President DeGioia To Become President Emeritus of Georgetown

John J. DeGioia (C'79, G'95) announced he is stepping down from his role as university president after 23 years and will become president emeritus and will continue as a member of the faculty.

DeGioia is the longest-serving president in Georgetown's history. Over his tenure as Georgetown's 48th president, DeGioia has expanded the impact and footprint of the university while strengthening its Catholic and Jesuit identity and deepening its commitment to academic excellence. He is the first lay person to lead a Jesuit institution of higher education in the U.S.

DeGioia is transitioning to his new role as he continues to recover from a stroke he suffered in June.

Robert M. Groves, provost and executive vice president, has been appointed interim president as Georgetown's board of directors launches a search for the next president of the university. Joseph A. Ferrara (G'96), vice president and chief of staff to President DeGioia, has been appointed to a new role as senior vice president and chief of staff.

"Serving as the president of Georgetown has been the privilege of my lifetime," DeGioia said in a message. "I look forward to continuing to advance and support Georgetown's mission and the university community that means so much to all of us. I remain deeply proud of the work we have done together to strengthen the Georgetown community, our nation and our world."

After graduating from Georgetown as an undergraduate in 1979, DeGioia joined the university's administration and served in a variety of administrative roles before becoming president on July 1, 2001.

While president, he continued to teach an undergraduate course as a faculty member in the Department of Philosophy. Most recently, he taught first-year students as part of a seminar program inspired by the Jesuit theme of cura personalis, or "care for the whole person."

Advancing Excellence at Georgetown

Since 2001, DeGioia has guided Georgetown in its efforts to advance academic excellence and expand its impact in the nation's capital and as a global institution of higher learning.

With DeGioia's vision, Georgetown has grown new and existing academic programs, deepened opportunities for student learning and engagement, and advanced Georgetown's mission of education and service globally.

In 2013, for example, Georgetown established the McCourt School of Public Policy - its first new school in nearly 60 years. A decade later, in 2023, McCourt moved into a newly constructed, landmark buildingon Georgetown's expanding Capitol Campus in downtown Washington, DC - one of the recent transformational efforts launched during DeGioia's presidency.

"It is hard to put in words the depth of Jack's impact at Georgetown," said Thomas A. Reynolds III (B'74), chair of the Georgetown board of directors. "Since first arriving on campus as an undergraduate student in 1975, Jack has spent his entire career at Georgetown and has helped shape every facet of the university. Under Jack's leadership as president over the past 23 years, Georgetown University has grown and flourished as a global leader in higher education."

Deepening Catholic, Jesuit Identity

For the past two decades, DeGioia has guided many new efforts to engage Georgetown's Catholic and Jesuit identity.

Early in his presidency, he formed the role of vice president for Mission & Ministry to deepen the university community's understanding of Ignatian spirituality. Over the years, he helped to expand and support one of the largest Campus Ministry programs in the country.

He continued to strengthen Georgetown's engagement with the Catholic Church, forming new partnerships and collaborations with the Vatican and traveling annually to Rome to engage with Catholic and Jesuit leaders.

The university has also held many significant events to mark milestones in the Church and the mission and role of the Church in the world. Gatherings over the past two decades have reflected on Vatican II and landmark documents such as Nostra Aetate; Church history and events such as the Council of Trent; Church engagement with other religious traditions; and papal encyclicals such as Pacem in Terris, Laudato si', and recently, Fratelli Tutti,as part of an ongoing projectto reflect on the culture of encounter described by Pope Francis.

The Office of the President has also collaborated on faith-based initiatives with the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, acenter established in 2006that's dedicated to the interdisciplinary study of religion, ethics, and public life. For the past 16 years, the Office of the President and the Berkley Center have hosted a regular Faith & Culture seriesto engage writers and artists whose work is at the intersection of these issues as well as a Building Bridges Seminarto foster dialogue between Muslim and Christian theologians.

In 2013, DeGioia helped to establish the university's Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life, a program that promotes dialogue, builds bridges across political, religious and ideological lines, and encourages young Catholic lay leaders in their faith.

Expanding Access and Belonging

During DeGioia's tenure, Georgetown has sought to strengthen its efforts to promote access, affordability and belonging.

Georgetown's financial aid budget has grown to $285 million in 2024, with about 50% of undergraduate students receiving financial aid. The expansion of financial aid was accompanied by the creation of the Georgetown Scholars Program(GSP) in 2004, founded to provide wraparound support for first-generation college students and students from low-income backgrounds. Twenty years later, GSP has served more than 2,600 students and prepared students to succeed at Georgetown and beyond.

