• Dossier on Davis
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A self-described “dusty, cowboy boot-wearing kid” from Kalispell, Mont., Robert Davis recalls his roots with ease as he discusses his path to English professor. The son of a Presbyterian minister and one of five children living in the small northwestern town in Big Sky country, Davis remembers how his father encouraged the family to read and discuss the readings around the dinner table.

“We made up our own community,” Davis says of his parents, three sisters and one brother, and “we became enraptured readers.”

The resulting love of literature and the transformative power it possesses inspired Davis to pursue a career in teaching, but it is his enthusiasm for the field, his uncanny ability to draw students out of their shells, and his desire to challenge them to stretch themselves day in and day out that recently earned Davis the 2005 Alumni Association Award for Distinguished Teaching, Wittenberg’s most prestigious faculty prize.

To hear current and former students speak about the beloved professor of English is to hear excitement and gratitude in their voices.

“Dr. Davis has the power to inspire, teach, nurture and energize within a matter of minutes,” says Sarah Lowe ’01, one of Davis’ former students who recently completed her first novel. “I did not merely learn literature from Dr. Davis; I learned to live, to love and to write.”

“After taking three classes with Dr. Bob Davis, my purpose became more clear,” Justin Morrison ’01 remembers. “He made me want to teach. I saw the impact he had on students, the way he made every student feel like they had something to offer the Wittenberg community. And I realized that few things in life are more meaningful than a great teacher.” Today, Morrison works as an instructional assistant at Shaker Heights Middle School.

Accolades like those shared by Morrison and Lowe flow freely from his students’ mouths and fill an entire blue binder given to Davis upon his promotion to full professor in April. Yet visitors to his Hollenbeck Hall office would never guess how highly his students regard him as he prefers to talk about his students instead.

“My students are my heroes,” says Davis, who admits to being humbled by the Distinguished Teaching Award. “There is something transforming about working with these young people. It’s a real rush on both sides of the desk.”

Davis first discovered that “rush” as an undergraduate at Stanford University from 1974-1978. Although he originally considered the ministry and even attended seminary briefly, Davis realized he missed literature, so he decided to pursue his M.A. in education at Stanford, graduating in 1980. He then went on to teach at Serra High School in San Mateo, Calif., that same year.

Five years later, Davis then began teaching at the college level while pursuing his Ph.D. at the University of California at Berkeley.

“Being in Berkeley, Calif., was a tremendous experience,” Davis recalls, noting how the entire culture stimulated interest in the arts, learning for learning’s sake and rigorous intellectual debate.

“The political and ethical discussions created an excitement about learning.”

Davis’ genuine love of learning continued to define his teaching style, and by 1992, he was approached about teaching at Wittenberg, where, he says, he discovered the perfect fit.

“I found my intellectual family who shared my passion for teaching and whose vision connected with my own.”

Thirteen years later, with family photos and daughter-drawn pictures now on display in his office, Davis’ passion for teaching and for Wittenberg continues not only in the classroom but also in his work outside of it. The current director of the Wittenberg Seminars (WittSems) program in addition to serving in other capacities on campus, Davis also chaired the First-Year Experience (FYE) committee for two years.

“We want to help students make connections between ideas and their lives,” Davis says, adding that one of the most difficult transition issues for first-year students is coming to terms with the difference between what scholar Keith Hjortshoj calls “writing-as-thinking” (pursuing a problem, chasing an idea, taking apart an argument) and “writing-as-knowing” (showing mastery of an idea and proving an understanding of it).

“I believe the primary work of first-year college teachers is to demystify academic critical thinking for students,” Davis explains. “What counts as knowledge in college culture is the ability to get into and out of intellectual trouble.”

Toward that end, Davis often writes, “You’re not getting into enough trouble” on students’ papers, challenging students to take their writing beyond rote by inviting them to “complicate a common assumption.” He then encourages them to use their writing to tell the story of that complication.

“Rather than buckling down to a fixed or dogmatic position, the most successful student-writers open their essays to hesitation, ambivalence and second thoughts,” Davis says.

Pharon Holtrey ’06 experienced this firsthand in Davis’ class, where she also learned to recognize her own thoughts in the writing of others.

“Before I would think that I had read it somewhere in the past, and I was just remembering it, but now I know that I have the ability to have great thoughts, and I am not afraid to have them anymore,” Holtrey says. “I love that I am finally passionate about literature.”

Her newfound confidence as a result of Davis’ teaching epitomizes the English professor’s ability to change perspectives, all the while walking with students as they struggle through the process.

“For a short time, I shut myself down, not trying to understand the readings and just drifting along in the class,” recalls Mark Bennett ’99. Davis noticed and asked Bennett to stop by his office.

“After I feared the worst for the remaining half-hour, I was amazed when he asked if there was anything he could do to help put me back on the right track,” remembers Bennett, who is now in his second year of doctoral studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. “I truly believe that his act of compassion has set me on the right path ever since.”

Katie Preuss ’04, a high school English teacher in Illinois, had a similar experience. “While I was a student at Wittenberg, Dr. Davis took me under his wing, encouraging my intellectual and professional development at every turn,” Preuss recalls. “He expanded my critical-thinking skills, challenged me to refine my writing voice and made the extra effort to know me outside of Hollenbeck.”

Yet, for the father of two, the road runs both ways as he also learns daily from his students.

“Our thinking process was more important to him than his was, as he’d often rethink or sometimes even abandon his own conclusions because one of ours seemed, or more accurately, felt more ‘right’ to him,” remembers Jared Harding ’01, who plays pro basketball in Denmark and, like most of Davis’ students, still keeps in touch. “The e-mails I get in return are nothing less than I’d expect from the best teacher I’ve ever had.”

“To have the opportunity to live your passion is a gift,” Davis says, but to live it at Wittenberg, where he can share regularly in his students’ “wow” moments, is a privilege.

“There is an excitement, a connective insight, that occurs in the classroom where I can be changed in an hour and so can my students,” he says. “Literature is transformative and engaging, and when students recognize that power, the experience is extraordinary.”