Jenny Davis

UCA first lady, English teacher, feels at home on campus

Jenny Davis, the wife of new University of Central Arkansas President Houston Davis, sits on the windowsill of the President’s Home, where they live. The Davises, who celebrated their 22nd wedding anniversary in July, have three children. Jenny, an English teacher, is taking a break from her career. She said her goal is to be “present and encouraging and available” as first lady.
Jenny Davis, the wife of new University of Central Arkansas President Houston Davis, sits on the windowsill of the President’s Home, where they live. The Davises, who celebrated their 22nd wedding anniversary in July, have three children. Jenny, an English teacher, is taking a break from her career. She said her goal is to be “present and encouraging and available” as first lady.

University of Central Arkansas administrator Shelley Mehl wasn’t sure if Houston Davis would get the university president’s job, but his wife, Jenny, immediately had Mehl’s vote for first lady.

“I got the chance to take her around Conway when they first came to visit, so it was just her and me, and we drove around, and I took her to lunch,” said Mehl, associate vice president for outreach and community engagement.

Mehl was on the transition team to help during interviews for UCA president after former President Tom Courtway announced that he was ready to leave the office.

Ultimately, Houston Davis, interim president at Kennesaw State University in Georgia, was interviewed in October, hired in November and started in January as the 11th president of UCA.

During the Davises’ visit to UCA, Mehl showed Jenny Davis highlights of the city, including Conway High School and the Village at Hendrix, as well as the UCA campus.

“She was just delightful,” Mehl said. “She was just so intelligent and thoughtful in an intellectual way. She’s very observant; she’s so genuine. She so much wants to be a part of Conway and UCA.”

Davis said she was impressed immediately with Conway and UCA, too.

“I said, ‘Houston, these people are so nice. Every single person is going to think they have the job.’ The welcome has been incredible.”

The 44-year-old first lady was sitting in a chair in the living room of the on-campus President’s Home, where her family lives. Elvis, their basset hound, was in the room looking for attention, and Zuzu, their cat, made a brief appearance.

The Davises, who met at Memphis State University, celebrated their 22nd wedding anniversary in July. They have three children — Polly, 21; Whitney, 18; and Joshua, 15. It was early August, and all three kids were home, but not for long. Polly is a senior at Georgia Tech, Whitney was headed to the Pratt Institute, an art school in Brooklyn, New York, and Joshua is a sophomore at Conway High School and a member of the band.

“The house is beautiful. It belongs to the university — it needs to serve the university,” Jenny said. “My only thoughts are, ‘How could it better serve the school?’ We were thinking tailgating in the backyard … more UCA faculty coming to events.”

The Davises have been encouraged to make the university-owned residence their home.

“The university has been very respectful,” she said. Even with her open-door policy, the house won’t be pristine all the time. “I have a 10th-grade boy who leaves his cereal box out on the counter,” she said.

After Houston was hired, Jenny stayed in Georgia until the school year ended, so the whole family is just getting settled in the home with Houston.

Jenny said that whenever Houston applies for a job — and he’s worked in higher-education positions in Tennessee, Oklahoma and Georgia — he asks her to first go check out the city where they would live.

When the Davises lived in Oklahoma, they often stopped in Conway on the way to his hometown of Clarksville, Tennessee, but Jenny said she didn’t tour the city.

“One of the things that really impressed me about Conway is that it had a symphony orchestra. How many cities have a symphony orchestra? Not many. It’s the home of the Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre — not Little Rock, not Fayetteville — Conway is.”

The city’s downtown was a plus, too, she said.

“All around the South, … towns are dying. It’s so heartening and so nice to see a place that was thriving,” she said.

Jenny said that when she met Conway High School Principal Jason Lawrence, “he knew the kids by name; he knew his school inside-out.

“You could tell that’s a school that nurtures its students. That’s servant leadership when you don’t sit in your office all day. Another thing that impressed me about the high school is it had an orchestra. Those things don’t happen by accident. It says something about Conway. People have been investing for at least 50 years.”