Georgetown has continued to attract more talented and more diverse classes of students. Undergraduate admissions has seen a record-breaking number of applicants in recent years, this past year receiving more than 25,000 applications.

DeGioia has also supported efforts to strengthen belonging at Georgetown. In 2008, for example, Georgetown became the first Catholic university to open a LGBTQ Resource Center. And in 2023, Georgetown was the first Catholic and Jesuit university to establish a Disability Cultural Centerto celebrate, connect and support members of the disability community.

DeGioia has been a longtime advocate for undocumented students and the Dream Act. In 2011, he testified before the U.S. Congress in support of the Dream Act, and in 2017, he served as a founding member of the Presidents' Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, an alliance of U.S. college and university leaders committed to addressing the ways immigration policies impact students.

He has also advocated for student mental health, hosting a number of national convenings of higher education leaders, partnering with the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Steve Fund, and the Mary Christie Institute, to focus attention on the mental health needs of college students.

"From the peer leaders in the residence halls to the centers for counseling and psychiatry, health education outreach, and support groups - our campuses have deep and strong programs in support of the health and well-being of our young people," DeGioia said at the American Academy of Arts & Sciences' conference he led on mental health in higher education in 2019. "And we are asking ourselves, given the mental health challenges of our students, what can we do to strengthen our communities to meet their needs."

Fostering Religious Diversity, Interreligious Dialogue

In his work to welcome students of all backgrounds, DeGioia sought to strengthen Georgetown's commitment to interreligious engagement and supporting students of all faith traditions.

Over the past two decades, Georgetown has renovated and created new sacred spaces, including renovations to Dahlgren Chapel and Copley Crypt, the campus sacred space where Orthodox Christian liturgies and Catholic masses are held, and the renovation and renaming of a chapel for Protestant and Catholic faith communities in honor of Sr. Thea Bowman, FSPA, a Black Catholic religious sister.

Most recently, Georgetown created a larger sanctuary space in Makóm, a Jewish gathering space on campus; opened the first-of-its-kind masjid on a college campus; and built the Dharmālaya, a meditation center for members of Dharmic spiritual traditions.

The university also created a retreat space in the mountains of Virginia for Georgetown community members. The Calcagnini Contemplative Center, which opened in 2013, offers retreats for faculty, staff and students.

Promoting Innovation in Higher Education

From the beginning of his presidency, DeGioia supported faculty in developing innovative approaches to research and teaching.

For example, Georgetown's Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship (CNDLS), the Engelhard Project for Connecting Life and Learning and the Doyle Engaging Difference Program have helped faculty develop new pedagogical practices and employ innovative designs and technologies in their courses and create learning opportunities for students in and out of the classroom.

In 2013, DeGioia launched the Designing the Future(s) of the University initiative, which invited community members to explore issues facing higher education and experiment with new ways to deliver Georgetown's educational mission into the future.

The Red House, an educational research and development unit within Georgetown, emerged from this process, and it has since designed new immersive and interdisciplinary academic offerings. The Baker Trust for Transformative Learning in the Red House, for example, has made strategic investments in pilots across Georgetown's schools that develop the skills, mindsets and values necessary for graduates to take on the world's greatest problems and shape a more just world.

DeGioia has also bolstered interdisciplinary collaboration and the creation of a wide range of academic centers across Georgetown.

In 2006, for example, Georgetown established the Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice, which enriches artistic and intellectual life at Georgetown through the written arts. The Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poorempowers working people to build an equitable, sustainable economy through new resources and strategies. And the Psaros Center for Financial Markets and Policyconducts research and drives solutions on the intersection of finance and policy.

Recently, Georgetown formed a cross-campus network of centers and institutes to further interdisciplinary collaboration, research and action on technology, ethics and governance. The Tech & Society Initiative includes the Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation, the Center for Digital Ethics, the Center for Security and Emerging Technology, the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law, Communication, Culture & Technology, the Department of Computer Science, the Ethics Lab, the Institute for Technology Law & Policy, the Knight-Georgetown Institute, and the Massive Data Institute.

Focusing on Health

Before he was president, DeGioia led the university in forming an academic health system partnership with MedStar Health in 2000. Less than two decades later, Georgetown and MedStar Health reaffirmed their commitment to expand and strengthen their partnership with a new 50-year agreement.

As president, DeGioia oversaw the launch of two new schools: the School of Nursing, which reflected a renewed commitment to the largest healthcare profession; and the School of Health, which focused on the university's interdisciplinary strengths in health, health care and policy. The two schools evolved from Georgetown's former School of Nursing and Health Studies.

