Personal Information for G.R. Davis, Jr.
Birthday: July 24, 1957
Name of your hometown and why you consider this your hometown: Fayetteville, North Carolina is where I was born and lived with my parents in the same house from age 1 until I went to college (the first time.) My parents, my brother and sister and their families all live in Fayetteville so I go to visit as often as possible (every 2-4 months.) It’s a 4.5 hour drive from Spartanburg.
Tell me something interesting about your hometown. Fayetteville (in eastern North Carolina 102 miles from the beach) is home to Fort Bragg, the largest military installation in the US based on acreage. The 82nd Airborne Division is stationed in Fayetteville. The presence of soldiers and their families is pervasive, yet none of my relatives have connections to the military.
In what ways are you talented? I’d like to think I’ve mastered some of the technical aspects of photography. In October of 2006, a coffee table book entitled “The Cottonwood Trail: Glimpses of Wildness in the Heart of Spartanburg” was published by the Hub City Writer’s Project. Dr. Peter Schmunk and I took photographs for about a year and a half for this book which contains essays by Thomas Webster. Since then, I’ve taken up digital photography. I used my Nikon D90 for the photographs in “Africa University-Thy Wonders Displayed” a book inspired by Dr. Ab Abercrombie who asked me and Dr. Terry Ferguson to contribute essays and photographs about the less-well-known aspects of AU, a Methodist-supported university in southeastern Zimbabwe where I intend to volunteer as a professor from Jan-May of 2012. I take my camera everywhere I travel so I have pictures from 17 countries, many of which you can see by following a link from my home page.
Tell me something interesting about a member of your family. You’ll hear lots about my family during the semester. I’ll describe their ailments, frailties, and shortcoming as examples of physiology (and physiology gone awry.) For now, I’ll tell you that I met my wife at our 5-year high school class reunion. We graduated from the same high school in 1975, had many mutual friends, but knew each other by face and name only at that time. We met when we sat with our mutual friends at the reunion, started dating, were married 14 months later, and have been happily married for 30 years.
Tell me about friends, acquaintances, or relatives that have a medical disorder that you’d like to know more about. Like I said, I’ll save these stories for class and lab. For now, I’ll say that I have a 23 year old daughter who is a former drug addict with bipolar disorder so I’m especially sympathetic to those individuals and their families who face mental illnesses and substance abuse problems.
What book would you recommend for students to read, and why? I usually would recommend whatever book I’m reading at the moment. Three summers ago, it was a biography of the painter Paul Cezanne. Two summers ago, I read a biography of the photographer Dorothea Lange who is famous for her coverage of the migrant farmers in California in the 1930s. In the summer of 2006 I and enjoyed a book by William Least Heat Moon entitled “Blue Highways” about a year-long journey of discovery of small towns around America. I enjoyed reading The Kite Runner. Wow, what a story! For summer 2008 I read E.O. Wilson’s autobiography entitled “Naturalist.” In it, he describes his trajectory through life as a scientist beginning with boyhood in Alabama and ending with his current position at Harvard University. Nice to read how hard work leads to success and fulfillment. I have recently finished a biography of a 15th century painter Michelangelo de Cerisi (better known as Carraviagio.) I’ve read biographies if Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painters and try to emulate their effects in some of my photographs.
If anywhere is possible, where would you like to travel and for what purpose? I can’t think of a single place on this planet that I wouldn’t like to visit. I’d go anywhere, but I’d especially like to see Tibet and Nepal. I want to marvel at Mount Everest, hear the tinkling of prayer wheels in Buddist shrines, and stroll the streets of Kathmandu, stopping to taste the coffee and sample the indigenous food. Alas, Maoist guerillas have disrupted the peace and Nepal is off-limits for political reasons. Drs. Ron Robison, Ab Abercrombie and I conducted a January 2008 Travel Interim project to Namibia and Botswana. Dr. Moeller and I will returned to Nambia for Interim 2009 and also had about a week in Cape Town, South Africa. One of the main goals of this project was to study how animals (including people) adapt and acclimate behaviorally and physiologically to life in the arid environments. That was my 4th trip to Africa and I strongly recommend it as a site for study abroad at the University of Cape Town and the University of Botswana. Both are appropriate for biology majors.
