Check Out Our Podcast: The Verdict
What does it mean to belong, not just as a student, but as a whole person navigating trauma, transition, or a second chance? Part four of our conversation with Dr. Lowell Davis, the Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs at the University of Texas at Arlington, will show you how colleges and universities are creating inclusive environments for adult learners, students with disabilities, and those reentering education after hardship.
From programs tailored to nontraditional students to the critical role of faith in his own journey through grief, loss, and leadership, Dr. Davis shares his experiences on what makes someone feel seen, supported, and part of a lasting community. We hope this conversation helps give you hope to anyone who is returning to school, supporting a loved one who is, or simply searching for a deeper understanding of perseverance and purpose.
Here’s what we discuss in this episode:
🎓 Social and academic support for adult learners
♿ Accessibility and inclusion on campus
💬 Why a sense of belonging matters for student success
🙏 Dr. Davis’s personal story of faith through grief and challenge
🏛️ Staying connected to your college community long after graduation
0:00 – Finding social groups
2:29 – Creating accessibility for all
4:20 – Lifelong relationships
8:23 – Faith when bad things happen
About our guest: https://resources.uta.edu/student-affairs/vice-president.php
Social groups, networking, social life, Lowell davis, education, accessibility, disabilities, catastrophic injuries, services, north Carolina,
Learn more about how Speaks Law Firm can help you: https://www.speakslaw.com/
Schedule your FREE case review: https://www.speakslaw.com/our-team/r-clarke-speaks/#contactFormTarget
Find us on YouTube: https://bit.ly/3R40YMP
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Student organizations, social opportunities, adult learners, sense of belonging, accessibility requirements, community engagement, alumni connections, faith and resilience, student support, higher education, personal challenges, career counseling, student affairs, campus community, student retention.
SPEAKERS
Speaker 2, Speaker 1
Speaker 1 00:00
I'm Clark, speaks the catastrophic injury lawyer. Welcome to the verdict. This is catastrophic comeback. So, so let me ask you something else. So I have two kids who are starting college in the fall, right? And I don't worry about them academically. I don't worry about them getting in trouble. They're good, good people. I and they got their stuff together. What I worry about is, will they find a really good social group to spend time with and to a friend group to to do things with and to experience the fun things about college and and do you know? Can you speak about how that might look for a person who's maybe going back to school a little older and and have and what, what types of social opportunities might they have as a student going back under these circumstances? UNC,
Speaker 2 00:53
W, we have over probably 150 different student organizations on campus for students to join if you are not engaged, we have what we call our involvement compass, where you can meet with a staff member in the Division of Student Affairs and you can have a conversation with them about what are your likes and dislikes, and they will suggest to you some organizations that you should possibly think about joining or attending those meetings. Early on in my career, I was tasked with setting up programs for transfer students, and I remember going to a bowling alley with transfer students, and the students wanted to buy beer. Most of these transfer students were over 21 they were old, they were older, and they wanted to do this. I said, No, you can't do this. And they said, Well, we won't come like we don't want to do what 18 we don't want to be treated like 18 and 19 year olds. And some of these transfer students had families, and it was bowling, and we said that they could bring their families, we would pay for them to bowl, but they wanted to do all the things in which adults have an opportunity to do, and not be confined by university rules and regulations. And so that has shifted. As a Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, I said we need to have programs for our adult learners and our our adult students, and we are doing just that. So don't be afraid to say, Oh, well, most of our traditional college students are between the ages of 18 and 22 I don't really fit in with that group. There are organizations and programs for students who are returning to college after being out for some years are fit into what the category, what we call adult learners.
Speaker 1 02:29
So as you're talking now, I'm, I'm kind of picturing, okay, these former clients that I have represented that maybe are now in wheelchairs, or have have maybe lost limbs, or, you know, they have these physical disabilities, you know, and if they wanted to go back and retrain and re engage in a different career path, I can see absolutely them going and maybe going to soccer games that I'm sure would have these accessibility requirement meet these accessibility requirements that you've described, maybe going to football games or basketball games, or just or doing or being involved in these other organizations and really feeling a part of this community, regardless of their age or physical or mental health limitations.