"For more than a hundred years, Georgetown has been a home for nursing education. As we begin this new chapter with the School of Nursing, we are so excited to see what will unfold," DeGioia said when the two schools were announced. "The School of Health represents a new phase of our work to positively impact the health of people around the world."

During his time as president, Georgetown also established new impactful efforts to address health disparities in DC, including the Office of Minority Health and Health Disparities Research, the Ralph Lauren Center for Cancer Preventionand the Health Justice Alliance, a cross-campus partnership that trains the next generation of health, policy and legal leaders to work together to advance health justice, while also serving vulnerable populations in the District.

In recent years, the university expanded its commitment to global health.

In 2019, Georgetown established the Center for Global Health Practice and Impact, which employs nearly 500 Georgetown colleagues who work locally in seven African and Caribbean countries to help improve international health outcomes.

Georgetown's university-wide Global Health Institute, created in 2022 as the successor to the Global Health Initiative, brings together faculty, students and staff through research, teaching and service to develop concrete solutions to global health problems.

Caring for Our Common Home

Throughout his presidency, DeGioia promoted academic initiatives to study the environment and the urgent environmental challenges facing our world. This work was inspired in recent years by Pope Francis' 2015 encyclical, Laudato si': On Care for Our Common Home.

"As a Catholic and Jesuit university, we believe caring for our environment is one of the most urgent moral and practical concerns of our time," DeGioia said in 2017. "[We] seek to strengthen our ongoing efforts to bring the intellectual and spiritual resources of our community to bear on the important work of being ever more sustainable as a university and contributing to our environment in beneficial and concrete ways."

In 2013, Georgetown created an Office of Sustainability to lead operational efforts advancing sustainability on campus. The university's efforts were recognized by the U.S. Department of Education in 2023, which named Georgetown a 2023 Green Ribbon School Postsecondary Sustainability Awardee for its innovation in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and becoming more energy efficient.

Under DeGioia's leadership, Georgetown has expanded its research and academic studies on the environment and climate change.

In 2015, the university established the Georgetown Environment Initiative to accelerate collaboration and research on the environment. In 2022, Georgetown launched the Earth Commons, the university's Institute for the Environment & Sustainability, which focuses on research, education, and action in areas such as environmental justice, climate change and energy transitions, environmental health, food and water security, and biodiversity conservation. It has partnered with multiple schools within Georgetown to offer undergraduate and graduate degreesin the environment.

Engaging with Past and Present

During his tenure, DeGioia has engaged with some of the most challenging issues of the day.

In 2015, he launched a working group on Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation, which resulted in a public apologyfrom Georgetown, the Archdiocese of Washington and the Society of Jesus for the 1838 sale of 272 children, women and men by the Maryland Province of Jesuits, who ran Georgetown at the time.

The university has continued to engage in a long-term process to respond to Georgetown's role in slavery and the legacies of enslavement in the nation through the Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation initiative. Georgetown has founded centers and institutes like the Racial Justice Instituteand the Center for the Study of Slavery and Its Legaciesto contribute research, scholarship and public programming to better understand the past and build a more just future.

Georgetown's ongoing work on racial justice builds on years of engagement with the District of Columbia.

In 2003, DeGioia established the Martin Luther King Jr. Initiative, which invites Georgetown community members and the greater Washington, DC, community to celebrate the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts every year.

During the celebration, Georgetown honors local leaders who are working to solve key issues in DC with its John Thompson Jr. Legacy of a Dream Award, named for the legendary Georgetown head basketball coach emeritus, advocate and community leader.

Georgetown has also expanded engagement with the District of Columbia and beyond through the Prisons and Justice Initiative(PJI), which was established in 2016 with financial support from the Office of the President. Now, PJI supports a number of academic initiatives in partnership with schools at Georgetown, including a professional development and entrepreneurship programand a paralegal programfor formerly incarcerated individuals, as well as a bachelor's degree programin a Maryland prison and a scholars program in the DC Jail for incarcerated students.

Building a Global University

In addition to his leadership in DC, DeGioia spearheaded Georgetown's efforts to engage the global community.

In 2005, Georgetown established a new campusin Education City, Doha, Qatar. In 2008, Georgetown led the creation of the Center for Transnational Legal Studiesin London, a one-of-a-kind partnership with 22 law schools.

The university has also maintained offices in Singapore; Nairobi, Kenya; and Rome, Italy, to expand its global engagement.

Most recently, Georgetown initiated a new program, Georgetown Asia Pacific, which launches in Indonesia next year, as well as an executive MBA program in Dubai.

In 2020, university leaders formed the Georgetown Americas Institute, an academic center dedicated to addressing key challenges and opportunities in Latin America.

