As debate surrounding the proposals of the Academic Life Working Group picks up, Provost James O’Donnell, left, met with student press on Thursday to discuss the progress all three working working groups have made this school year.

“At the end of the day,” he said, the initiatives are about “helping Georgetown line up with its own best image of itself …. To get us where we want to be, and aren’t always as good as being as we ought to be.”

He and President John DeGioia, he said, accepted the recommendations of the Admissions and Recruitment Working Group. First and foremost, Georgetown is “really ramping up its campaign for more financial aid dollars.” One third of Georgetown’s ongoing Capital Campaign, he said, will go to create more need-based scholarships. The University is not yet publicizing how much it has taken in through the Capital Campaign but O’Donnell said, “It’s gonna be a bunch more than we took in last time.”

“Last time, we took in billion. So my official statement is, this one will be a billion and a bunch.”

The University can begin to implement some of the suggestions of the three working groups right away. He said that a desire diversity will be a part of the faculty hiring process for next school year. Others, however, will take more time and resources.

“Developing the African American Studies major probably requires a reallocation of resources or new resources, preferably news resources. Faculty hiring and curriculum changes can be added through existing resources, but we could always have more.”

When asked whether the University was still considering an Asian-American Studies program or Latino Studies program, he said, “I think that there’s just no question that we need to do better in African American Studies. That’s somewhere where we’re way behind our peer schools. Beyond that, it becomes a question of, how much effort do you put into further individual ethnic communities, or do you study ethnic communities theoretically? …. We are already better at thinking about, studying every single other part of the world except America …. We should be thinking about how our American studies about African American, Asian, Latino groups can draw on our larger understanding of the world.”

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