Check Out Our Podcast: The Verdict
Today we’re sitting down for a heartfelt conversation with Dr. Lowell Davis, the Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs at the University of Texas at Arlington. Dr. Davis brings a wealth of experience and a deep commitment to supporting students who face significant challenges, particularly those who have suffered catastrophic injuries.
Join us for part one of our conversation, where Dr. Davis shares his personal journey—from being SGA President at Hampton University to earning his PhD and leading student affairs at major institutions—and how that experience drives his passion for helping nontraditional and disabled students succeed.
He explains how campuses provide accessibility resources, adaptive services, and now even Comprehensive Transition Programs designed for individuals with intellectual or physical disabilities. You’ll also hear how federal aid, state-level funding, and programs like UNCW’s upcoming initiative are helping open the door for students whose life path has shifted.
Here’s what we discuss in this episode:
0:00 – Intro
1:03 – Lowell’s background and career
7:35 – Being an advocate
8:38 – Providing access for disabilities
10:24 – Special program at UNC Wilmington
About our guest: https://resources.uta.edu/student-affairs/vice-president.php
Lowell davis, education, accessibility, disabilities, catastrophic injuries
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
I'm Clark speaks the catastrophic injury lawyer. Welcome to the verdict. This is catastrophic comeback. I am thrilled today to have Dr Lowell Davis with us. Welcome Dr Davis,
thank you so much for having me. Clark. Just
for full disclosure, Lowell's buddy of mine and we hang out together sometimes outside of outside of work, so I appreciate you coming here and talking to us about something that means a lot to me. All right, absolutely. So the question that I have for you, what this podcast is designed for, is people who have been in catastrophic accidents, maybe they have a physical injury that might prevent them from being able to do what they did before, if they had, if they might have been a construction person or an electrician or a welder or something where they work with their hands and and worked in a physical job, and now they have a permanent physical injury. So what I'm interested in trying to figure out is, if they wanted to go back to school and learn how to do something else, what would that look like? Let's start for a minute. Can you tell us what your position is?
Absolutely So my name is Lowell Davis. I of course, I serve as a Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, currently, and about a month I will move to the University of Texas, Arlington as a vice president for student affairs. I've built my professional and career working on college campuses and in Student Affairs, which really is an effort to support students who, as we say at UNC W leave the nest and want to come to college and want to be successful. So we see students who come to us from a number of different backgrounds. We see students who have a number of different I'm going to use the word issues where they may need additional support, and my role as the Vice President to ensure that any student, really that we admit to our campus has the tools that they need in order to be successful, to help them to graduate from our institution. Fair
enough. Before we go on, can we talk to you? Can you talk to me a little bit about your background, your your educational experience and your work experience that's led you to this position.
Absolutely. So I am originally from Dallas, Texas, which is why an opportunity to go to University of Texas Arlington is really exciting. Arlington is a suburb of Dallas, between Dallas and Fort Worth. And I left Dallas and went to Hampton University and pursued a bachelor's degree in English, Arts Secondary Education, thinking that I was going to follow in the footsteps of my mother and become a K 12 educator. That really did not pan out the way that I thought that it was going to. I ended up pursuing a master's degree in counseling, thinking that I wanted to run a counseling center on a college campus. While I was in the midst of doing my clinical hours for licensure, one of my clients ended up attempting to take his life. I say that really to help you to understand kind of what I've seen and what I've dealt with. I went to the hospital. His parents were at the hospital. I talked to his parents. I never disclosed to his parents, why I knew their son, what their son was coming to the Counseling Center to talk about, but it demonstrated to them that I cared about their child. I went back to campus and told one of my instructors, and I remember she smiled and she kind of chuckled and said, I'm not sure this is a profession for you. If you go work at a counseling center on a college campus, lol, you can't go to the hospital see all of your clients. You can't follow up with all of your clients. And really through then, too close is what you get. Too close. And it wasn't that she thought that I did anything that was that was unprofessional. It's that she said, lol, you care. And so you have a client where someone has told you that something is wrong and you want to be there to be supportive. She's
looking at it from your point of view, longevity of you being able to be in this career for a long time, if you get that attached and care that much about your
