Updated: Oct. 28, 2025, at 10:14 a.m.
GW is gaining community support for the strategic framework officials launched Tuesday, marking a divergence in public perception of the University’s priorities and engagement strategies after the former president’s plan faced criticism for sidelining stakeholder voices.
Student, faculty and staff leaders said the strategic framework reflects their input over the last year and a half and marks a shift from the community backlash former University President Thomas LeBlanc faced for his 2019 plan, which included a goal of cutting undergraduate enrollment by 20 percent and increasing STEM majors by 30 percent. University President Ellen Granberg and Interim Provost John Lach unveiled the University’s first guiding framework since 2020 last week — a blueprint outlining plans to boost student success and expand GW’s research enterprise over the next five to seven years, starting with three priorities.
The framework outlines the three priorities on its website — generating scholarship with impact, preparing students to be strong and resilient leaders and strengthening the University’s foundation for excellence — along with 12 goals GW plans to accomplish in the next five to seven years, which officials will implement in a phased approach to ensure “clear progress” and adaptability over time. The website states that adopting a framework — rather than a plan, as GW did under LeBlanc — establishes broad priorities instead of specific actions, allowing flexibility in implementation amid ongoing changes in higher education.
The launch of the strategic framework comes as officials work to address the University’s $24 million structural deficit as of July, with Granberg saying last month that she wants to hold off on funding “fancy initiatives” until the budget stabilizes. It also comes as the University contends with the Trump administration’s policies affecting higher education — including initiatives targeting diversity, equity and inclusion programs, immigration, research and federal student aid — while facing a looming demographic cliff as college enrollment declines nationwide.
Chief of Staff Scott Mory said the Steering Committee — a group of 15 officials Granberg charged on Oct. 2 with overseeing the implementation of the framework and designing a process to source and evaluate phase two initiatives — will continue to work with the Faculty Senate, Staff Council and Student Government Association as the framework is implemented over the next five to seven years, and each working group will solicit community feedback.
Officials announced last month the creation of three working groups to implement the initial framework initiatives, including enhancing GW’s interdisciplinary research ecosystem, better leveraging D.C. experiences as part of student learning and improving academic and career advising.
“This spirit of collaboration has shaped the development of the framework itself and will continue to guide its implementation,” Mory said in an email.
Community members said their voices are reflected throughout the strategic framework and expressed anticipation for officials to advance its three initial projects and expand future initiatives, following concerns last year from some members that officials did not reflect their input in the draft framework.
Nicholas Anderson, an assistant professor of political science and international affairs who served on the strategic framework’s Innovation Committee, said a lot of the final framework reflects the committee’s extensive recommendations to the Steering Committee, including calls for new faculty hires, facility upgrades for speaker events and stronger research support.
“Lots of it looks very familiar, which is great as far as I’m concerned because we spent a lot of time and thought a lot about it and incorporated the feedback from a lot of members of the GW community,” Anderson said.
Granberg charged the group of Innovation Committee members, which included mostly faculty and some officials, in October 2024 to make recommendations about the framework to the Steering Committee based on community feedback. The group concluded their work in January 2025, Anderson said.
Anderson said the committee met for two hours weekly during the fall 2024 semester and into the spring 2025 semester, where Deputy Provost for Academic Affairs Terry Murphy — the leader of the group — facilitated discussions each week based on an agenda that reflected Granberg’s charge to the group. He said each committee member was paired up and responsible for hosting a town hall for community members to collect feedback, which they incorporated into their recommendations for the Steering Committee, who helped craft the framework.
Officials in April released a draft framework for additional feedback from the community before the Board of Trustees adopted the framework during their June retreat with no amendments, Mory confirmed in July.
“We got lots of excellent feedback from outside people, faculty, students, even some parents, staff, and we took the outside feedback very seriously and incorporated it into our work,” Anderson said.
Granberg said in an interview with The Hatchet last week she’s learned from previous strategic plans she’s worked on in her career that a plan should not be “hatched quietly,” and instead the community should evaluate the ideas officials come up with, and officials should listen and allow their thinking to be changed.
The Faculty Senate passed a resolution in February 2020 criticizing officials for violating shared governance principles after the Board approved LeBlanc’s plan to decrease the undergraduate student population by nearly 20 percent while increasing the proportion of STEM students to about 30 percent of the population.
Staff Council President Kim Fulmer said Mory and Murphy engaged the body on multiple occasions regarding the strategic framework, including in March when they met with elected representatives and the Executive Committee to go over the planning process for the framework. She said she attended a community session for the strategic framework last year and was “very happy” to see a focus on bettering staff experience at GW, a goal under the framework’s priority to strengthen their foundation for excellence.
Fulmer added that the framework as a whole is meant to improve the student experience and staff are “integral” to student success.
Staff Councilmembers voiced concerns last fall that the pillars officials were discussing to implement into the framework did not include staff’s concerns about low compensation, limited opportunities for career advancement and a lack of inclusion in University initiatives. They said staff recognition was not included in the same way officials were including student and faculty concerns.
“You have to invest in staff salaries and welfare to attract and retain the top talent,” Fulmer said in an email. “Students want the staff to be stable and supported because we directly impact their experience at GW.”
SGA President Ethan Lynne said he’s “incredibly optimistic” about the framework’s direction, and he is looking forward to the SGA engaging with the three working groups — composed of faculty and staff — officials launched in the framework’s first phase, especially those involved in improving student advising and leveraging D.C. experiences.
He said he’s “most passionate” about officials’ goal to meet the full demonstrated financial need of residential undergraduate students, which officials plan to do through fundraising, adding that he wouldn’t be able to attend GW without financial aid.
Granberg said last week the framework’s second priority — preparing students to be strong and resilient leaders — involves student success, including the “ambitious goal” of trying to meet the full demonstrated need for all residential undergraduate students that will take the University the length of the framework’s full implementation to achieve.
Lynne said Mory and Murphy spoke with 20 SGA members in March for over an hour about their initial thoughts on the draft framework and solicited feedback from members, where he said they voiced their opinions to ensure the framework prioritized student needs as universities can’t exist without students. He said officials engaging faculty and students on the process and opening up ways of communication makes the framework stronger.
“I had members, lower staff members on my team that still went and met with them afterwards to talk about different specific points with the plan,” Lynne said. “They kept those communication channels open, which is I think what helps make it a lot stronger.”
Ariana Nazir, Dylan Ebs and Leanna Joju contributed reporting.
This post was updated to correct the following:
Due to an editing error, the Hatchet incorrectly reported Nicholas Anderson was an associate professor. He is an assistant professor. We regret this error.