Jenny has also been impressed by what she sees as servant leadership by former Mayor Tab Townsell, current Mayor Bart Castleberry and Tom Courtway.

The campus itself impressed her, too.

Houston was executive vice chancellor and chief academic officer for the University System of Georgia before becoming interim president at Kennesaw State.

“I’ve seen a lot of campuses,” Jenny said. “UCA is the best-maintained campus I’ve ever seen.”

Her husband predicted Jenny would be a first lady whom students would love because of her never-met-a-stranger personality and easy rapport with everyone, from young people to senior citizens.

Jenny, who has master’s degrees in English and in teaching, has taught in public and private schools and at the college level, although she is taking a break from teaching.

She is animated and enthusiastic when she talks about being a teacher.

“I love it,” she said.

Her passion for teaching was obvious to Mehl.

“If I could say anything about her — she is a true teacher at heart, whether she’s teaching a friend, her students, her children or her husband,” Mehl said. “[She believes] you’ve got to think about what you’re doing. You’ve got to have perspective; you’ve got to broaden your horizons.”

Jenny said teaching is “honorable and honest.”

“I’m not saying Dead Poets Society happens in my classroom every day,” she said. The movie about life in a prep school “didn’t show Robin Williams teaching grammar, which is not glamorous.”

When students put their words on paper, it’s a show of trust, she said.

“That doesn’t mean they’re equal to you. You have authority. It’s about goals; it’s about growing a kid,” Jenny said. “Every kid should think they’re your favorite student.

“It’s also teaching a kid how to think — that’s unleashing power. Education is an empowering act.”

Jenny’s mother was an English teacher, too, and Jenny’s father worked for the U.S.

Army Corps of Engineers and on their family farm. Her parents divorced when she was 4, and Jenny and her mother moved to Memphis. She spent the school year with her mother, and her summers with her father in Port Gibson, Mississippi.

Jenny’s stepfather was a high school principal.

When Jenny went to Memphis State University, she majored in English and minored in history.

“Nothing else inspired me,” she said. Southern literature makes her swoon.

“College blew up my world and rebuilt it. It was literature and art and discussions. College made me a more compassionate, thoughtful, kinder, intelligent person. That’s the role of the university. I feel like that role is more important than ever,” she said.

She and Houston met the first month of school at a Greek fashion show. She was a member of Alpha Gamma Delta sorority, and he was a Kappa Sigma. Houston asked Jenny if she needed help rolling up Christmas lights, ones she’d borrowed from home.

“I had a boyfriend, so I wasn’t looking. I remember thinking he was nice and helpful,” she said.

Houston recalled that he just “lit up” when he met her.

“She was the nicest person I’d ever met,” he said.

Jenny said they stayed friends, but he asked her out every couple of months for about two years. They finally had a date, and she knew he was the guy she was going to marry.

What changed?

“Maturity. I just grew up. I knew what I needed to be happy. He was just a gentleman, so easy to have fun with; it wasn’t hard at all,” she said.

Jenny Davis first taught at John Overton, an arts/magnet school in Memphis; then she taught for five years at Benton Hall Academy in Franklin, Tennessee, when the couple lived in Nashville.

“[Benton Hall] formed me and framed me as a teacher for the rest of my life,” she said.

The school realized it was not serving the needs of its brighter kids, Davis said, and she was hired to make suggestions to keep both gifted and special-needs students on track.

“I’d come home wiped out because the kids were just needy, but you feel like you’re making a difference,” she said. “Overall, teachers get way too much credit and way too much blame. If a kid comes to school hungry and abused every single day, a teacher can’t save that child.”

But a teacher “in consort” with churches, school and community can make a difference, she said.

“I feel like my faith is stronger when I teach because I realize how much smaller I am,” Davis said.

