After professors Jenny Bursell and Cory Geraths transferred, Eureka brought in Craig Lowery, Professor of Criminal Justice, and Daniel Cochece Davis, Assistant Director of Communications. These two bring a much-needed spark and loads of fun to the college, each with a one-of-a-kind personality.
Lowery is from Ypsilanti, Michigan. His education consists of a bachelor’s in criminal justice with an emphasis in criminal profiling, a master’s in criminal justice administration with a focus in addictions, Doctoral student in a Doctor of Criminal Justice program with an emphasis in Secondary Education. He attended the University of the Cumberlands in Kentucky to receive his Bachelors and Masters, but his Doctorate from Tiffin University in Ohio.
Lowery has had quite the ride when it comes to his career path. He began as a Crime Scene Intern with the Detroit Police Department working in Homicide. He shares via email that seeing different crime scenes and having his first encounters with death investigations was “powerful work.” His father was a high school teacher in Detroit, and he wanted to be there and play a small role by doing his part to help keep the city safer for him.
While a senior in college, he was a Victim Advocate Intern in Williamsburg, KY. This allowed him to work with victims of crime as well as domestic violence shelters getting women the resources they need to help rebuild their lives. He shares that this is the work that really changed his life.
In 2020, Covid changed his path once again by terminating the law enforcement contracts which ultimately ended the criminal analyst work he was doing. As a result of this, he started coaching, bringing him to a college campus. He took his first head coach job with the lacrosse team at Cleary University at the age of 23, also having his father as the assistant coach.
Lowery switched over to coaching the women’s game and bounced around until landing at St. Francis University two years ago.
“I coached a group of students that were not only resilient, but inspiring.” He continues to say that he learned a lot during his time coaching there and with that came some success.
He went from big lights in big stadiums to going back home to a small corn field and coaching a small rural high school team. Later, he left home and came to Eureka where he ended up as a college professor.
“Even when I was lost, I always had students in my life to help guide me,” Lowery says.
Lowery shares that the students are the ones who give him purpose.
“It’s not about a fancy town or the number of movie theaters you have; it’s about knowing every day you will find family and that’s what I truly found here at Eureka College,” Lowery states.
Daniel Cochece Davis is from a small rural town in northern California. He was a first-generation college student, and he believes that has played a big part in his role as a teacher. He shares that he gives all his students the same number of tools to do their best to pursue a degree, and is always willing to help, talk, or have his door open to listen.
Davis believes he has been blessed to have several interesting careers and jobs. Many were interrelated with prior jobs or training he had received, ranging from being a firefighter to a ship to shore coordinator, and even completing five years of culinary school, being a dessert chef and participating in a catering business relating to nutraceutical health.
In academia, he has taught in an array of places, including Italy, San Diego State, USC, Purdue, ISU, Culver-Stockton, and now Eureka. Here at Eureka, he is currently under the position of a visiting professor for one year but hopes to be able to convert to a tenure contract.
He shares that, “Eureka has a very engaged faculty who seem to genuinely care about the success of the students here.”
Davis goes on to say that after working at the diverse colleges and universities that he has, he knows how valuable that is and hopes the students realize and appreciate that.
As an undergraduate student, he was involved in speech and debate. He had some success there, and it led to a position in the wine industry giving a variety of tours. A few more experiences gave him the opportunity to work at fascinating places like the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Apple, and the Stanford Linear Accelerating Center.
Davis has gotten to work with leaders and organizations to train them to be better and allow their work to be more sustainable. This allowed him to gather lots of knowledge on how to create organizational cultures that are successful and how to drive innovation.
He uses these skills both inside and outside of the classroom to help his students and other faculty members. His drive and motivation to inspire others to use their critical thinking skills is a great addition to the college.
The addition of these two professors is very exciting, and will be intriguing to see how they continue their journeys at Eureka.