What topics (or questions) in physiology are most interesting to you? You’ll see I have a fascination with the nervous system, having studied the development of the nervous system as a part of my Ph.D. dissertation research at UNC-Chapel Hill. I’m interested in the mechanisms by which the nervous system organizes itself during development such that its billions of cells connect in to produce reflexes and movements and behaviors and consciousness. I’m also very interested in the discovery of ways by which the brain and spinal cord can be induced to recover function following injury. I studied these phenomena in bullfrog tadpoles that had spinal cord injuries, and later, while doing post-doctoral research at the University of Missouri, used similar methods to study the same phenomena in larval sea lamprey which exhibit remarkable behavioral recovery after their spinal cords are completely severed. With Dr. Hettes as a colleague in the Biology Department, I’ve re-directed my research to the area of the neural regulation of feeding behavior and the two of us have pursued studies in laboratory rats. I’m interested in how human appetite is affected by food restriction. You’ll also see, especially in lab, that I get excited about the heart and the kidneys. For the last two summers, I’ve served as the Director of Wofford’s Community of Scholars, a 10 week residential program in which 19 student scholars from all academic disciplines pursue a research project of their own design under the direction of one of the 10 faculty fellows who likewise conduct their own research project. As director, I’ve had no time to pursue a project of my own but I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the Community of Scholars and interacting with faculty and students from virtually every department at Wofford college.
What do you feel passionately about? I’m passionate about the value of a liberal arts education. Right out of high school, my first attempt at college was a disaster. At UNC-Chapel Hill among 10,000 students, I felt all alone and without purpose. I dropped out at mid-term of first semester, freshman year. I worked in my father’s business (chain link fencing) for the next two years, where I started out on top and worked my way down as a P.H.D. (post-hole digger). After two years, I went back to college, this time at Campbell University, a small Baptist school with a funeral-home atmosphere where I worked diligently and was a star student in the Biology program. At that time, I didn’t fully appreciated what all those history and French and English and theatre and religion professors were trying to do for me, so it is with regret that I say that only now in my fifth decade have I come to love art and music and history and culture and science, that is, everything that is available for you here at Wofford if only you recognize this smorgasbord that is set for you to enjoy. Oh, I’d love to do college over, but this time I’d learn for the sake of learning and not simply to earn a stellar grade. I realize now that if I’d studied out of a pure love of learning that the grades would have followed. Now I read and learn because I want to, not because I want a decent grade.
Describe yourself at age 30. Let’s see, that would have been 1987. At that time, I was an Assistant Professor of Biology at Wingate College, about 50 miles from Charlotte, NC. I had (and still do have) a lovely wife (the same one!) I had a two-year old daughter and a newborn daughter, but no Ph.D. at this point. I’d taken my first teaching position without having completed my Ph.D. in Physiology at Chapel Hill, and my teaching duties (invertebrate zoology, human anatomy and physiology, introductory biology) prevented me from making serious progress on my dissertation. It was a frustrating period where the pressure of finishing the degree was compounded by my duties to my family and my students. I loved my teaching job but dreaded the effort that would be required to complete my professional credentials.
Describe yourself at age 50. I turned 50 in July of 2007. As professor of biology, I had developed some expertise in my new research interest (the control of feeding behaviors.) I’d been guiding students who are interested in that research and helped them publish abstracts and present their findings at scientific meetings. I continued to build my library by reading books on art and travel. I made progress in photography as evidence by several exhibitions of my photographs. My son was a sophomore at The Citadel (his choice, not mine). Our two daughters have been on their own for a while. My wife and I hoped enjoyed more quiet time around the house and still hope to travel together (which has been limited to this point.)
What must you be doing now to achieve your goals for age 30 and 50? Thirty? Been there….done that. 50? Also, history! Maybe I should be establishing goals for age 70, but I’d rather not think about that right now.
What are your fears? I fear dying before I’m through living. I fear not doing a good job of being a husband, a father, a son, a teacher, a scientist, a mentor, a friend, and a role model. I’m anxious about the health of my parents who are in their seventies and how I can be helpful to them as they face declining mobility and resiliency. And though I’m not claustrophobic, I would be terrified by cave diving. Something about being under water breathing bottled air, surrounded by darkness in an unfamiliar environment…. I don’t think I could handle that.