A Texan by birth, Dr. Davis spent her childhood in Louisville, Tennessee, and Nashville before reluctantly returning to Texas with her family for high school and college. After graduating in 1974 from Baylor University (where she was forced to go because her father was on the history faculty, and as a faculty kid, she received free tuition), she attended Emory University in Atlanta, receiving her Master’s in English in 1978 and her Ph.D. in British Romantic Literature in 1979. She was a Visiting Assistant Professor on the Emory English faculty until the end of the 1980 spring term, when she was hired for a tenure-track position in English at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Dr. Davis spent eight very odd years in Huntsville—a very odd place indeed—teaching courses ranging from English Composition to graduate offerings in her field, British Romanticism, and publishing articles on Milton, Blake, and Tennyson; she was tenured in 1986.
Within two years, however, Dr. Davis had married an Emory English professor, Dr. John Bugge, her first graduate professor at Emory but only a friend ( really) until 1985, when they met again in Oxford, England—he directing the Emory at Oxford Program at University College and she teaching on the Alabama at Oxford Program. After they married in June of 1988, Dr. Davis gratefully returned to Atlanta to live in Druid Hills with her husband and his 13-year-old stepson by his first marriage, Eric. (That was an interesting year!) She was hired as an Associate Professor to teach at Kennesaw State University, where the only tenure-track teaching position then available was in developmental English. However, she quickly discovered the great advantages of being a member of the Developmental Studies faculty, all of whom were refreshingly gracious, collegial, and, in general, unacquainted with mean-spiritedness.
A new phase of Dr. Davis’s life began when her son, Stefan Davis Bugge, was born in March of 1992. Although she and her husband were frequently asked if Stefan were their grandson, they just laughed and worked out regularly so that they could keep up with him.
In 1995, when the Chancellor of the University System of Georgia mandated that four-year universities scale back their developmental programs, the Chair of KSU’s former Department of Development Studies—by then the Department of Learning Support Programs (aren’t euphemisms fun?)—joined the Vice President of Academic Affairs in asking Dr. Davis to work with an Honors Council designing, implementing, and directing a university-wide Honors Program. Having been an Honors student herself, Dr. Davis had a vague idea of what this meant, but she had never administered anything greater than a dose of pediatric Ibuprofen. Nevertheless, her promotion to full professor in 1996 gave her renewed confidence.
Running the Honors Program became the most challenging and fulfilling professional assignment she had ever had. Since it began admitting students in 1996, the program has grown from 20 to well over 300 members, and, in 1999, it received the Regents’ Award for Teaching Excellence given by the University System of Georgia Board of Regents. It is still evolving, and so is Dr. Davis: Stefan is now 14 and Eric and his wife are expecting their first child. Becoming a step-grandmother delights her. Raising a teenager baffles her, but she loves him. Owning a Prius gives her material and moral satisfaction. Teaching Honors courses (exclusively) and working with brilliant Honors students like David Albert broaden her intellectually. And she and John are still working out.
Although retirement is some years away, Dr. Davis and her husband hope to win the lottery and settle some day near Oxford, where people are made more civil (and the environment is made healthier) by their inability to drive through the city.
