Between checking to see if a professor ever replied, scanning Bear Blurbs or killing a few minutes between classes, Mercer students opening their Outlook inbox over the past decade have seen a slew of newsletters with the following signature: David A. Davis, Ph.D, Director of Fellowships and Scholarships.
Jamming students' inboxes full, Davis said he has learned to make his emails “as pervasive as possible” to ensure that scholarship and fellowship opportunities are “very difficult for students to avoid.”
Between posts on Yik Yak and preceptors calling him out in lectures, Davis’ reputation and name recognition ranges far across Mercer’s campus.
With a smile, Davis said he plans to upgrade his emailing system to Technosolutions’ Slate platform, a site used by schools to track students’ applications – particularly in admissions offices. Davis will use Slate to track email analytics such as how many people open his email or click on links within them.
“Currently, though, I send through Outlook,” Davis said. “The best feedback I get on the impact we’re having is students posting on Yik Yak, so I really appreciate it.”
Chandler McCrea ‘29, who is currently in Davis’s class, reflected on a time her classmate asked Davis why they were receiving so many emails from him.
“I just found it very entertaining how much he embraced it. He was very proud of his Yik Yak reputation of the emails because he thinks it’s helping,” McCrea said. “Some of the emails are helpful, I will admit that.”
Davis is no newcomer to oddball notoriety. He said that more than a decade ago, students came to ask him if he, an English professor, was running for Bibb County Sheriff. It turns out he shares a first and last name with the current Bibb County Sheriff David Davis, who initially ran for the position in 2012. He also shared a nearly identical email with Mercer’s former provost, the late David Scott Davis.
Scott Davis and he “were constantly forwarding emails to each other. That was a bit humorous, when students were sending him paper assignments and people were sending me complaints,” Davis said. “I’m glad that I didn’t have to solve his complaints, and he was glad he didn’t have to grade my papers.”
Davis speculated that his emailing tactics would be “unusual” at other universities, but feels that, like Bear Blurbs, the newsletters have become a part of campus life. He said that he spoils Mercer students with scholarship offerings because they deserve to advance the University’s “culture of achievement.”
“A good student at Mercer is a good student anywhere. Mercer students can compete on a national level for any of these awards,” Davis said.
McCrea said she remains unbothered by the newsletters, but as one of Davis’s students, she occasionally struggles to differentiate between his campus-wide announcements and course-specific information.
“That’s the only time I’m frustrated. I would prefer him to make sure the subject line is ‘Urgent’ if it’s actually something that I need to pay attention to,” McCrea said while giggling.
Students often spawn around campus with questions about award opportunities, according to Davis, but that is nothing out of the ordinary for the professor who has worked at Mercer since August 2008.
“It’s not at all unusual for an impromptu advising session to begin in a classroom, or in a hallway on campus,” Davis said. “I work out at the gym most evenings, and I’ve done an awful lot of fellowship advising in the gym.”
If you ever see Davis in a presentation on campus, he said he’ll likely open with a smile and, of course, acknowledge that, “You probably get my emails.”
Nathaniel Jordan '29 intends to major in Journalism at Mercer and hopes to work as an investigative journalist. His hobbies include poetry, photography and home cooking, and you can probably find him around Macon shopping or walking through local parks with his wife and son.