students. Absolutely, you know, she said this will be high burnout for you. So she introduced me to profession of Student Affairs. I'd served as SGA president at Hampton University, and so I knew that there were college administrators on a college campus, but really didn't know that you could do something professionally on a college campus, beyond really being a faculty member. So she introduced me to this student affairs as profession. I ended up applying to Indiana University in Bloomington for a PhD in higher education administration and student affairs. IU has one of very few history of education programs in the country, and so I was able to take some history of education courses. I've always been interested in history, but really get a PhD in student affairs. So I took that position, took a number of courses, graduated and what most people would maybe say, record time, and started my first professional career. At the University of Alabama was really kind of daunting for me. I'm a kid from Texas whose parents grew up born in the 40s, but grew up in the height of the civil rights struggle, and so I am now working at an institution that whose history would say that it was really not too kind to people that look like me and my office. Out of my office window, I could look at Foster Auditorium, which is the auditorium in which the Governor Wallace stood in the door and would not allow an African American student to enroll. So from a personal standpoint, I'm on the historic campus, and I'm in a state where I've never really lived, but it was my first kind of professional job. I went straight through I had my PhD at 25 I was not that much older than the students that I was going to really work with. I went there to as an assistant director, to work in an office called New Student and Parent Programs to support parents and to support students who come to the University of Alabama. And from that experience, I began was given more and more or increased responsibilities. Ending up supervising the largest Greek community in the country. I supervised veteran, military affairs, involvement, leadership, just a number of different offices. And after five years, I decided that I wanted to do something different, and ended up at Western Carolina University in the mountains of North Carolina, actually, west of Asheville. Most people, really in eastern North Carolina, where I live now, probably have never been that far west, but I was there for seven years, with one year I did an American Council on Education fellowship at the University of California Davis. So I lived in downtown Sacramento for a year and commuted over to Davis and then pursued a career at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. But all of my career moves have been committed to working with students I am personally and I would say, financially invested to supporting kids who've aged out of the foster care system, who tend to come to college and want to pursue a baccalaureate degree. Less than 8% of students who age out of the foster care system and go to college actually graduate from college. And so they need support. Very interesting. And when I started initially like that at Alabama, I was going to the Vice President and to the provost asking for resources to do it where being in the job as Vice Chancellor Student Affairs, I could just automatically dedicate resources to support students who are part of that population. Well. So
it seems like then this is kind of with your different experiences, but this seems like the common thread is being an advocate and being in a position where you can help students achieve their academic objectives. Is that absolutely,
and I tell people this, that I didn't come from much, but I came from a home where I always saw people who took what they had and gave it to others, and I've taken that philosophy with me personally. And so I don't have a lot now i but what I do have, I try to make sure that I'm giving back, and whether that's on my job, whether that's in the community, whether that's through some fiscal kind of philanthropic organizations, I always try to do something that will allow me an opportunity to get back or appearing
on podcasts with your friend. Okay, so let me ask you something that's kind of, I feel like is along these same lines, right? So what we're looking at is people who have were going along with their lives, and they were living their lives, and they had they had a plan, they had a they had a job, they had a life, they had their health, and all of a sudden something catastrophic happens to them, and it changes the way that their path goes forward, and maybe they're not in a position to do the same job that they need to do. What I'm thinking is, you know, is going back to school and retraining and learning and relearning an option for them.
It both definitely, it most definitely, is the Department of Education requires, really, every institution of higher learning to have what we would call a Disability Services, Office of Accessibility, resources. The name may be different on a number of different campuses, but we are required by law to support students who may come to institutions of higher learning with a disability, and that support looks different on a number of different campuses, but the accommodations can range from extended time on tests, taking tests in a distracted environment, the instructor providing notes for this student, a professional note taker, a. A person to provide sign language for the student who's actually in the course. The accommodations can really be a number of different they can take on a number of different forms, but we are required by law to provide those services and resources to students if they come to our institutions.
And I think you mentioned that this is kind of the way it is at almost all institutions. Is that fair? Absolutely. And so you said there was a number of accommodations that would be made for Are there specific programs that are available to students who have disabilities? Or would those be along the same lines? So along
the same lines, I will put a shameless plug in here for UNC W, we are in the process of creating what we call a comprehensive transition post secondary education program, and so these are for students who go to high school and may be enrolled in special education courses but want a college experience. The Department of Education has recently recognized these programs, where they will allow students to use federal financial aid to participate in those programs, not to be political, but we have received some funding on the Senate side in the state of North Carolina for a program like this, to the tune of a million dollars to be funded to support these students at UNC W we're in the middle of our kind of political session, and so we'll see what happens on the House side, but we will be the only program in southeastern North Carolina that will give K 12 students who may have had a catastrophic injury that prevented them from, kind of doing the same things in which they were doing, an opportunity to continue to possibly go to college and have a college experience.
