Two longtime Kenyon professors, who each helped shape Kenyon’s history, as well as the academic careers and lives of thousands of students, have now made significant investments in Kenyon’s future.
Michael Evans taught at Kenyon for 44 years, until 2009, including as chair of the history department and in the Integrated Program in Humane Studies, which he founded in 1975. Evans, now retired and living in Tucson, Arizona, said he loved teaching at Kenyon and that the idea of creating a scholarship had been on his mind for a long time. “Education at Kenyon matters to me a great deal, and I have admired Kenyon students with a general humanities orientation.,” he said.
Evans made a commitment through his estate to establish the Michael J.and Tamara S. Evans Scholarship, also named for his late wife, to support future generations of Kenyon students.
Evans was teaching at Kenyon when Adele Davidson joined as a student. Davidson graduated in 1975 among the third full class of women and went on to become the first alumna of Kenyon to receive tenure in the English department. She has taught at Kenyon since 1985, now part-time, and holds the Charles P. McIlvaine Professor of English endowed position.
With a gift from her family, Davidson has established the Davidson Family Professorship of English Literature, for a tenured senior faculty member who shares her focus area: pre-modern literature, especially major British authors such as Shakespeare, Milton or Chaucer.
Provost Jeff Bowman shared his appreciation for the inspiring teaching and remarkable generosity of his longtime faculty colleagues. “Michael and Adele are both Kenyon legends. For them to choose to give back to a place where they have already made such incredible contributions through their teaching is extraordinary — and deeply appreciated.'
The inaugural holder of the Davidson Family Professorship, as of July 1, is Sergei Lobanov-Rostovsky, who has been her colleague since he joined the department in 1993.
“I can remember being part of the committee that hired Sergei, so that's great,” Davidson said. “I have admired his career for such a long time.”
Lobanov-Rostovsky returned the sentiment. “Adele Davidson has inspired generations of Kenyon students with her brilliant teaching, scholarship, and mentorship. She has been the kind of colleague who has made teaching at Kenyon a pleasure throughout my career. I am immensely grateful for all she does for Kenyon, and I can think of no greater tribute to her than for Kenyon’s English Department to carry on her tradition of inspired teaching of Shakespeare and Early Modern Literature through the Davidson Family Professorship.”
As an endowed position, it will be fully funded in perpetuity as part of the College’s endowment.
Davidson said she was inspired to create the position because of all that Kenyon has meant to her. “I have kind of devoted a lifetime to Kenyon. I just had my 50th College reunion in May and then I also this past year completed my 40th year of teaching at Kenyon.”
She and her mother, Mary Ann, who died in 2024 at age 99, had talked about wanting to endow a professorship. Now, with their family gift, Davidson said, they were able to invest “in values that I think are Kenyon values, and also my family values, of understanding the importance of a liberal education.”
“My mom was aware, and certainly I have felt, the specialness of Kenyon; it has been a kind of family for me over the years and I wanted to do something to honor both my former professors and also my colleagues in the English Department.”
Much as Davidson has formed bonds that endure across the decades, Evans still enjoys being in touch with former students. For years, he taught an honors seminar on the history of historical thought, a formative intellectual moment for many students. IPHS is Kenyon’s oldest interdisciplinary program, tackling life’s fundamental questions through classics with a modern application.
Jeff Bell ’84 was one of his students. Now operating partner and board member of MidOcean Private Equity, he also volunteers for Kenyon with the Kenyon Fund Executive Committee. He visited his former professor in early August, just their most recent visit across the years.
“In 2009, while attending our 25th reunion, Doug Heuck, David Guenther, Gerry Zyfers and I celebrated Michael Evan’s august career at Kenyon and made plans to gather annually for a symposium. This gathering would follow the syllabus from our Kenyon History Junior Honors seminar,” Bell explains.
Over the next 16 years, the group met at least annually in places as diverse as the Kenyon campus, Tucson, Northern Michigan, Seattle, and Florence, Italy, reading Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, Augustine, Machiavelli, Mann, Cervantes and others.
“Kenyon creates lifelong friendships, and promotes lifelong learning, and for us, Michael Evans was a part of both,” Bell said.
Davidson shared similar thoughts about Kenyon students. “I wouldn't have stayed as long as I've been here if it weren't for the wonderful students along the way, because they sustain and keep my teaching going, and I wanted to honor them as well,” Davidson said.