Rate My Professor Michael Davis

Davis engaged in scholarly and pedagogical projects emphasizing community involvement and ethical reasoning. In 2015-2016, he was awarded a Faculty Senate Vision Mini-Grant for his project 'Oral History Archive of Those Displaced by the Creation of the Shenandoah National Park.' Initiated at the request of the National Park Service, the project involved students conducting interviews with descendants of displaced families, park officials, and historians; archiving scattered public materials into a central database housed at JMU; and presenting findings at a conference. It integrated community service, engaged learning, and civic engagement themes related to citizen responsibilities. Additionally, Davis contributed to JMU's Quality Enhancement Plan, The Madison Collaborative: Ethical Reasoning in Action, by leading workshops that introduced the Eight Key Questions—Outcomes, Fairness, Authority, Liberty, Rights, Responsibilities, Empathy, and Character—to guide ethical decision-making in complex scenarios. He advised undergraduate honors projects, including research on media framing in NASA's space shuttle program cancellation. Subsequently, Davis advanced to Chief of Staff and Executive Adviser to the JMU President, overseeing strategic planning, policy, and institutional research, before becoming President of Fairmont State University.