So that's one of the reasons why I thought that maybe that you would be a great guest for our show, is because you had mentioned that to me before, and you were instrumental in getting that funding and having building that program here at UNC w is that right? Well, we're
in the process of building the program. We are at least I'm personally invested and excited about it. I have aunt who died of colon cancer because she was mute and she just could not speak. And it was not until it was too late they realized she had stage four colon cancer. She could walk, she could do what you would think of most people could do, as far as fully function in society, but she could not speak. And that doesn't mean that she should not have had an opportunity to continue to engage and function in society like everyone else. And because of that personal passion, I created a proposal and had an opportunity to share it with not only my boss at UNC W, the chancellor, but also with Senator Lee, who was just very instrumental in helping UNC W to obtain funding for their program. So even on the K 12, if you think about the K 12 side, you want a collegiate experience, or you think about, you're an adult, you want to go to college, or you simply, you know, 18 and you've been admitted to college as a standard, kind of regular admitted student. We have the resources to support you to be successful.
So this, this, this idea of helping people with disabilities, however they might have been generated. Helping them have a productive and fulfilling and enjoyable college experience is something that is important to you, personally, most
definitely. And we are there institutions from the CTP program, I think there are three in the state of North Carolina, app, state, Unc, Greensboro. And, well, there are two. And so hopefully UNC W will be, will have, will be the third one. You know, there's a coffee shop here in Wilmington, and I'm not sure if this is appropriate to call these things out, you know, bitty and Bose. There's no
limitations on what we're talking about. Okay, it's helpful to people who are in this situation. We're going to talk
about, well, there's a coffee shop. Well, let me back up. You know, I remember as a kid Walmart, going in Walmart, and there was always the Walmart greeter. And the Walmart greeter was usually someone who may have had a disability, but it made me kind of feel proud as a kid to see that this person had an opportunity, that this person had a job, that they could function, and sometimes a smile on their face, walking in a store after a long day may have been all that that I needed, because my life may have been better than than something else that was going on. So that was always just kind of extremely positive. But then I moved to Wilmington, and there's this coffee shop, bitty and Bose, which I've realized as I've traveled to other cities, that they are not only in Wilmington, there are other locations that intentionally hire people who may have an intellectual or physical disability but can make coffee that they can engage. Age with customers, and it gives them an opportunity. And I think like kids who age out of foster care, they turn 18 and we say, go figure it out. You're on your own. The same thing happens with some of these kids that we have, or people who have an intellectual or a physical disability that we say, well, we can all provide services for you the K 12 level you need to kind of figure out how to maneuver this world on your own. So colleges are starting to get into the business of supporting these students. And I'm really excited about that. And we have had to by the American Disabilities Act, support college students for a long time who've disabled, but the high school students having a collegiate experience is something that's fairly new.
Thanks 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.
I'm Clark speaks the catastrophic injury lawyer. Welcome to the verdict. This is catastrophic comeback. I am thrilled today to have Dr Lowell Davis with us. Welcome Dr Davis,
thank you so much for having me. Clark. Just
for full disclosure, Lowell's buddy of mine and we hang out together sometimes outside of outside of work, so I appreciate you coming here and talking to us about something that means a lot to me. All right, absolutely. So the question that I have for you, what this podcast is designed for, is people who have been in catastrophic accidents, maybe they have a physical injury that might prevent them from being able to do what they did before, if they had, if they might have been a construction person or an electrician or a welder or something where they work with their hands and and worked in a physical job, and now they have a permanent physical injury. So what I'm interested in trying to figure out is, if they wanted to go back to school and learn how to do something else, what would that look like? Let's start for a minute. Can you tell us what your position is?
Absolutely So my name is Lowell Davis. I of course, I serve as a Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, currently, and about a month I will move to the University of Texas, Arlington as a vice president for student affairs. I've built my professional and career working on college campuses and in Student Affairs, which really is an effort to support students who, as we say at UNC W leave the nest and want to come to college and want to be successful. So we see students who come to us from a number of different backgrounds. We see students who have a number of different I'm going to use the word issues where they may need additional support, and my role as the Vice President to ensure that any student, really that we admit to our campus has the tools that they need in order to be successful, to help them to graduate from our institution. Fair
enough. Before we go on, can we talk to you? Can you talk to me a little bit about your background, your your educational experience and your work experience that's led you to this position.
