A Georgetown University law professor received the 2025 President’s Award for Distinguished Scholar-Teachers, an accolade awarded to Georgetown faculty who demonstrate an impressive ability to integrate scholarship with teaching excellence, the Office of the President announced March 18.
Eloise Pasachoff, the recipient who has taught at the Georgetown University Law Center (GULC) since 2011, specializes in the fields of education, administrative and appropriations law. Her publications focus on how executive agencies and the president influence policy through manipulating congressional funding.
Interim President Robert M. Groves said in an email sent to Georgetown students and faculty that Pasachoff’s commitment to the Georgetown community earned the award.
“As a mentor and community member, Professor Pasachoff is cherished for her earnest generosity of spirit and admired for her remarkable dedication to her students and colleagues alike,” Groves said in his announcement.
Pasachoff, whose academic interest in federal expenditures has recently been the subject of controversy as the Trump administration attempts to freeze funding for various departments, said she appreciates people recognizing the relevance of budget and appropriations law.
“I’m certainly talking a lot about it to reporters, and I’ve been on podcasts and things like that, talking behind the scenes to folks,” Pasachoff told The Hoya. “It’s been kind of amazing to see this thing that I’ve been working on, which was a quiet little area when I started working on it, and see how this has all exploded.”
Kenneth Kellar, a professor in the pharmacology and physiology department and chair of the selection committee, said the nomination process was inclusive of all faculty and students.
“Faculty in all Departments on the main campus, the Law Center and GUMC are invited to nominate faculty who they believe qualify and deserve this important recognition by their peers,” Kellar wrote to The Hoya. “The faculty selection committee is composed of faculty from each of the University campuses listed above. The teaching evaluations by students and comments by other faculty are taken into consideration.”
Pasachoff said she hadn’t expected to receive the award.
“I didn’t know that I was nominated,” Pasachoff said. “I guess somewhere in the deep, dark background of my brain, I had hoped that maybe someday I would be lucky enough to earn this award. But I had no idea that I was even under consideration for this year. I was truly flabbergasted when I heard about it and I was really honored.”
Kellar said the award also represented the recipient’s positive relationship with other faculty members and unique position within the university.
“I think the significance of this award is the recognition by one’s peers that the nominee has done an excellent job as a faculty member and perhaps/probably exceeded expectations of even this University, with its very high-achieving faculty,” Kellar wrote.
Pasachoff said her father is her role model in how she approaches scholarship and education.
“My dad, who died in 2022, was a professor at Williams College for fifty years,” Pasachoff said. “My dad was an astronomer, and he always brought students as part of his research team — I wouldn’t even call them research assistants.”
Pasachoff added that she initially worried whether GULC’s size would provide her opportunities to cultivate similarly deep bonds with students.
“But although it is such a huge law school, it is actually the size of a small college,” Pasachoff said. “And that opened up my thinking to being able to have those close relationships with students that I had grown to admire my dad for having.”
Pasachoff said her work in academia forced her to communicate complex ideas in intelligible ways, allowing her to become a better educator.
“I think it’s like being deeply invested in my research helps me translate important ideas to my students in a really, I hope, deep and meaningful way,” Pasachoff said. “Having to figure out what you really think about things as part of your research, and then translate that to paper, is a skill that really translates into helping students understand the breadth of the field.”
Award recipients receive a three-time annual grant of $10,000 to fund their scholarship. Pasachoff said she hopes to use these funds to continue exploring how government officials control budget allocations.
“I began a book project last year where I interviewed people who work on different parts of the appropriations process in the government,” Pasachoff said. “I had some research support from a wonderful other award from Georgetown Law to help with that project, but that research support is coming to a close. So I’m thrilled to be able to draw on this new set of funds to help transcribe those conversations.”
Pasachoff said her teaching and scholarship is rooted in the desire to give back to mentors who inspired her work.
“I really see it as my job to pay forward all of the wonderful mentoring that I received,” Pasachoff said. “It’s just truly an honor to be able to work with wonderful students at Georgetown and hoping to pay forward the wonderful experiences that I’ve been honored to have in my own life.”