New academic centers have also supported engagement in global issues, such as the 2003 founding of the Mortara Center for International Studies, the 2005 naming of the Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim Christian University, the 2010 founding of the Steers Center for Global Real Estate, and, in 2016, the elevation of the Program for Jewish Civilization to the Center for Jewish Civilizationand the founding of the Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues, and in 2023, the Baratta Center for Global Business.

In 2013, DeGioia launched the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Securitywith former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to examine and highlight the roles of women in fostering peace and security and growing economies worldwide.

DeGioia also helped to create and curate an ongoing lecture series named for the South African leader Oliver Tambo, in partnership with African Studies at Georgetown. Over the years, Georgetown has welcomed South African President Thabo Mbeki, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and 2011 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Leymah Gboweethrough the series.

Enhancing Georgetown's Fundamentals

Over his tenure, DeGioia navigated the university through multiple national and global crises, including the September 11th attack just a few months into his tenure as president, the 2008 financial crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Through these times, he provided steady leadership and ensured the strongest possible framework was in place to support Georgetown's students, faculty and staff. In addition, DeGioia maintained a strong commitment to shared governance and the role of faculty in guiding the academic work of the university.

He modernized Georgetown's operations and strengthened its financial position, expanding the resources it has to support its people and academic programs.

The Georgetown endowment has grown from $0.7 billion (ranked 70th in higher education) in 2001 to $3.6 billion (ranked 44th) in 2024, enabling the university to significantly increase the support that the endowment provides to the operating budget. Research funding has grown from $141 million to $389 million.

DeGioia has led three university capital campaigns during his tenure, including the final years of the "Third Century Campaign," a $1 billion campaign; the "For Generations to Come" Campaign, raising $1.67 billion; and the ongoing "Called to Be" Campaign, which has raised $2.3 billion toward a $3 billion goal.

Developing Major Campus Infrastructure

During his presidency, DeGioia oversaw the construction and renovation of a significant number of buildings across the university's campuses, creating new academic, research and student spaces that have shaped Georgetown's living learning community.

In 2016, the District of Columbia Zoning Commission unanimously approved a historic 20-year campus plan to support the university's future development, which Georgetown developed in close collaboration with neighborhood leaders through the Georgetown Community Partnership.

DeGioia also guided the development of Georgetown's Capitol Campus, anchored around Georgetown Law. In May 2024, DeGioia outlined his vision for the Capitol Campus and its growing impact in downtown DC.

Shaping Intercollegiate Athletics

Going back many decades, DeGioia has been involved in the national landscape of intercollegiate athletics. He served as Chair of the NCAA Board of Governors from 2020 to 2022, as well as a member of the NCAA Division I Board of Directors and as Chair of the NCAA Division I Committee on Academics. He also served as a commissioner on the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics.

He played a central role in the reorganization of the Big Eastconference in 2012 and has played a significant role on the Big East Executive Committee.

Leading in Higher Education

DeGioia's impact has extended far beyond Georgetown University.

From 2016-2017, he served as chair of the Board of Directors of the American Council on Education (ACE), and he has also chaired the Board of Directors of the Forum for the Future of Higher Education. He has served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Carnegie Corporation of New York and was formerly a member of the National Association of Independent Schools.

He has also served on numerous higher education leadership boards related to business, Washington, DC, mental health, immigration, global engagement, health, civic engagement, and Catholic and Jesuit identity.

DeGioia has been recognized for his leadership, excellence and impact in higher education.

He has been presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in Academia by the Sons of Italy and the Catholic in the Public Square Award by Commonweal in 2012. He was honored as a "Brave Thinker" by The Atlanticin 2012 and as "Washingtonian of the Year" by Washingtonian magazine in 2008.

DeGioia has received honorary degrees from Miami Dade College (2008); Loyola University, Maryland (2009); Queens University, Belfast (2009); Sacred Heart University (2011); Mount Aloysius College (2015); Seattle University (2016); and Regis University (2018). He has also received an honorary fellowship at Glyndŵr University (2010), as well as the "Esteemed Friend" award from Sophia University in Tokyo (2014). He was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2010.

Personal History

DeGioia earned a bachelor's degree in English from Georgetown University in 1979 and a Ph.D. in philosophy from the university in 1995. Prior to his appointment as president in 2001, DeGioia held a variety of senior administrative positions at Georgetown, including Senior Vice President and Dean of Student Affairs.

DeGioia spent his early years in Orange, Connecticut, and Hanford, California. He and his wife, Theresa Miller DeGioia (C'89), a Georgetown alumna, and their son, John Thomas, live in Washington, DC.