One Class Act
Alice Louise Davis ’27 grew up gazing at the columns of the University of Mary Washington’s Seacobeck Hall. The recently renovated space, where her parents’ wedding reception was held decades ago, was captured in photos in her Hanover home.
The irony isn’t lost on Davis, an education major who’s spent much of her college career learning from professors in that very same building.
Trips to visit her grandmother, who graduated from Mary Washington in the ’60s, took the family through Fredericksburg. So when college crept closer, she kept UMW in mind, touring campus multiple times. The minute applications opened in fall 2022, she hit “send” on hers.
Moving in felt like coming home, she said, with friendly faces galore, including that of her advisor and faculty mentor, Professor of Education Teresa Coffman. And practicums and student-teaching in Stafford County have provided classroom experience, she said, that “challenged and transformed me as an educator.”
Student Government Association and Class Council vice president, she sometimes finds herself rubbing elbows in meetings with Mary Washington President Troy Paino. “He just blows me away every time,” said Davis, also a student alumni ambassador in the Honors Program. “His kindness is really so telling.” Coffman says the same about Davis, whom she calls approachable, creative and patient. “Allie is a leader, but she also listens to others’ views and learns from them,” Coffman said. “Students seek out people like her who will allow them to bloom and grow.”
