Alison Hall Mauzé
(Awarded 2009)

The Alumni Service Award is presented to alumni and other friends of Davidson College who have rendered and performed a high degree of service to the institution. Today we are honored to recognize Alison Hall Mauzé of the Class of 1984.

          “Calm, poised and spiritual, with an ease that kindles and
            burnishes conversation, [she] engages the hearts and
            minds of those who meet her, eliciting the best in people.”

So wrote the journalist Elisabeth Laurence of the San Francisco Examiner in describing this recipient of the Alumni Service Award from the Class of 1984.  Ms. Laurence may well be a talented investigative reporter or, then again, perhaps she has simply known Alison Hall Mauzé for twenty five years – just as we have been privileged to know her.

She came to Davidson through Salem Academy, and quickly wove herself into the fabric of campus life; the daughter of a school teacher and a college president, she had it in her blood.  An active member of Rusk House, the Y-Student Service Corp, Amnesty International, the Women’s Concerns Group and even playing on the Field Hockey Team, Alison still found time to participate in College Union activities and to volunteer at the Florence Crittendon Maternity Home in Charlotte.  She graduated with a degree in psychology, with desires to keep learning and to make the world a better place, and with lifelong friends including one in particular named Mike, a soccer star in the class behind her.

Degree in hand, Alison’s next commitment to alma mater was immediate and immense, as she accepted the position of Admission Counselor, helping to bring the country’s best and brightest high school students to Davidson.  She and Mike were married at the DCPC by the Dean of Students, and though they left Davidson in 1986, Alison has continued to serve alma mater in numerous capacities ever since.  She has been an Annual Fund class agent, Chair of the Davidson Alumni Admission Program, and a member of the New York Campaign Committee.  She and Mike have hosted countless alumni events in New York, New Jersey, and more recently the San Francisco Bay Area.  Acknowledging her leadership, Davidson alumni elected Alison Vice President of the Alumni Association in 2001.  She was appointed to the Board of Visitors in 2006 and recently for a second three-year term, serving in that capacity as an ambassador of the college and a resource to Davidson’s new President in setting the course for the college’s future.  In 2007 President Vagt called upon Alison to be National Annual Fund Vice Chair, a responsibility she graciously accepted and which meant that she would, as she recently has, become National Annual Fund Chair, offering Davidson her now quite expert counsel and support in setting and reaching the college’s fundraising goals.

For her myriad contributions to Davidson College: her time, her energy, and resources of every kind; for entrusting alma mater with a full one-third of the most precious gifts she has to offer, son Christopher who was admitted with the Class of 2013; for the example of service she sets and others try to follow; and for her leadership of alumni across generations, the Davidson College Alumni Association honors Alison Hall Mauzé with the Alumni Service Award on the occasion of her 25th Reunion, this 25th day of April, 2009.