Davison Receives Cornell Distinguished Service Award

Political science professor Don Davison has received the 2021-22 Cornell Distinguished Service Award.

“A longtime advocate for faculty, Don Davison has been involved in numerous projects that examine salary equity and has advocated for transparency and the use of good data in decision making,” says Susan Singer, provost and vice president of academic affairs.

Davison’s service at Rollins includes serving on or chairing nearly every faculty governance committee as well as serving as associate dean of the faculty, chair of the political science department, and twice as faculty president. Davison helped develop new career paths for lecturers and produced a white paper addressing racial and gender biases for the Council for International Exchange of Scholars (CIES). He also recently helped several faculty members navigate tenure and promotion during the COVID-19 pandemic. Davison has long worked with the Democracy Project, a non-partisan student-led organization dedicated to preserving and promoting the tenets of democracy.

In 2016, Davison received the Graham-Frey Civic Award, given by Florida Campus Compact to a single faculty member among the state’s colleges and universities, for his outstanding contributions to the development of civic learning and engagement in sustaining participatory democracy. Davison, who came to Rollins in 1989, was also selected by the National Endowment for the Humanities as a summer fellow to study immigration and citizenship.

“I am honored to receive the Cornell Distinguished Service Award,” says Davison, who describes the most gratifying achievement as leading the effort to establish a Rollins chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, the nation’s oldest and most prestigious academic honor society recognizing excellence in the liberal arts. “Membership in PBK places Rollins College among the elite academic institutions in the United States,” he says.

The Cornell Distinguished Service Award, named for George Cornell ‘35 and made possible by his generosity, honors faculty whose outstanding service has distinguished themselves and Rollins.