RYAN HAGEN
Staff Writer
Leaning away from blinds concealing the Santa Monica Mountains, Distinguished Professor of Biology Stephen Davis studies his monitor from a chair that occupies half the free space in his office. Research books, periodicals and student assignments are stacked on a desk and bookshelves along two walls, and the only open space is the seat of a sturdy chair inches from the open door.
The chair is seldom empty, students say.
“I went to him with a question for another class, and we talked for an hour,” said senior Jacqueline Devoto, a biology major who, like others in the natural science department, took Biology of Plants with Davis when she was an underclassman. “Then he e-mailed me more information. He’s so welcoming, and I’ll never have to do it alone.”
Davis said he is always available to help his students, but he requires them to perform their own research.
“I provide direction, but it’s a real broad direction,” he said. “Students surprise me all the time [with their approaches]. That’s part of the fun.”
And it’s not just busywork.
Many of his students have had their work published, and of the nine articles on chaparral Davis knows of, eight were written by Pepperdine students.
“It’s a perfect storm,” Davis said of the unique challenges to the chaparral environment in Malibu. His students study how the plants, which grow in the Santa Monica Mountains but not in the colder regions through Malibu Canyon, adapt to drought, wildfire and freezing air temperatures.
His studies accelerate each summer with a summer-long research program and a three-day retreat with as many as 25 students and five faculty members.
One of those is Jay Brewster, professor of biology.
“I’ve known him 10 years, since I started teaching here,” Brewster said. “He’s the gold standard for a successful faculty member. I’m blown away by the breadth of his knowledge.”
The two also worship together at the University Church of Christ, which Davis said does not conflict with anything he knows through science.
“[Reconciling science and religion is] not a personal challenge for me, but I think it is for society,” he said. “There are so many wedges driven between science and religion that are, in my opinion, unjustified. Good scholarship and good theology suggests that many of these questions are open to interpretation.”
Religion and science should work together and learn from each other, he said, which is why chose to teach at a religiously affiliated school.
Pepperdine was one of several small liberal arts schools he considered teaching at, and when the school had an opening he accepted it.
Other than one year each as a visiting scholar at the University of Utah, University of California at Los Angeles and Stanford University, Davis has taught at Pepperdine since receiving his doctorate in biology from Texas A&M in 1974.
Brewster said he adopted his open teaching style from Davis, who was one of the few to invite other professors into his laboratory courses.
Davis said he was disappointed by the lecture-dependent courses he took in college and wanted to give students the opportunity to learn through experimentation.
“I guess I’m a little bit reactionary,” he said. “I really enjoyed discovery. I had a really strong desire to do original and creative work, but there wasn’t much opportunity.”
Davis, the first in his family to attend college, decided to major in biology during his first semester as an undergraduate student at Abilene Christian University in Texas.
He had considered chemistry at first, although he said he was interested in everything during his two years of junior college.
“I really liked history, really liked religion, really liked chemistry,” he said. “Biology linked to living organisms and living people, so I think it was more of a natural fit.”
It also fit his background as a fisherman.
“I fished for salmon and tuna— that’s how I paid my way through college,” said Davis, who grew up fishing with his father and living on an apple orchard in northern California.
He recalled that some days, the struggle was not to finish 25 pages of reading, but to collect the 25 cents he got for every tuna.
“When the wind was really going and my knuckles were bleeding and it was really getting tough, I’d say I can pull out just one more quarter,” he said. “I’d get 700 to 800 fish a day.”
He smiled briefly.
“Tuition’s gone up since then,” he said.
Davis said he also has changed during that time.
“Teaching is dynamic,” he said. “You always need to stay current, and I try to continue to learn from my students.”
He also focuses on his goals for Pepperdine.
“I’m hopeful that we’ll have more support at all levels,” he said. “I mean monetary support— fellowships and scholarships. You can’t live on government grants.”
For most of the last decade, Pepperdine has received a grant from the National Science Foundation, which accepts the top 10 to 15 percent of applicants. But the government agency’s requirements, like that half the students involved in Pepperdine programs come from other universities, limit opportunities for some students.
Students who worked with Davis say the opportunity is life-changing.
“I would say he was one of the biggest influences in my decision to be a teacher,” Kim Watson, who graduated in 2006 with an honors degree in biology and now attends Boise State as a graduate student, wrote in an e-mail. “He truly loves his job and has the ability to really reach his students. To me that sounds like the ideal job, and he is definitely the model for my own life and career.”
05-18-2007