Speaker 2 03:09
Absolutely and just as a Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, even when there is a mail truck blocking a handicap space, I tend to hear about it. And so we do all that we can to ensure that students who come to UNC W and most institutions of higher education that they feel like they belong. And there's a lot of talk right now in higher education about a sense of belonging, and what does that mean? But in order for us to retain students, they have to feel like that they belong and that they are part of the campus community. And I think we try to be I don't think we try to be intentional by creating programs that students feel like that they are actually a part of campus but also part of their academic program, because if they don't, they'll leave. And no institution wants that. It occurs
Speaker 1 03:58
to me after some of your some of your descriptions today that that doesn't necessarily end with graduation. You've talked about being connected to your former students and with, probably with, I imagine, I know from from other conversations I've had with you. You're connected from other with other people that you went to school with or you went to graduate school with. And so can you talk about little bit about that? If a person were to go back to school, might they have connections with faculty, with administration, with other students that might last a lifetime,
Speaker 2 04:31
absolutely, and once you graduate from and I'm just speaking from UNC W I'm excited to go to Texas, but it's my current job. It's what I know you have the opportunity to visit and meet with a career counselor as an alumni of UNC W so we want to make sure that even though you may have graduated, as we say, leave the nest, you are still connected to our institution. We have a number of events all over the state of North Carolina. We were going to actually, we've done some things in A D. Area to try to engage our alumni. So even after you graduate, you are still a sea hawk. You still belong to UNC W, you're a part of our community. One of the hardest jobs that I have is talking to parents after they've lost a son or daughter or going to the funeral of a deceased student, and after that, we host a memorial service on campus Carlton Fisher, who happens to be on our board of trustees and local commercial and residential real estate developer here in Wilmington, his family has what they call the Fisher Memorial, named after his mother and father, where we place a brick of every student that has passed from UNC W regardless of their classification. A couple months ago, I went to Los Alamitos, California, suburb of kind of college suburb of Los Angeles, because we lost a student when I talked to my colleagues at other institutions, they said, No, we don't send student we don't send a staff member to a funeral. When I went to the funeral, not only did the parents give me a hug, they invited me to their house. We were on the other side of the country, and for someone who left Wilmington, North Carolina, to go to say, I'm here. I'm representing the University. Your son, in this case, was a part of our community. And I want you to know that we care. That's special, and that doesn't happen everywhere, but that's something that we do at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. And so even if a student comes to us and they have a a TBI, and they realize that, you know, they can't do it, they are always going to be a member of our community, and that's what's most important to me as a vice chancellor student affairs. But I think that's just the culture of the institution.
Speaker 1 06:55
And let me ask you this, you've worked at a number of other institutions. You've you've been to Hampton, Indiana, Alabama, Western Carolina, Unc, W you're going to Texas for if we have listeners in other areas, is it your experience that other schools have other people who have feel similarly to to you do in terms of their commitment to connecting and supporting students and their families?
Speaker 2 07:26
Absolutely. I mean, most definitely, Student Affairs would be the first kind of division that I would go to, as it is our job to make sure the students feel like they have a place on campus. And that's what we do. You know, we went into these careers to interact and engage with students. I will say that as my career has progressed, I have gotten further and further away from students. And my dean of students always tells me that if a student makes it to my office, something has gone really, really wrong. And I circle back and I said, it doesn't mean something has gone really, really wrong. I want to have the time to engage with those students. That's why I went into the profession. It's just my schedule sometimes precludes me from interacting with students and making sure that I can provide the support that they need. But we have people on campus, on any campus, I would say, start with someone in the Division of Student Affairs.
Speaker 1 08:21
I wanted to ask you a couple of questions that we sort of touched on in our previous conversation. I know from personal conversations that I've had with you, that you're a person of faith and that your faith is important to you, and we've talked, you know, in a different context, in different contexts, about things related to faith. The thing that I am trying to talk to our audience about is faith when bad things happen. So the question is, if God is good and God is powerful, then why does God let bad things happen to good people, and the idea is that people lose loved ones and people have these catastrophic injuries. And is that something that you can speak to us about, about your personal viewpoint?
