Faculty in the News: Davis speaks at Legal Issues in Higher Education Conference

NORMAN, Okla. - Dr. Mike Davis, Associate Professor of Criminal Justice and Special Assistant to the President for Compliance at Southeastern Oklahoma State University, was a featured presenter at last week's Legal Issues in Higher Education Conference on the campus of the University of Oklahoma.

Davis was invited by the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education to present to higher education professionals and administrators on the topic of implementing student disability accommodations. The talk given by Davis focused on the legally required interactive process between accommodation specialists and students in arriving at reasonable and effective modifications and auxiliary aids for students with disabilities in the classroom and other campus activities.

"It was an honor to be invited by the Regents' office to speak at this event," said Davis. "Protecting the rights of our students to receive the same educational opportunities regardless of a disability is not just an important legal issue but a matter of fundamental fairness, and I'm gratified to play a role in reinforcing that message to an audience of managers and administrators."

Dr. Davis is a licensed attorney and an active member of the Oklahoma Bar Association and United States Supreme Court Bar Association. The 2007 graduate of Southeastern previously served as the University's Disability Services Coordinator (2014-16) and as the Director of Compliance and Safety (2016-19), and has been Special Assistant to the President for Compliance since 2019 in addition to his teaching responsibilities.

In 2018, Davis authored an article on disability accommodations in higher education for the Oklahoma Bar Journal which won an award from the Oklahoma Bar Journal Board of Editors. For the past several years he has been sought as a presenter, trainer, and consultant across the state on civil rights compliance in higher education.

Sponsored by the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education and hosted at the University of Oklahoma's Norman campus, the bi-annual Legal Issues in Higher Education Conference began 25 years ago and has become the premiere conference on legal and regulatory challenges in the postsecondary educational setting in the state of Oklahoma.

This year's keynote speaker was former Southeastern president Sean Burrage, who hosted a panel on the role of institutional attorneys in empowering the educational mission of colleges and universities in the modern legal landscape.