Interim University President Mark Wrighton announced Friday that University officials will direct more than $50 million into 14 new professorships to bolster GW’s medical enterprise.

Officials will use $50 million from the University’s sale of GW Hospital in May to fund the professorships, nine of which will be in the School of Medicine and Health Sciences, according to a University release. Wrighton said the professorships are crucial to supporting GW’s recruitment of medical experts and the University’s mission to improve health research and patient care.

Officials will also fund one professorship in the Milken Institute School of Public Health, one in the School of Nursing, two in the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences and one in the School of Engineering and Applied Science.

“George Washington University faculty are key to our mission of education, research and patient care, and endowed professorships are critical to our recruiting efforts and ability to further this mission,” Wrighton said in the announcement.

Officials sold GW’s 20 percent stake in GW Hospital in May for about $54 million, according to minutes of a June public hearing with the State Health Planning and Development Agency within the D.C. Department of Health.

Barbara Bass – dean of SMHS, vice president for health affairs and CEO of the Medical Faculty Associates – said faculty in SMHS and the MFA strengthened GW Hospital over the years and said the new professorships is a “stride” to making GW a premier health care destination.

“The recognition of the GW academic medical enterprise as a national health care destination will fundamentally be built on clinical performance excellence, but it is renowned faculty who bring transformative clinical expertise, discovery and innovation that will fuel that success,” she said in the release. “These endowed professorships are evidence of our commitment to that future.”

The University will begin searching for faculty to appoint to these professors “over the coming months,” per the release. Officials will announce the first professorship, which will be within SMHS, this fall.