Absolutely. So I am originally from Dallas, Texas, which is why an opportunity to go to University of Texas Arlington is really exciting. Arlington is a suburb of Dallas, between Dallas and Fort Worth. And I left Dallas and went to Hampton University and pursued a bachelor's degree in English, Arts Secondary Education, thinking that I was going to follow in the footsteps of my mother and become a K 12 educator. That really did not pan out the way that I thought that it was going to. I ended up pursuing a master's degree in counseling, thinking that I wanted to run a counseling center on a college campus. While I was in the midst of doing my clinical hours for licensure, one of my clients ended up attempting to take his life. I say that really to help you to understand kind of what I've seen and what I've dealt with. I went to the hospital. His parents were at the hospital. I talked to his parents. I never disclosed to his parents, why I knew their son, what their son was coming to the Counseling Center to talk about, but it demonstrated to them that I cared about their child. I went back to campus and told one of my instructors, and I remember she smiled and she kind of chuckled and said, I'm not sure this is a profession for you. If you go work at a counseling center on a college campus, lol, you can't go to the hospital see all of your clients. You can't follow up with all of your clients. And really through then, too close is what you get. Too close. And it wasn't that she thought that I did anything that was that was unprofessional. It's that she said, lol, you care. And so you have a client where someone has told you that something is wrong and you want to be there to be supportive. She's
looking at it from your point of view, longevity of you being able to be in this career for a long time, if you get that attached and care that much about your
students. Absolutely, you know, she said this will be high burnout for you. So she introduced me to profession of Student Affairs. I'd served as SGA president at Hampton University, and so I knew that there were college administrators on a college campus, but really didn't know that you could do something professionally on a college campus, beyond really being a faculty member. So she introduced me to this student affairs as profession. I ended up applying to Indiana University in Bloomington for a PhD in higher education administration and student affairs. IU has one of very few history of education programs in the country, and so I was able to take some history of education courses. I've always been interested in history, but really get a PhD in student affairs. So I took that position, took a number of courses, graduated and what most people would maybe say, record time, and started my first professional career. At the University of Alabama was really kind of daunting for me. I'm a kid from Texas whose parents grew up born in the 40s, but grew up in the height of the civil rights struggle, and so I am now working at an institution that whose history would say that it was really not too kind to people that look like me and my office. Out of my office window, I could look at Foster Auditorium, which is the auditorium in which the Governor Wallace stood in the door and would not allow an African American student to enroll. So from a personal standpoint, I'm on the historic campus, and I'm in a state where I've never really lived, but it was my first kind of professional job. I went straight through I had my PhD at 25 I was not that much older than the students that I was going to really work with. I went there to as an assistant director, to work in an office called New Student and Parent Programs to support parents and to support students who come to the University of Alabama. And from that experience, I began was given more and more or increased responsibilities. Ending up supervising the largest Greek community in the country. I supervised veteran, military affairs, involvement, leadership, just a number of different offices. And after five years, I decided that I wanted to do something different, and ended up at Western Carolina University in the mountains of North Carolina, actually, west of Asheville. Most people, really in eastern North Carolina, where I live now, probably have never been that far west, but I was there for seven years, with one year I did an American Council on Education fellowship at the University of California Davis. So I lived in downtown Sacramento for a year and commuted over to Davis and then pursued a career at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. But all of my career moves have been committed to working with students I am personally and I would say, financially invested to supporting kids who've aged out of the foster care system, who tend to come to college and want to pursue a baccalaureate degree. Less than 8% of students who age out of the foster care system and go to college actually graduate from college. And so they need support. Very interesting. And when I started initially like that at Alabama, I was going to the Vice President and to the provost asking for resources to do it where being in the job as Vice Chancellor Student Affairs, I could just automatically dedicate resources to support students who are part of that population. Well. So
it seems like then this is kind of with your different experiences, but this seems like the common thread is being an advocate and being in a position where you can help students achieve their academic objectives. Is that absolutely,
and I tell people this, that I didn't come from much, but I came from a home where I always saw people who took what they had and gave it to others, and I've taken that philosophy with me personally. And so I don't have a lot now i but what I do have, I try to make sure that I'm giving back, and whether that's on my job, whether that's in the community, whether that's through some fiscal kind of philanthropic organizations, I always try to do something that will allow me an opportunity to get back or appearing
on podcasts with your friend. Okay, so let me ask you something that's kind of, I feel like is along these same lines, right? So what we're looking at is people who have were going along with their lives, and they were living their lives, and they had they had a plan, they had a they had a job, they had a life, they had their health, and all of a sudden something catastrophic happens to them, and it changes the way that their path goes forward, and maybe they're not in a position to do the same job that they need to do. What I'm thinking is, you know, is going back to school and retraining and learning and relearning an option for them.
