History
David Davies joined the Department of History in 1964 as a lecturer. He became an assistant professor in 1965 and has served as an associate professor since 1969. Dr. Davies is a scholar in the field of Russian history. His teaching ranges from a graduate course in modern Russian history through a third year course, also on Russian history, to the renowned introductory course on crisis and change in western civilization in which he joins some of the department's best teachers. As a teacher, Dr. Davies has earned the respect and friendship of his students and his colleagues. To quote from his nomination for the Distinguished Teacher Award, he gives his students "a strong sense both of the greatness of intellectual activity and of their own ability to grow intellectually. He is an excellent lecturer, who involves students totally in his subject through careful preparation and technique, but mostly through his own enthusiasm for his subject. Yet it is in the countless hours he devotes to individual student contacts and in the small, intimate seminars which he insists on maintaining, despite the great numbers in his courses, that his personal warmth, intellectual vigour and pleasure in teaching are most obvious".