Eva Paus awarded the Mount Holyoke College Faculty Award for Service

It is fitting that Eva Paus is the recipient of the College’s inaugural award for service. In a career of many “firsts,” Eva was the founding co-director of the Weissman Center for Leadership as well as the inaugural Carol Hoffman Collins director of the McCulloch Center for Global Initiatives, which she led with great distinction from 2004-2019. She also founded and then chaired the Entrepreneurship, Organizations and Society (EOS) Minor and introduced the Social Innovation Initiative. A dedicated member of the Economics department, where she has taught since 1987, and a stalwart of the International Relations department, Eva has served on committees for strategic planning and assessment and twice chaired the Planning and Budget Committee.

In her teaching, scholarship and service, Eva advocates for—and demonstrates—the power of a liberal arts education that is rigorous, ethical and globally focused. With an unerring belief in the value of international education and the importance of good citizenship, she has worked relentlessly to craft and sustain an intellectual community where teaching and learning are cross-disciplinary and collaborative. Eva has championed the extraordinary international diversity of the campus, defying national and global trends toward isolationism and xenophobia.

Eva has launched and participated in numerous initiatives aimed at enriching the life of the College. She is a passionate and inspiring teacher and a generous caring mentor. She leads with great wisdom and grace, speaks her mind clearly and without equivocation; she is comfortable with her own views but willing to entertain alternative perspectives. Leadership advice, Eva style, is “rather than getting angry, we must be constructive; be patient, but be pushy.”

First as the director of the Weissman Center and then of the McCulloch Center, Eva connected scholars and practitioners from around the world with the College. She argued for embedding experiential learning throughout the curriculum, creating research and internship opportunities for students to connect classroom learning and study abroad with local community-based projects. Notably Eva set up the College’s signature BA/MA Program with the Graduate Institute in Geneva.

Eva is in the forefront of ambitious curricular innovations at the College. As one colleague put it: “Eva always had big ideas and big goals; she has an incredible ability to get things going and to get things done.” She promoted case method teaching across the campus, led the Global/Local Initiative, and served as the co-PI for a NEH funded initiative designed to prepare students for engaged citizenship in an interdependent world.

With colleagues from Mount Holyoke and the Five Colleges, Eva organized conferences on leading-edge topics such as offshore outsourcing, the rise of China, building peace in post-conflict societies, and the future of work. Global Challenges conferences brought hundreds of students together with faculty from different departments, all striving to understand and tackle problems that call for creative and collective solutions.

Thanks to Eva’s vision and her commitment to transforming Mount Holyoke into a hub for international education, the College in 2015 received the prestigious Senator Paul Simon Award for Comprehensive Internationalization from NAFSA, the Association for International Educators. Eva is the recipient or co-recipient of grants from the Mellon, Freeman, Hewlett, Teagle, and Rockefeller foundations.

A prolific scholar, Eva has written and edited at least nine books, and numerous articles, book chapters, and working papers on globalization, economic development, international trade and finance, prompting her colleagues to exclaim: “Does Eva ever sleep”?! Energized by fresh ideas and projects, Eva on any given day will email news stories, calls for conferences, or new opportunities, saying, “What do you think? Could we do this? Or do we already do this”? Eva’s enthusiasm is infectious and she is indefatigable! We are delighted to present Professor Eva Paus with Mount Holyoke’s Faculty Award for Service.