AU Faculty Profile: Eileen Findlay

By Travis Mitchell


Dressed in a pumpkin orange sweater, brown capris and festive jewelry- an outfit that matched her infectiously energetic demeanor -Dr. Eileen Findlay hunched over laughing in her office chair as she recounted her unsuccessful attempt at teaching junior high school.

“It was the only time in my life I would say I completely and utterly failed,” Findlay said, chuckling. “I had no good mentoring. I came out of college thinking, ‘I’m smart, I have a lot of energy and I have good intentions and that should be enough,’ and it wasn’t enough.”

But, there was also a more serious issue that affected her concentration as a beginning teacher-the death of her younger brother from cancer.

“It was just a total upheaval,” said Findlay, who was living in Philadelphia at the time- hundreds of miles away from her dying brother in Rhode Island.

Findlay said that challenge gave her a newfound respect for secondary educators and helped shape her educational philosophy, which emphasizes critical thinking, lengthy reading assignments, and comprehensive discussions.

Now, years later, Findlay is an associate professor of history at American University. One of 20 other professors in her department, she sees her role as a facilitator of the “conversation” within the classroom.

“She’s extremely intelligent and likes to listen to what students have to say,” said Callan Quiram, a sophomore at American University. Though, Quiram admits, Findlay’s class on colonial Latin America was tough.

“I’m not going to lie,” she said. “It was a lot of reading.”

But despite the heavy workloads, Findlay is admired by many of her students.

“I call her miss popular,” said Amanda Harrison, a graduate student and two-time teaching assistant for Findlay. Harrison is studying Eastern European history but said that she “jumped at the opportunity” to work with Findlay.

“You meet her once and completely fall in love with her,” Harrison said. “She gives off this incredible energy.”

Quiram said it was Findlay’s energy and unique way of looking at history has inspired her to pursue the subject more intensely. She has since decided to add a history major to her international studies degree.


For Findlay, pursuing a career in history was never the plan.

“I never read history,” said Findlay. “I thought history was memorizing facts.”

She graduated from college with a degree in theology, but after her first attempt at teaching, she chose to spend some time abroad in South America. While living in the capitol city of Bogota, Columbia, Findlay decided to enroll in a few history classes. It was there that Findlay encountered a teacher who dismantled any negative preconceptions she had about the subject.

“He just completely took my world apart in his analysis of history and put it back together again in a new way,” Findlay said.

After spending several years in South America, Findlay returned to the United States to work as a community organizer in Philadelphia-a very different life than what she had been used to growing up in a small town in Indiana. She became a paralegal, advocating for residents of an impoverished Puerto Rican neighborhood.

Eventually, she began teaching Spanish as a second language to English-speaking volunteers. It was then that she rediscovered her passion for teaching. This time around she had with her the wisdom of her failures, losses, and life experiences.

“I want to be able to do something that is empowering to the people that I’m in relationship with and allow me to think freely and widely,” said Findlay.
Findlay said she believes it is important to use her position as an educator in a private institution to inspire students to go out into the Washington, D.C. area and make a difference.

“I think my job is to teach my students to be good citizens of the world, and to be open to new ways of life and thinking,” not necessarily to just “know the things that happened in the past,” Findlay said.

She said its students like Quiram that validate her teaching style, which is focused on understanding “the practice of debating ideas and interpretation.”

“She exposes you to a new type of history,” Quiram said, emphasizing that, “If you’ve learned nothing else you should learn to question facts. Always question facts.”

Findlay will be on sabbatical in the fall and will be focusing on writing, research, family and on pushing herself to new discoveries about her field and her outlook on life.

“I think I’m going to be 80 years old and still examining pieces of myself,” she said.

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