Faculty senators went into a closed-door session Friday to hear a report on the financial status of the Medical Faculty Associates, a group that owes more than $250 million to GW.
Faculty Senate Operations Coordinator Liz Carlson told the senate via email a day before the meeting that she moved Chief Financial Officer Bruno Fernandes’ MFA report to the top of the agenda after discussions with him, the senate’s Fiscal Planning & Budgeting Committee Chair Susan Kulp and Executive Committee Chair Ilana Feldman. In a second, unsigned email sent less than two hours before the meeting’s scheduled start time, the senate office said the meeting would begin in executive session, meaning all nonsenate and nonadministrative attendees would not be initially admitted.
Dean of Students Colette Coleman, Vice Provost for Enrollment and Student Success Jay Goff, Vice President for Safety and Operations Baxter Goodly and Executive Director of Media Relations Shannon McClendon were among the officials that left the meeting after senators went into executive session. The email told attendees to expect 45 minutes for the closed-door portion of the meeting, but the executive session lasted roughly an hour and a half.
University spokesperson Julia Metjian said a faculty senator made a motion for executive session, which was voted and approved by the senate. She said executive sessions are usually held when there is a need for a “closed or confidential discussion” with administrators and faculty senators.
Metjian said the MFA has been working to reduce its budget deficits, but persistent losses point to “deep and systemic challenges.” She said Bill Elliott, the MFA’s new CEO, is working to address the MFA’s issues “comprehensively” as they aim to build a “sustainable clinical practice” that supports both the District’s health and wellbeing and provides a training setting for GW’s medical students.
“While external factors have played a role, internal structure and operations are also contributing factors,” Metjian said in an email.
The financial status of the MFA — a group of physicians and faculty from the School of Medicine & Health Sciences and GW Hospital that owes more than $250 million to GW — has been a source of frequent conflict between officials and faculty senators as faculty have long pressured the University to evaluate the MFA’s financial losses and their potential effects on GW’s “underfunded areas.”
Fernandes typically delivers the MFA’s fiscal year update at the Faculty Senate’s October meeting. In last year’s report, he said the MFA wouldn’t pay back its $200 million debt to the University by the end of FY2024 and projected it would instead lose between $30 to $50 million this fiscal year, walking back GW’s profit projections for the second year in a row.
Senators moved into executive session in February to discuss the MFA’s Q2 financial report at Feldman’s suggestion. At the time, Jennifer Brinkerhoff, a faculty senator and professor of international affairs, asked Feldman about the status of filling in faculty who are not in the senate about the MFA’s finances.
After the MFA granted GW full governing power over the enterprise in 2018, the organization lost more than $43 million in FY2020 and another $49 million the next year. The nonprofit group of doctors, nurses and health care staff used to break even, sometimes exceeding expenses by millions.
Officials initially attributed the enterprise’s losses on the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and have maintained that they can revive the organization’s financial viability, despite former MFA leaders’ comments that the enterprise should be financially stable by now.
After the senate ended executive session Friday, University President Ellen Granberg said the third-party firm that officials hired last month to investigate GW Police Department’s existing training protocols and safety and compliance measures taken by department personnel during the arming process are “on campus,” and “engaging in interviews.”
Officials hired the third-party firm after former GWPD officers in late September reported gun safety violations, insufficient firearms training and a poor working environment that led to high turnover within the department in the past year, but officials declined to say which firm they hired.
Granberg said officials “widened the scope” of the firm’s investigation, adding that officials expect a final report at the end of 2024 or the beginning of 2025. She did not specify why officials widened the scope of the investigation or what the third party is now additionally investigating but confirmed the investigation is not determining if officials should unarm the force.
Granberg also said officials intend to distribute a report to the community once the third party completes the investigation. She said she’s not aware of any conversations with the Board of Trustees — who approved the department’s arming in 2023 — about potentially unarming the force.
“I am not aware right now of conversations within the trustees about this, I think everybody’s awaiting the results of what we’re looking at now,” Granberg said.
Brinkerhoff asked Granberg how the University plans to navigate the potential impacts of President-elect Donald Trump’s administration, raising concerns that international student enrollment dropped under his first administration due to Trump’s travel ban and stories of students and professors from six Muslim-majority countries being banned from entering the United States.
Granberg said that after international students during Trump’s first term found themselves unable to return to the United States, universities around the country “made it clear” to students that all students were welcome at their institutions, a mission that they wish to continue. GW enrolled about 1,600 international students in fall 2023, according to Provost Chris Bracey’s annual core indicators report in March.
“That took a lot of different forms at a lot of different institutions but absolutely making sure that all of our community know that we want them to be a part of us, and nothing about who’s in the White House changes that,” Granberg said.
Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs Rumana Riffat also delivered her annual salary equity review progress report, which identified schools with potential faculty salary outliers that officials need to adjust to achieve more equitable pay. She said the Columbian College of Arts & Sciences saw the largest number of outliers, with 24 and said officials made 16 adjustments.
She said the Milken Institute School of Public Health and the Elliott School of International Affairs had the second-most outliers, tied with nine each. She said officials made four and five adjustments, respectively, to the schools.
Last year, CCAS had 27 outliers, the most of GW’s 12 schools and colleges, and officials made four adjustments. Milken followed behind with second-most outliers, with 14 outliers and five adjustments.
Bracey said that earlier on Friday, the University began the “conversation phase” of the strategic framework development process during a retreat with the senate. He said that at the retreat, senators discussed feedback that officials have received from the community about the process and recommendations made by the Education Policy & Technology Committee.
Granberg announced the formal launch of strategic plan development in September after a series of conversations with GW community members last year. Currently, the Innovation Committee, made up of faculty and officials, is identifying opportunities for growth to include in the plan, including through town halls and conversations with community members. The committee will present a report to the Steering Committee at the end of the semester, which will then draft the framework during the next semester to be presented to trustees in the summer, according to the framework website.
Sarah Wagner, a faculty senator and professor of anthropology, shared the three goals that the EPT Committee recommends officials add to the plan, including establishing a six-year graduation rate target of 90 percent, creating goals for retention rates between students in their first and second years, as well as between students’ first and third years and use these goals to measure the effectiveness of potential new programs and policies.
“This is our fulsome, our strong message to say that, as we are in this conversation stage, as the strategic framework and ideas, now is to imagine what are treating graduation rate goals as not merely something we tag on later,” Wagner said.
Goff said the committee’s goals will help GW consider ways to improve student success personalized to individuals. He said the committee’s goals “align perfectly” with work he has already been doing to achieve targets for enrollment that the EPT Committee established during the 2020-21 academic year.
Wagner and the EPT Committee also announced a pilot program for Blackboard Ally, an extension of the course management platform, which provides feedback to faculty on the accessibility of their documents using ratings and suggestions for improvement. She said officials will turn on the extension for all courses during in spring 2025 as they gather feedback, though faculty can opt out.
Granberg also announced an internship program that the Office of the President will run in collaboration with the GW Center for Career Services. She said officials will open applications early next year and the program’s initial summer cohort of undergraduate and graduate students will be placed into internships with humanitarian organizations.
Fiona Riley, Jenna Lee and Sachini Adikari contributed reporting.