Speaker 2 09:12
It's really I have a college classmate who is a year older than me, and I'm going to just say between 40 and 45 who is the must was the mother of three kids who lost her life earlier this Week. Oh, Mary, Mother three kids had cancer and just could not beat cancer. When I was working on my dissertation, my mother was in ICU for quintuple bypass surgery, and my father was terminally ill and. I left Indiana and I went I still have those crates with articles in them. I would take my laptop and crates with articles and books in them to the ICU waiting room, because that's where I would sit all day and write my dissertation. And in most instances, I was there alone, and I say to myself at some point, I probably just should have said, This is it like? Well, the PhD can wait. You're 23 maybe 2324 the PhD can wait. You need to take care of your mother. You need to take care of your father. But I could kind of subconsciously hear my mother saying, You need to finish this. You know, you need to do this. And this is what would make me most proud. And even when my mother came out of ICU and she was in rehab and she went home, she said, you go back and you finish that degree, I'm gonna be okay. I finished my PhD, ended up finishing my PhD and graduating in May. Went back to Dallas to kind of take care of my father. He ended up dying that October, and then I started the University of Alabama, maybe in March or April. And here I am, this newly minted guy with this PhD whose father's died. Mothers dealing with, you know, significant health challenges, and I had encouragement, and I relied on my faith to really get me through those situations. That I can do this. I can be successful. I can I can continue to press on. I ended up, maybe from that bypass surgery seven years later, burying my mother. When I think about kids who are in foster care, it's interesting, because I think of myself as a kid who's who's an orphan, because both of my parents were deceased, probably by the time I was 35 and to have to navigate this world on your own at that age. And most people I don't you know, may say law that 35 is old, but to try to buy a house, or to, you know, look for someone for moral support, or someone when there are challenges on my job that I can talk to, I tell people all the time, if no one loves you, in most instances, your mother's gonna love you. You can always call your mom even when your dad's upset with you. You can still go to mom, and mom would tell your dad she's gonna be on your side. She's gonna be on your side regardless. But to be at that point and to not have someone to to talk to about those things, even when I I went to Dallas, and I had a level of anxiety, and this was recently, and I called a friend, and they said, what's different is that what you know of Dallas and your parents being there, they're no longer there, where you're used to getting, you know, landing at the airport, and you're used to doing these things that those things, that's just not a part of your life anymore, And so you have to figure out how to move past those things and through. I would say faith and determination and just grit is the only way I think that I am probably standing right now. I've had personally people to lie on me. I've had challenges professionally, whether they be racial, whether they are discrimination because of my gender, just statements that were not untrue. The only thing I could turn to through all of it was my faith, and I could sleep at night because I knew that I hadn't intentionally mistreated anyone and that God had my back through all of it, and even in those times when I thought they were the darkest and I couldn't see my way through it, God still had my back. I'm still able to leave an institution that I absolutely love, that has about 18,000 students and become Vice President of Student Affairs at a university that has 46,000 students, that is in my hometown, and I just can't think of anyone else who could make that happen. Thanks
Speaker 1 14:17
for joining us. Don't forget to subscribe and follow us to stay up to date with our weekly episodes. We'll see you next time you.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Student organizations, social opportunities, adult learners, sense of belonging, accessibility requirements, community engagement, alumni connections, faith and resilience, student support, higher education, personal challenges, career counseling, student affairs, campus community, student retention.
SPEAKERS
Speaker 2, Speaker 1
Speaker 1 00:00
I'm Clark, speaks the catastrophic injury lawyer. Welcome to the verdict. This is catastrophic comeback. So, so let me ask you something else. So I have two kids who are starting college in the fall, right? And I don't worry about them academically. I don't worry about them getting in trouble. They're good, good people. I and they got their stuff together. What I worry about is, will they find a really good social group to spend time with and to a friend group to to do things with and to experience the fun things about college and and do you know? Can you speak about how that might look for a person who's maybe going back to school a little older and and have and what, what types of social opportunities might they have as a student going back under these circumstances? UNC,
Speaker 2 00:53
W, we have over probably 150 different student organizations on campus for students to join if you are not engaged, we have what we call our involvement compass, where you can meet with a staff member in the Division of Student Affairs and you can have a conversation with them about what are your likes and dislikes, and they will suggest to you some organizations that you should possibly think about joining or attending those meetings. Early on in my career, I was tasked with setting up programs for transfer students, and I remember going to a bowling alley with transfer students, and the students wanted to buy beer. Most of these transfer students were over 21 they were old, they were older, and they wanted to do this. I said, No, you can't do this. And they said, Well, we won't come like we don't want to do what 18 we don't want to be treated like 18 and 19 year olds. And some of these transfer students had families, and it was bowling, and we said that they could bring their families, we would pay for them to bowl, but they wanted to do all the things in which adults have an opportunity to do, and not be confined by university rules and regulations. And so that has shifted. As a Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, I said we need to have programs for our adult learners and our our adult students, and we are doing just that. So don't be afraid to say, Oh, well, most of our traditional college students are between the ages of 18 and 22 I don't really fit in with that group. There are organizations and programs for students who are returning to college after being out for some years are fit into what the category, what we call adult learners.
