HARRISONBURG, Va. — Catherine R. Mumaw of Corvallis received Eastern Mennonite University’s 2006 Alumna of the Year award during the Oct. 15 morning worship service of homecoming and family weekend. The award is presented annually to a graduate who has been recognized for significant achievements in his/her profession, community or church.

Dr. Mumaw, a home economics graduate of EMU, returned to teach courses in that discipline at her alma mater from 1957 to 1974. She earned a master’s degree in 1958 and a Ph.D. in 1967 from Penn State University.

She was professor and chair of the home economics department at Goshen College in Indiana from 1974 to 1986, and served as associate professor in the Human Development and Family Studies department at Oregon State University from 1987 to 1995. Through OSU, she helped Bunda College of Agriculture in Malawi update their home economics and human nutrition programs and took part in a faculty exchange program with Avinashilingam Deemed University in India.

Mumaw retired early from OSU to work in Nepal. From 1995 to 1999, through Mennonite Central Committee, she was an education adviser for Kathmandu University School of Education. There, she and her colleagues worked to improve education especially in Nepal’s primary schools. While in Nepal, she served twice as a technical adviser for the Asia-Pacific region of the Food and Agricultural Organization, which developed distance education programs for rural women in Thailand, Laos and Vietnam.