Alumna of the Year: Robbie Davis
Alumna’s devotion and commitment is a hole-in-one for Lipscomb.
Posted 1-2-25
The 2023 ASUN-winning women's golf team with Davis.
There doesn’t seem to be an area of Lipscomb University that Robbie Brewer Davis (BS ’74) has not somehow supported or been involved in.
She played intramural football as a member of Delta Sigma while a student in the 1970s, she has served on the Board of Trustees in the 2000s, she’s a Lifelong Learning program student and a mission trip participant, she’s a member of groups supporting Lipscomb’s health sciences and archaeology, and most of all, she is an active fan and supporter of Bison Athletics in all its forms.
Her all-encompassing involvement and support of Lipscomb was honored this past November with the 2024 Alumna of the Year Award, the university’s highest honor conferred upon alumni to recognize the inspiring ways Lipscomb alumni are making a profound impact in the world.
Davis doesn’t have the award-winning credentials the world has come to expect: an impressive job title or a long resume. What she does have is heart, and lots of it. Student athletes for generations will attest to the value of her sassy brand of personal support and positivity.
She is a welcoming hostess who started coordinating meals for Don Meyer’s basketball teams during the 1980s and 1990’s during the famed coach’s tenure, and she continues hosting student athletes in her Nashville home and Alabama lake house today.
Davis often hosts student athletes in her Nashville home and Alabama lake house.
She’s a fixture in the stands of practically all the athletics’ teams decked out in Lipscomb gear. Her passion for the women’s golf program was honored this October with the naming of “The Robbie,” a Lipscomb-hosted collegiate golf tournament, and the members of the women’s golf team gave her an honorary championship ring after winning the ASUN Championship in 2023.
“Relationships are the key for why I love Lipscomb,” said Davis. “I think athletics is an important portion of the college experience. I have enjoyed being around sports all my life, and knowing that Lipscomb puts such an emphasis—not only on academics and excellence in sports—but also in spiritual development is important. This university is not only concerned about academics and winning banners, but in the last few years with our spiritual formation directors, almost 150 of our athletes have put on Christ in baptism. I just think about the ripple effect of that.”
Davis is an active fan and supporter of Bison Athletics in all its forms.
Davis was born into a family full of Lipscomb Bisons. Her great-grandfather was Dr. J.S. Ward, the university’s first science professor on faculty. Her grandparents, Robbie Dearing Ward (A ’13) and Charles R. Brewer (A ’13), met on Lipscomb’s campus, and her grandfather served as a faculty member for 25 years. Davis’ parents, Rose Foster (A ’45) and Charles W. Brewer (LA ’41), also met at Lipscomb. David Lipscomb's brother, William, was the great-grandfather of her husband, Harrison "Hank" Davis.
“I wanted to stay engaged with Lipscomb not only because of my family history here, my legacy, but because my life was transformed here,” said Davis in her speech accepting the award. “My spiritual growth was so transformed, and for those reasons I will forever be grateful.”
Davis’ childhood dream was to be an archaeologist, but being a practical woman, she entered Lipscomb with the intent to become a high school teacher of history. Upon learning that the chances of finding a job as a history teacher were small, she changed her major to business management and was working as a credit manager for the Bradford Furniture Company when she met her husband of 47 years. Hank Davis has been a lifelong enthusiastic supporter of her involvement and support of Lipscomb, said Robbie.
As a Lipscomb student, Davis was a member of the Delta Sigma social club, the academic society Phi Beta Lambda and the President's Student Council. She also was a Bisonette who enjoyed supporting the basketball team and watching the baseball team play at the field at Onion Dell. Davis also loved playing intramural sports.
Davis with her husband Hank
Davis brought her lifelong love of sports—especially golf—to every aspect of her life. She has won six golf championships at Nashville’s Belle Meade Country Club, but she also coordinated the Associated Women of Lipscomb (AWL) golf tournament for 11 years, and has worked for more than 30 years to raise money for Lipscomb and scholarships through golf tournaments.
Her love of sports was nurtured by her father, who personally taught her to play golf when she was still young (She got her first clubs on her 10th birthday.), and her brother Barry Brewer, who was not only an athlete himself but he also started the Bison Scramble in 1985, later named the Barry Brewer Golf Tournament in his honor.
During her time on the Lipscomb Board of Trustees, she helped elevate and steer the athletics program in the early years of its transition to NCAA Division 1. In 2019, she was inducted into the Athletics Hall of Fame for meritorious service.
Once again focused on relationships, Davis’ love for the Lipscomb community has grown through mission work, including building homes with Habitat for Humanity in the Appalachian Mountains of East Tennessee with faculty members Paul Prill, now retired, and Jon Lowrance (BS ’77), chair of biology, and going to Honduras to build homes and support medical workers with Steve Davidson (BS ’77), Lipscomb’s director of IMPACT and founder of Jovenes en Camino in Honduras.
Davis' family has long been supportive of her passion for supporting Lipscomb and its students.
In recent years, Davis has been able to rejuvenate her love of archaeology, going on two archaeological trips in 2012 and 2016 to Beth Shemesh, the valley where Samson lived, and serving on the advisory board for Lipscomb’s Lanier Center for Archaeology. Her finds on the trip were “the most exciting time of my life,” she said.
But back at home, watching Lipscomb athletes, supporting them with hugs and hospitality and building relationships with the next generations brings her a great deal of enjoyment, as well as building a better future for young people.
“I’m not some successful business executive. I’m not some published author,” Davis said humbly upon receiving her award. “I’m just a graduate who loves Lipscomb.”
Photos by Kristi Jones and submitted by Davis.