Former MU med school administrator sues over pay, treatment
A former administrator at MU Health Care claims that top officials retaliated against her and fired her after she complained about pay disparity.
Ann McGruder, the former associate director for administration in the department of surgery, sued the university June 26 over sex discrimination and retaliation. McGruder served in that role from 2016 to January 2018, when she claims MU Health Care fired her during a “departmental reorganization” that she called a “sham” in filings with the Missouri Commission on Human Rights.
The lawsuit claims that McGruder began doing some work of the director of administration for the surgery department when she started in August 2016 at the request of Dr. Kevin Staveley-O’Carroll, the head of surgery and director of the Ellis Fischel Cancer Center. In the year she did that work, the lawsuit claims McGruder became aware that MU Health Care had hired Matt Waterman as director of administration.
According to university pay records, Waterman made $186,094 in 2016. McGruder made $95,076 in that same year. McGruder’s lawsuit, though, claims that she was doing some of the work reserved for the director, and complained to Staveley-O’Carroll about the disparity.
The lawsuit claims Staveley-O’Carroll began excluding her from meetings with department heads, which involved her areas of work such as budgeting and faculty recruitment. In August 2017, McGruder claims she asked the medical school dean Dr. Patrice Delafontaine’s office to transfer out of the surgery division due to Staveley-O’Carroll’s “toxic work environment.” That request was denied, according to the suit.
The lawsuit also claims Staveley-O’Carroll would complain about surgery staff to her, and ask her to find reasons to fire people so that he could replace them with his friends.
MU Health Care spokesperson Jesslyn Chew declined to comment on the allegations due to pending litigation.
McGruder is represented by Paul and Peter Gardner, the Blue Springs attorneys also representing Dr. Rachel Brown in her lawsuit against the medical school. Court filings show that attorneys are taking depositions of top medical school officials, including Delafontaine, who left the medical school in June for the same job at Tulane University. Delafontaine’s deposition is scheduled for July 25 in Columbia.