“Kids look normal; then you read the files, and they’re abused. … They make B’s, and that’s success for them. It’s humbling to be around that kind of quiet dignity,” she said. “Those kids never make the news. They never make the paper, but those are the kids I remember.”

Davis recalled that one student had done well, and she told him she was looking forward to meeting his mother at the school’s open house.

“I said, ‘I can’t wait to tell your mom how hard you work.’ He said, ‘She’s not coming. She works three jobs.’”

Debbie Bendick, associate superintendent for secondary education for the Edmond (Oklahoma) Public Schools, was Davis’ principal when she taught English at Edmond Memorial High School.

Bendick sang Davis’ praises for being a stellar teacher, wife, mother and friend.

“I can attest to the energy, optimism and purpose that Jenny

infused in every collegial discussion,” Bendick said. “Largely, I think, due to the investment Jenny made in teacher-to-teacher relationships both inside and outside of the classroom, a high level of trust existed between Jenny and her peers. When Jenny talked, teachers listened and followed.”

It wasn’t just the teachers who respected Davis, Bendick said. “I know that just this summer, she has had several visits by former students, now young adults, who were traveling cross country and stopped to meet her for coffee. Students adored Jenny, and each of them believed they were her favorite because she invested so fully in each child in her class. That is a rare and beautiful quality in the best of our teachers.”

Bendick said Davis is “beautifully complex,” describing her as intellectually inquisitive, a voracious reader, fiercely loyal, a lover of arts and music, and a wonderful wife and mother, who often put her own career “on the back burner” with Houston’s many career moves.

Mehl said, “In a way, she’s the epitome of a modern woman. She had a career, yet she’s adapted and adjusted for her family. I get the sense she and Dr. Davis are equal partners; this is not ‘come along for the ride.’”

Davis said she will not be a first lady who tries to help run the university.

“Houston and I don’t come home and talk university politics,” she said. “When he comes home, he’s about us. … What are the kids doing?”

By the same token, “I don’t invite him into my classroom, and he doesn’t dictate my pedagogy,” she said.

This is Houston’s first presidency, so being a first lady is a new role for Jenny Davis.

“I’ve thought, ‘What kind of a person would the university need?’ I don’t think the university needs a first lady who has to wear makeup in my backyard. I think they just need me to be present and encouraging and available and to work hard,” Davis said.

“I just plan on showing up and helping support what [the students] do. If it’s a pep rally, I’ll be there. If it’s serving pancakes before final exams, I’ll be there, or moving kids into the dorm,” Davis said. “If I’m not in Atlanta or New York or doing something for Joshua, I’ll be on campus. It’s important for them to see us.

“My role as a first lady is an extension of what I did as a high school teacher — make myself accessible on campus, celebrate the success of our students, support them in athletics, art and any way, welcome them … and support the faculty, too, when they accomplish something in their field. My role is to help integrate Houston and myself in their lives. We’ll eat in the student union; we’ll be familiar faces.”

She said that before Houston was hired, the hardest interview he had — one in which she participated — was with the Student Government Association.

“They knew exactly what they wanted; they had firm ideas. They liked the access of President Courtway. They liked that he was responsive. Being accessible will maybe make the administration and faculty less like obstacles and more like partners,” she said.

As a teacher, Davis said, she has seen students become “more socially engaged and kinder every year.”

She doesn’t like the condescension she hears when people talk about millennials or young adults.

“I have a lot more respect for high school kids and college kids these days,” she said. “There are more people in college; there’s a lot more competition.”

Mehl said a new women’s leadership networking event will be launched on campus for the fall and spring.

“We’re going to have topics on how women can be self-assertive, but in a productive way,” she said.

The panel will include women in business, female elected officials and a session on stay-at-home moms. Mehl asked Davis to host the first session.

“Jenny was all over that,” Mehl said. “She said, ‘Just tell me what you need me to do.’

“She’s a breath of fresh air.”

Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.

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