Nineteen years ago, Aicha Davis walked across the stage at Newton County High School to collect her diploma, launching her onto a career path that would lead to her winning the Nov. 6 election for the Texas State Department of Education’s District 13 Seat.
“I’m just really excited,” she said. “It’s a 15-member board, and they make the rules for 20 million kids in Texas.”
Looking back, Davis said many of the skills she learned at Newton County High helped bring her to where she is today.
“I was given a lot of opportunities there,” she said. “Even though Decatur is a small town, I was given a lot of opportunities by the teachers.”
Davis, who has followed a career in science and engineering since leaving Decatur, said it was the teachers and staff at NCHS who nurtured her interest in STEM sciences.
“I was in the CAD program with Coach McMillan,” she said. “He really got us excited about building things.”
After graduation, Davis followed that passion to the University of Southern Mississippi, where she studied science and engineering. Then, she relocated to Baton Rouge for graduate school.
While in Baton Rouge, Hurricane Katrina hit, Davis said. Working with a mentorship program to get kids interested in science and engineering, she said she started seeing a lot of children from New Orleans. To help, she joined an effort to create a pipeline program with Southern University.
“They’d go to Southern and then come back and work for Exxon Mobile in Baton Rouge,” she said.
Her success with the program caught the attention of a Texas textbook company, which offered her a position developing curriculums for science and engineering courses. There, she worked to create lessons and, on several occasions, testified before the Department of Education about science and engineering matters.
On Jan. 2, 2019, Davis will assume her seat on the Texas State Board of Education. While far away from Decatur, she said she plans to use her position to give students the same opportunity she was given at NCHS.
“I’m all about increasing resources and increasing opportunity,” she said. “There’s so much opportunity to create new things.”
Davis said she wanted to thank her the teachers and administrators at NCHS, who helped nurture her interest in science as a child. She said the foundational knowledge she learned as a student there has helped her be successful in her career.
“I’m just very thankful to my principal and teachers at Newton County,” she said. “I’m very proud to be from Newton County.”
