools: Georgetown’s Canvas.
“It’s just easier to navigate and takes less time to set it up and work with it,” he said in an email.
McCarthy is one of a few GW professors who have bent their loyalty to the Revolutionaries to teach at neighboring universities across the D.C. region. Three of those faculty members said their time spent at other local schools has expanded opportunities for students to attend educational events and trainings across other region universities and revealed the distinctive qualities that define GW, Georgetown, American University and the University of Maryland.
McCarthy started teaching at Georgetown in 2011 and tacked GW courses onto his schedule to rack up teaching opportunities, which were “limited” at Georgetown at the time. He said professors who teach at two universities like himself encourage collaboration among institutions and that sometimes students utilize his cross-school ties to learn about professors or events at the other university, like the one time he had students from both GW and Georgetown attend a nonviolent skills training at the universities.
“When there are opportunities to kind of collaborate together, whether it’s doing service or advocacy or just educational events I think that’s a wise move, kind of way that we could grow together,” he said.
McCarthy said his students haven’t had a strong reaction to his professorship at both schools because he doesn’t advertise it, but his GW students typically catch on since he uses his Georgetown email to communicate with them. He said his GW email automatically forwards to his Georgetown email, which helps him keep all of his teaching materials in one place.
He said he splits his time between the two schools through scheduling requests for courses to his respective universities, which helps him balance his schedule. He said cross-school allegiance entails navigating two administrative structures — for example, the Justice and Peace Studies program at Georgetown houses his peace studies courses, compared to the Department of Religion at GW.
“There’s all sort of administrative hoops and things to keep track of when you’re at two different places versus if you were just at one that would save me a little bit of time, a little less of a headache,” he said.
Savreen Hundal, a visiting assistant professor of communication, said she spent her first two years at GW driving between her home in Virginia, GW’s Foggy Bottom Campus and the University of Maryland, College Park, where she was also working as an adjunct professor of communication. She said she wanted to gain more professional experiences and expand her income and decided to teach simultaneously at GW and UMD from 2021 to 2023.
“The very first year, it was a great opportunity to kind of get my foot in the door at GW,” Hundal said.
Hundal said her weeks were split between Foggy Bottom and College Park, teaching four classes at UMD on Tuesdays and Thursdays and two classes back-to-back at GW on Wednesdays. To manage her course load between the universities, she said she taught higher-level classes, like Communication Theory, at GW and requested to only teach the introductory classes at UMD, which she had been teaching there since starting as a graduate teaching assistant in 2013.
“The lower-level classes, though they’re very significant and important, I had done them for so long,” Hundal said. “I already knew my lesson plans. I can teach them with my eyes closed.”
During her spell as both a Revolutionary and a Terrapin, Hundal said she also completed her dissertation for her doctorate in communication from UMD and gave birth to her son. After finishing the spring 2023 semester, she said managing the commute to College Park and her course load while caring for her son became unmanageable and she decided to settle down at GW by working as a part-time, adjunct professor until she earned her full-time spot in fall 2024.
Hundal said she longed to establish a secure “academic home” as she began her career as a professor and researcher, but she was thankful to secure flexible professional opportunities at different universities in the D.C. area — all within the confines of the Capital Beltway.
“You can do the whole circle in less than an hour without traffic,” Hundal said. “It’s not that big. So I’m also very lucky in the sense that even though I couldn’t necessarily find my academic home right away, I had the ability to kind of jump around a little bit.”
Hundal said she never sensed a rivalry brewing between GW and UMD when she worked on both campuses because the universities are “very different.” She said students are often drawn to College Park because of the large campus, Big 10 football games and active Greek Life community, while GW attracts students who are more career-oriented and want to immerse themselves in the nation’s capital.
“I even ask them, ‘Well, do you go to the basketball games?’ And it’s like, ‘No,’” Hundal said, referring to her GW students.
Hundal said she has picked up on a sense of one-sided competition between GW and Georgetown, where she worked as a lab manager for their psychology department from 2010 to 2013.
“I worked at Georgetown for a little bit,” Hundal said. “I never heard anything about GW. But from GW, I do hear a little bit about Georgetown.”
Dan Whitman, a professorial lecturer at GW and a former adjunct assistant professor at American University, said he started teaching at American in 2009 for their Washington Semester program until the university stopped offering the course he taught. He said Director of the Institute for African Studies Jennifer Cooke invited him to teach at GW in 2020 and he has taught the course Africa: Challenges & Prospects since.
He said the GW and American student bodies “want to be where they are” in D.C. but also experience anxiety about money and grades due to the pressure to take advantage of a university with high tuition. He said students at both schools can feel confined to their respective campuses, and he encourages his current students to take advantage of the Consortium of Universities of the Washington Metropolitan Area — which includes GW and American — to experience educational opportunities that their home school doesn’t offer.
“AU students, they play this game of hating GW, and GW hates AU,” he said. “It’s very funny, and I know it’s not serious, but it’s sort of a tribal loyalty, which is cute, but it’s a little bit silly. I mean, look, we’re all in it together.”
