Paul W. Mulvey Honored With 2024 UNC Board of Governors Award for Excellence in Teaching

Paul W. Mulvey, associate professor in the Department of Management, Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the Poole College of Management, has been named the 2024 NC Board of Governors Award for Excellence in Teaching. The honor is the university system’s most prestigious teaching award, recognizing and encouraging faculty’s extraordinary teaching contributions.

“Paul’s dedication to teaching and his long-term commitment to NC State and its students deserve the utmost gratitude and recognition,” said Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Warwick Arden. “He has proven himself to be an outstanding educator, mentor and colleague, and we are fortunate to have him as a member of our esteemed faculty.”

He is also the director of undergraduate programs in business administration representing the Department of Management, Innovation and Entrepreneurship and the Department of Business Management. Mulvey is a co-founder of the Human Resources Advisory Board, whose 18 members are HR executives helping to advise HR curriculum decisions and facilitate research projects in the Poole College of Management. He has been a faculty member at NC State since 1995. 

Mulvey and nominees from NC State’s colleges were honored at the University Teaching Awards Luncheon and Ceremony on April 11. Mulvey will be recognized at the Celebration of Faculty Excellence on April 30, in the spring 2024 commencement program, and will be given his medal by a Board of Governors member at the spring commencement ceremony.

In a letter of support for Mulvey’s award nomination, former student Kimberly Allen Richards said, “Despite his five other mentees, his responsibility as the faculty advisor to the Park Scholar Class of 2004, and his regular courses in the Poole College of Management, Paul went above and beyond his duty as my mentor. Paul took a genuine interest in my success that continues to this day. His guidance as a professor, mentor, and friend has been instrumental in helping me to not only achieve my goals, but more importantly, to think outside of the box…Over all the other talented professors I got to know at NC State, Paul has had the greatest single impact on my success as a student at NC State and in my current career. He has been, and continues to be, a truly outstanding teacher and lifelong mentor.”

Mulvey’s teaching philosophy takes a “pay-it-forward” approach. He believes that it is a privilege to help students learn and be successful. This does not end with the end of a class session or a semester, it is his lifelong commitment to them.

Mulvey’s research focuses on employee reward systems, work teams, recruitment, trust and toxic leadership. He has written two books and published many book chapters and research articles in prestigious journals such as Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Perspectives (formerly Academy of Management Executive), Behavioral Science & Policy, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Small Group Research, and Industrial Relations.  Currently, he is an associate editor of Group & Organization Management.

He has received several research grants from WorldatWork (formerly the American Compensation Association), TIAA (formerly TIAA-CREF), Sibson & Company, IBM and the Council of Labor Research, as well as serving as an expert witness on performance management issues. He has conducted executive education and consulted with over 60 organizations, and he is a member of the WorldatWork, the American Society of Training and Development, the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology and the Academy of Management. Mulvey’s research was featured in several outlets including NPR’s “All Things Considered” and a cover article in USA Today.

At NC State, Mulvey has developed several courses and taught more than a dozen different classes, including over two decades of teaching leadership seminars and academies for the

prestigious Park Scholarships Program. Mulvey was among the first five faculty members at NC State to have an online course certified by Quality Matters and the first to have his course recertified at NC State. Additionally, he has led numerous executive education seminars and won several Poole College of Management and NC State teaching awards. He was named an inaugural 2022-2023 Poole College of Management Teaching Faculty Fellow.