STLCC welcomed Dr. Christine Davis during the Pandemic
BY: GENEVA LEE
News Editor
Dr. Christine Davis, Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs is in charge of student development, involvement and achievement: Essentially, her job is to make the college experience a good one for all STLCC students.
Davis said she has always known she wanted a career in education and in service. “As an immigrant who came here for a better life, education was drilled into my head as a ticket to a better life … I wanted to be a teacher [and] in the helping profession,” she said. When Davis herself went to college she “fell in love … and wanted to tell the story of higher education.”
After attending undergraduate school, Davis earned her master’s degree in adult and community education and obtained her PhD in education leadership. She worked in higher education for almost 20 years before coming to STLCC. Davis said she was drawn to STLCC because she “really felt like STLCC really cares about the students, and they wanted to take a direction where the students are at the center of their work [to] make things better [and] improve the student experience.”
Davis joined the college on the cusp of the COVID-19 pandemic in January 2020. The pandemic created a huge challenge for the STLCC community, and balancing safety, education and overall student well-being was a daunting undertaking, she said.
“We realized that our student population is being disproportionately impacted, [and] we really just stepped up to the plate and responded,” said Davis. She said that STLCC used CARES relief money from the federal government to try to mitigate the difficulties of the pandemic for students: For example, the school allowed students who withdrew in the Spring 2020 to come back and retake their courses at no additional cost. Davis said she and her coworkers asked, “How can we make this easier, how can we lift this burden from students?”
Building upon this work, Davis’s vision is to impact retention above everything. “I want to work with the team to improve our services to the students, whether that’s to add services or improve what we’re doing to improve completion,” she said. “Too many of our students leave without completing. We have an obligation when a student enrolls to help them succeed.”
Davis said to achieve this, “Students require handholding and support. It’s important, I think, that they feel a sense of belonging, that they’re important.”
“If I had my magic wand … if resources were limitless, I would want a hundred students assigned to an academic advisor … right now, our ratios are higher than that,” she said.
The role of advisors who report to Davis encompasses more than just course scheduling. “They are responsible for intrusive advising, support and making sure that they stay on track and get to completing … this would be one way to say how important they are to us.” She emphasizes, “You’re not just a number.”
This attention to students extends beyond the classroom to her home. Davis balances her scholastic duties with raising her 14-year-old daughter and ensuring her academic success. On top of starting her new job in a pandemic, Davis had to “Make sure, being a mom, that her [daughter’s] high school experience was a positive one, despite being virtual in a new school, as she prepares to go to college in a few years. That was probably the biggest challenge, wanting to make an impact at the college, but also making sure she was okay with that transition as well.”
Davis said the values that guide her in this work are “integrity” and “hard work.”
“If I say I’m going to do something, [I] do it. I have high expectations of myself, so I have high expectations of our staff and our students because I know they can do it, and I want them to do it,” she said. It is through this integrity and “putting in the hours” that Davis pushes onward in her work on behalf of students.
When she is not at STLCC, Davis said she loves to visit St. Louis parks. “I like to get out whenever I can and hike and walk. There’s some amazing spaces in our surrounding area for us to enjoy,” she said.
Though her time outside may be limited, she said “I’m loving the different seasons, though I know that may wear off as I stay here longer … there are days in February where I’m like, ‘What is happening?! Can I even go outside?!”
