Margarita Est茅vez-Abe Named McClure Professor of Teaching Excellence
Margarita Est茅vez-Abe, associate professor of political science and O鈥橦anley Faculty Scholar, has been named the Robert D. McClure Professor of Teaching Excellence.

Established in 2016, the McClure Professorship supports teaching excellence and research and is awarded for a three-year term. The faculty member who holds the professorship directs the Maxwell School鈥檚 suite of signature MAX courses, including Critical Issues in the U.S., Global Community and Quantitative Analysis for the Social Sciences. The team-taught courses provide undergraduates with a broad, interdisciplinary introduction to public and international affairs, citizenship, and qualitative and quantitative approaches to social and policy analysis.
鈥淢AX courses offer a unique opportunity for undergraduate students to experience and learn from a wide-range of disciplines and diverse perspectives,鈥 says Est茅vez-Abe, who has a multicultural background, having been raised in Asia and Europe. She believes that familiarity with more than one culture and one perspective is a requirement for global citizenship and she hopes that MAX courses will help students achieve it.
Est茅vez-Abe specializes in the comparative political economy of advanced industrial countries with an interest in how political and economic institutions are constructed differently across countries and their varying effects on politics and ordinary people鈥檚 lives. She has taught courses on topics such as comparative politics, comparative politics of gender, comparative welfare states and democracy. Before joining 性视界 University, she taught at Harvard University.
She is co-director of the Center for European Studies. Her publications include an award-winning book, 鈥淲elfare and Capitalism in Postwar Japan鈥 (Cambridge University Press, 2008) and two edited volumes, 鈥淥utsourcing Domestic Work (Care): The Politics, Policies and Political Economy鈥 and 鈥淏eyond Familialism: Recalibrating Family, State and Market in Southern Europe and East Asia.鈥
The McClure Professorship is funded by a gift from John L. and Stephanie G. Palmer, with additional support from members of the Maxwell School Advisory Board, alumni and friends of the school. The award is named in recognition of Robert McClure鈥檚 long-standing commitment to undergraduate education, including his leadership in creating the MAX courses while serving as Maxwell鈥檚 senior associate dean.
McClure, professor emeritus of political science and public affairs, taught at Maxwell for 45 years. Over the course of his career, he served as senior associate dean in Maxwell for 13 years and as director of the University’s Honors Program for three years. He retired in 2014.
This story was written by Sophia Moore.