Speaker 1 02:29
So as you're talking now, I'm, I'm kind of picturing, okay, these former clients that I have represented that maybe are now in wheelchairs, or have have maybe lost limbs, or, you know, they have these physical disabilities, you know, and if they wanted to go back and retrain and re engage in a different career path, I can see absolutely them going and maybe going to soccer games that I'm sure would have these accessibility requirement meet these accessibility requirements that you've described, maybe going to football games or basketball games, or just or doing or being involved in these other organizations and really feeling a part of this community, regardless of their age or physical or mental health limitations.
Speaker 2 03:09
Absolutely and just as a Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, even when there is a mail truck blocking a handicap space, I tend to hear about it. And so we do all that we can to ensure that students who come to UNC W and most institutions of higher education that they feel like they belong. And there's a lot of talk right now in higher education about a sense of belonging, and what does that mean? But in order for us to retain students, they have to feel like that they belong and that they are part of the campus community. And I think we try to be I don't think we try to be intentional by creating programs that students feel like that they are actually a part of campus but also part of their academic program, because if they don't, they'll leave. And no institution wants that. It occurs
Speaker 1 03:58
to me after some of your some of your descriptions today that that doesn't necessarily end with graduation. You've talked about being connected to your former students and with, probably with, I imagine, I know from from other conversations I've had with you. You're connected from other with other people that you went to school with or you went to graduate school with. And so can you talk about little bit about that? If a person were to go back to school, might they have connections with faculty, with administration, with other students that might last a lifetime,
Speaker 2 04:31
absolutely, and once you graduate from and I'm just speaking from UNC W I'm excited to go to Texas, but it's my current job. It's what I know you have the opportunity to visit and meet with a career counselor as an alumni of UNC W so we want to make sure that even though you may have graduated, as we say, leave the nest, you are still connected to our institution. We have a number of events all over the state of North Carolina. We were going to actually, we've done some things in A D. Area to try to engage our alumni. So even after you graduate, you are still a sea hawk. You still belong to UNC W, you're a part of our community. One of the hardest jobs that I have is talking to parents after they've lost a son or daughter or going to the funeral of a deceased student, and after that, we host a memorial service on campus Carlton Fisher, who happens to be on our board of trustees and local commercial and residential real estate developer here in Wilmington, his family has what they call the Fisher Memorial, named after his mother and father, where we place a brick of every student that has passed from UNC W regardless of their classification. A couple months ago, I went to Los Alamitos, California, suburb of kind of college suburb of Los Angeles, because we lost a student when I talked to my colleagues at other institutions, they said, No, we don't send student we don't send a staff member to a funeral. When I went to the funeral, not only did the parents give me a hug, they invited me to their house. We were on the other side of the country, and for someone who left Wilmington, North Carolina, to go to say, I'm here. I'm representing the University. Your son, in this case, was a part of our community. And I want you to know that we care. That's special, and that doesn't happen everywhere, but that's something that we do at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. And so even if a student comes to us and they have a a TBI, and they realize that, you know, they can't do it, they are always going to be a member of our community, and that's what's most important to me as a vice chancellor student affairs. But I think that's just the culture of the institution.
Speaker 1 06:55
And let me ask you this, you've worked at a number of other institutions. You've you've been to Hampton, Indiana, Alabama, Western Carolina, Unc, W you're going to Texas for if we have listeners in other areas, is it your experience that other schools have other people who have feel similarly to to you do in terms of their commitment to connecting and supporting students and their families?