It both definitely, it most definitely, is the Department of Education requires, really, every institution of higher learning to have what we would call a Disability Services, Office of Accessibility, resources. The name may be different on a number of different campuses, but we are required by law to support students who may come to institutions of higher learning with a disability, and that support looks different on a number of different campuses, but the accommodations can range from extended time on tests, taking tests in a distracted environment, the instructor providing notes for this student, a professional note taker, a. A person to provide sign language for the student who's actually in the course. The accommodations can really be a number of different they can take on a number of different forms, but we are required by law to provide those services and resources to students if they come to our institutions.
And I think you mentioned that this is kind of the way it is at almost all institutions. Is that fair? Absolutely. And so you said there was a number of accommodations that would be made for Are there specific programs that are available to students who have disabilities? Or would those be along the same lines? So along
the same lines, I will put a shameless plug in here for UNC W, we are in the process of creating what we call a comprehensive transition post secondary education program, and so these are for students who go to high school and may be enrolled in special education courses but want a college experience. The Department of Education has recently recognized these programs, where they will allow students to use federal financial aid to participate in those programs, not to be political, but we have received some funding on the Senate side in the state of North Carolina for a program like this, to the tune of a million dollars to be funded to support these students at UNC W we're in the middle of our kind of political session, and so we'll see what happens on the House side, but we will be the only program in southeastern North Carolina that will give K 12 students who may have had a catastrophic injury that prevented them from, kind of doing the same things in which they were doing, an opportunity to continue to possibly go to college and have a college experience.
So that's one of the reasons why I thought that maybe that you would be a great guest for our show, is because you had mentioned that to me before, and you were instrumental in getting that funding and having building that program here at UNC w is that right? Well, we're
in the process of building the program. We are at least I'm personally invested and excited about it. I have aunt who died of colon cancer because she was mute and she just could not speak. And it was not until it was too late they realized she had stage four colon cancer. She could walk, she could do what you would think of most people could do, as far as fully function in society, but she could not speak. And that doesn't mean that she should not have had an opportunity to continue to engage and function in society like everyone else. And because of that personal passion, I created a proposal and had an opportunity to share it with not only my boss at UNC W, the chancellor, but also with Senator Lee, who was just very instrumental in helping UNC W to obtain funding for their program. So even on the K 12, if you think about the K 12 side, you want a collegiate experience, or you think about, you're an adult, you want to go to college, or you simply, you know, 18 and you've been admitted to college as a standard, kind of regular admitted student. We have the resources to support you to be successful.
So this, this, this idea of helping people with disabilities, however they might have been generated. Helping them have a productive and fulfilling and enjoyable college experience is something that is important to you, personally, most
definitely. And we are there institutions from the CTP program, I think there are three in the state of North Carolina, app, state, Unc, Greensboro. And, well, there are two. And so hopefully UNC W will be, will have, will be the third one. You know, there's a coffee shop here in Wilmington, and I'm not sure if this is appropriate to call these things out, you know, bitty and Bose. There's no
limitations on what we're talking about. Okay, it's helpful to people who are in this situation. We're going to talk
about, well, there's a coffee shop. Well, let me back up. You know, I remember as a kid Walmart, going in Walmart, and there was always the Walmart greeter. And the Walmart greeter was usually someone who may have had a disability, but it made me kind of feel proud as a kid to see that this person had an opportunity, that this person had a job, that they could function, and sometimes a smile on their face, walking in a store after a long day may have been all that that I needed, because my life may have been better than than something else that was going on. So that was always just kind of extremely positive. But then I moved to Wilmington, and there's this coffee shop, bitty and Bose, which I've realized as I've traveled to other cities, that they are not only in Wilmington, there are other locations that intentionally hire people who may have an intellectual or physical disability but can make coffee that they can engage. Age with customers, and it gives them an opportunity. And I think like kids who age out of foster care, they turn 18 and we say, go figure it out. You're on your own. The same thing happens with some of these kids that we have, or people who have an intellectual or a physical disability that we say, well, we can all provide services for you the K 12 level you need to kind of figure out how to maneuver this world on your own. So colleges are starting to get into the business of supporting these students. And I'm really excited about that. And we have had to by the American Disabilities Act, support college students for a long time who've disabled, but the high school students having a collegiate experience is something that's fairly new.
Thanks 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.
