This morning, a commenter republished an email about changes within the School of Foreign Service administration. We decided to put on our journalism pants and investigate the claims.

According to the email, which was sent to SFS faculty and staff by Dean Carol Lancaster, Associate Dean Mitch Kaneda replaced Senior Associate Dean James Reardon-Anderson on July 1 as director of the Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service program.

SFS Director of Communications Beau Boughamer confirmed the changes via email earlier today.

“We are extremely proud and fortunate to have a teacher and advisor of Mitch Kaneda’s quality and character taking on this role,” Reardon-Anderson said of Kaneda, who has advised students as an associate dean for almost a decade.

However, don’t expect Reardon-Anderson to leave the SFS. As Senior Associate Dean, he now “[oversees] all curricular programs, academic appointments and finance,” according to a comment written by Lancaster. Reardon-Anderson’s duties will extend to serving as acting dean when Lancaster is out of the office.

“I didn’t want anyone to somehow get the impression that Jim Reardon-Anderson had left,” Lancaster wrote in an email to Vox.

Jennifer Windsor, former Executive Director of Freedom House, will step in on August 23 as Associate Dean of Programs. Windsor, who previously taught for MSFS, will be in charge of “administration, communications, the career center, the Georgetown Journal, Fellows in Foreign Service, alumni affairs, [and] new initiatives (including putting together an executive education degree),” according to Lancaster.

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Earlier this week, the Washington Examiner‘s Emily Babay reported that Georgetown paid President John DeGioia $911,613 in 2008.

DeGioia’s salary, which included a $150,000 retirement annuity and an allocation for University-provided housing, marks a 40 percent increase over the previous year when he received $642,582.

Babay’s story got us thinking—how much do other University employees take home? According to tax forms filed by the University, it was plenty.

In 2008, John Thompson III made $1,829,757, which made him the University’s highest-paid employee. However, Thompson’s salary was a far cry from the $2,007,508 he was paid in the 2008 fiscal year. (In previous tax filings, compensation was based on fiscal year.)

SFS-Qatar Dean James Reardon-Anderson, who more recently took over “Map of the Modern World,” pulled in $676,025, while Provost James O’Donnell brought home $394,509.

And the three men tasked with building Georgetown’s endowment—Chief Investment Officer Lawrence Kochard ($702,158), Chief Financial Officer Christopher Augostini ($458,497), and Office of Advancement Vice President James Langley ($452,895)—all made the list too.

But, don’t expect salaries to continue to rise in 2010. Last January, DeGioia announced a salary freeze for all senior executives.

Want to know who else is making tons of cash at Georgetown? We’ve got the run-down after the jump.

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Bring back the old Map!

As we reported yesterday, the School of Foreign Service institution, Map of the Modern World, is undergoing major changes this year.  Turns out SFSers aren’t taking too kindly to the alterations.

They’ve started a Facebook group in protest, “Take Back Map of the Modern World.”  The group currently has 392 members, including SFS Academic Council Representative Josh Mogil (SFS ’11) and former Map TA Helen Burdett (SFS ’11).

The group’s description explains their grievances:

Just because Dean Reardon-Anderson wants to take over the course, it doesn’t the course material should change … Map of the Modern World is a pillar of the SFS, and we urge the new Dean to reconsider his changes, not to the class called Map, but to that SFS institution called Map.

Keep Map and its cherished contents intact. Some additions to the course are always warranted, as there have been new developments occuring all the time. That isn’t the same as gutting the course. It’s just one of those binding forces that brings all of us in the SFS together

The group encourages members to invite all their friends in the SFS so that the deans will understand that students don’t support the “watering down” of Map.

All you will need to know to pass the new Map of the Modern World course

Map of the Modern World, the School of Foreign Service rite of passage, is undergoing significant curricular changes and getting a new instructor this year, as The Hoya first reported yesterday.  Instead of the surly and demanding Professor Keith Hrebenak, the course will now be taught by former SFS-Qatar Dean James Reardon-Anderson.

So how will the class be changing?  According to an email from Reardon-Anderson:

The course content has been modified to provide a greater emphasis on physical geography (what is sometimes called “environment”) and to demonstrate how physical geography has influenced large scale human behavior (what is sometimes called “international affairs”) …

The content of the exam will be modified to reflect the new course content.  Therefore, there will be more emphasis on physical geography and its influences and less on topics that were the focus of the previous version of this course [such as political boundaries, colonial legacies and border disputes].

Reardon-Anderson wrote that the change is “partly” related to the effort to add science to the SFS core curriculum.

According to the syllabus Reardon-Anderson used when he taught the course in Doha (posted in full after the jump), four of the 14 lectures will be devoted to science topics like “The Atmosphere,” “Plate Tectonics” and “Global Climate Change.”  The other 10 lectures will be devoted to specific regions.  The course will include lectures on North America and Europe, regions that were previously not covered.  The class will maintain the 100 multiple choice question final exam.

When asked if Hrebenak wanted to stop teaching the course, Reardon-Anderson replied, “I will let him speak for himself concerning his interests in teaching.”  Hrebenak has not yet replied to requests for comment.  Reardon-Anderson did say he would continue to teach other courses at Georgetown, though.

Check out the full syllabus for the revamped course after the jump!

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SFS-Qatar Dean James Reardon-Anderson will be stepping down at the end of this school year, according to a (slightly melodramatic) email recently sent out to students there.

Some of you I have gotten to know inside and outside of class. Some of you I have observed only at a distance. But all of you have helped to make this peculiar outpost of Georgetown in the desert a model for higher education in the twenty-first century. This is an accomplishment that will be remembered through the ages. And your part in it will be remembered by me, as long as I live.

Reardon-Anderson was the first Dean of SFS-Q, which was founded in 2005 and will be seeing its first class of seniors graduate in a few weeks. He will be returning to the Main Campus SFS as the Sun Yat-sen professor of Chinese History. According to the email, Provost James O’Donnell, President DeGioia and freshly-minted interim SFS Dean Carol Lancaster will be working out a process for picking his successor.

Full email after the jump!

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