Prominent Educator Receives The Pfeiffer University Distinguished Alumni Award
Dr. Wayne T. Davis ’70, the recipient of this year’s Pfeiffer University Distinguished Alumni Award, has enjoyed a notable and celebrated career in higher education. He has demonstrated again and again that a graduate of Pfeiffer can absorb the best from its small-is-beautiful culture and apply it successfully on a much larger stage. For Davis, Pfeiffer helped provide the foundation for teaching and leadership positions at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UT), where he spent his career.
Davis found extraordinary success at UT as a professor, researcher, and administrator from 1975 until 2019, the year he retired. And he did so while keeping influences of Pfeiffer in the forefront of everything he did: “Even in a large university environment, I was somehow able to retain and pass on the benefits of the small college/university atmosphere I knew at Pfeiffer,” Davis said.