Speaker 2 07:26
Absolutely. I mean, most definitely, Student Affairs would be the first kind of division that I would go to, as it is our job to make sure the students feel like they have a place on campus. And that's what we do. You know, we went into these careers to interact and engage with students. I will say that as my career has progressed, I have gotten further and further away from students. And my dean of students always tells me that if a student makes it to my office, something has gone really, really wrong. And I circle back and I said, it doesn't mean something has gone really, really wrong. I want to have the time to engage with those students. That's why I went into the profession. It's just my schedule sometimes precludes me from interacting with students and making sure that I can provide the support that they need. But we have people on campus, on any campus, I would say, start with someone in the Division of Student Affairs.
Speaker 1 08:21
I wanted to ask you a couple of questions that we sort of touched on in our previous conversation. I know from personal conversations that I've had with you, that you're a person of faith and that your faith is important to you, and we've talked, you know, in a different context, in different contexts, about things related to faith. The thing that I am trying to talk to our audience about is faith when bad things happen. So the question is, if God is good and God is powerful, then why does God let bad things happen to good people, and the idea is that people lose loved ones and people have these catastrophic injuries. And is that something that you can speak to us about, about your personal viewpoint?
Speaker 2 09:12
It's really I have a college classmate who is a year older than me, and I'm going to just say between 40 and 45 who is the must was the mother of three kids who lost her life earlier this Week. Oh, Mary, Mother three kids had cancer and just could not beat cancer. When I was working on my dissertation, my mother was in ICU for quintuple bypass surgery, and my father was terminally ill and. I left Indiana and I went I still have those crates with articles in them. I would take my laptop and crates with articles and books in them to the ICU waiting room, because that's where I would sit all day and write my dissertation. And in most instances, I was there alone, and I say to myself at some point, I probably just should have said, This is it like? Well, the PhD can wait. You're 23 maybe 2324 the PhD can wait. You need to take care of your mother. You need to take care of your father. But I could kind of subconsciously hear my mother saying, You need to finish this. You know, you need to do this. And this is what would make me most proud. And even when my mother came out of ICU and she was in rehab and she went home, she said, you go back and you finish that degree, I'm gonna be okay. I finished my PhD, ended up finishing my PhD and graduating in May. Went back to Dallas to kind of take care of my father. He ended up dying that October, and then I started the University of Alabama, maybe in March or April. And here I am, this newly minted guy with this PhD whose father's died. Mothers dealing with, you know, significant health challenges, and I had encouragement, and I relied on my faith to really get me through those situations. That I can do this. I can be successful. I can I can continue to press on. I ended up, maybe from that bypass surgery seven years later, burying my mother. When I think about kids who are in foster care, it's interesting, because I think of myself as a kid who's who's an orphan, because both of my parents were deceased, probably by the time I was 35 and to have to navigate this world on your own at that age. And most people I don't you know, may say law that 35 is old, but to try to buy a house, or to, you know, look for someone for moral support, or someone when there are challenges on my job that I can talk to, I tell people all the time, if no one loves you, in most instances, your mother's gonna love you. You can always call your mom even when your dad's upset with you. You can still go to mom, and mom would tell your dad she's gonna be on your side. She's gonna be on your side regardless. But to be at that point and to not have someone to to talk to about those things, even when I I went to Dallas, and I had a level of anxiety, and this was recently, and I called a friend, and they said, what's different is that what you know of Dallas and your parents being there, they're no longer there, where you're used to getting, you know, landing at the airport, and you're used to doing these things that those things, that's just not a part of your life anymore, And so you have to figure out how to move past those things and through. I would say faith and determination and just grit is the only way I think that I am probably standing right now. I've had personally people to lie on me. I've had challenges professionally, whether they be racial, whether they are discrimination because of my gender, just statements that were not untrue. The only thing I could turn to through all of it was my faith, and I could sleep at night because I knew that I hadn't intentionally mistreated anyone and that God had my back through all of it, and even in those times when I thought they were the darkest and I couldn't see my way through it, God still had my back. I'm still able to leave an institution that I absolutely love, that has about 18,000 students and become Vice President of Student Affairs at a university that has 46,000 students, that is in my hometown, and I just can't think of anyone else who could make that happen. Thanks
Speaker 1 14:17
for joining us. Don't forget to subscribe and follow us to stay up to date with our weekly episodes. We'll see you next time you.
