Lita Davis has supervised and mentored many student employees over her 27-year career with Clemson Libraries. One thing she always encourages them to do is to stay in school and complete their degrees. After many starts and stops over the years and classes taken at several institutions, Davis has recently completed her own degree, earning a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and a minor in Nonprofit Leadership from Clemson this past December.
A native of Greenwood, Davis started out at Lander University after high school, but wasn’t sure what she wanted to focus on, so she decided to take a break from school and go to work. She was working for General Electric in Greenville and was laid off in the late 1990s. She decided to go back to school and enrolled in some computer technology classes at Tri-County Technical College through the Job Training Partnership Act. There she met a Clemson Libraries employee who encouraged her to apply for a position at the libraries, and in 1998, she started working as a circulation assistant in Cooper Library. She has been with the libraries ever since.
“If anyone had told me that I’d work in a library, I would have laughed at them because that was never the plan, but here I am” she said. “I guess things happen for a reason.”
Davis has held several positions with the libraries over the years, including night supervisor in the reserves and media department, day-time desk supervisor at the circulation desk and second-shift circulation assistant in the Gunnin Architecture Library. She currently serves as stacks specialist, overseeing the shelving and organization of the books in Cooper Library. She supervises a team of about 10 student workers and ensures that everything in the library is shelved properly so that patrons can easily locate the books they need. She also helps maintain community patron information, pull books for patron requests and helps with special projects that involve shifting large numbers of books.
Though a career spent in the library was not her original plan, Davis said she enjoys her job, primarily because of the different people she gets to interact with.
“Working at the circulation desk for part of my library career was interesting in a lot of ways,” she said. “I met a lot of really interesting people. I’ve hired students from other countries and met people at the desk from different countries, people I still have relationships with to this day. It has been nice to have a job that allows me to interact with people from different cultures and learn new things.”
Her favorite part of her job, though, is the students.
“The best part is hiring and getting to know students … offering them personal and career advice and being someone, they can confide in because they are here to better their lives personally and professionally,” she said. “With the amount of stress that they are under, sometimes they need to let off some steam. I try to ask them how things are going, and that one question allows them to unload potential problems to someone who could possibly provide other options or suggestions. I like trying to help them see things from several sides. Sometimes a different view helps put things into perspective and lightens their load enough for them to keep moving forward.”
Davis said she is still in touch with many former student workers from the course of her career, and she said she sometimes learns that students have mentioned her as someone who had an influence on their time at Clemson in post-graduation surveys.
Outside of her time at the library, Davis spends a lot of time in the kitchen. She has a “side hustle” as a pastry cook with seasonal menus of cakes, pies and other pastries that she makes for clients, and she works part time for Table 301 Catering in Greenville.
“I come from a long line of amazing cooks, so I literally have been cooking since I was 8 years old,” she said.
She knew she was a good cook, but she wanted some paperwork to back that up, so she decided to go to culinary school. She earned a degree in culinary arts from Greenville Tech in 2017 and is an American Culinary Federation-certified chef . She enjoys “getting to do what I love on the side,” and may consider opening her own business or working in a kitchen when she retires from Clemson.
“Honestly, I love cooking different types of cuisine more than baking. But finding a job as a pastry cook aligned more with my full-time job than working as a sous chef or a line cook because of the crazy late-night hours,” said Davis.
The culinary degree wasn’t enough for Davis, though. Inspired by the memory of her mother, who was a teacher for 33 years and the first in her family to go to college, Davis decided to go back to school to earn a bachelor’s degree. Because of her credits from Lander, Tri-County Tech, Greenville Tech and other courses she had taken over the years, she realized she was already halfway there. 
“I enrolled as a special student for a Career Success program and did well. After I took the maximum number of classes (six) I had to apply as an undergrad to continue but I wasn’t quite ready to commit,” she said. “I went to Culinary School first to become a chef and after I graduated, I was ready to continue.”
So, she applied and was accepted into Clemson’s sociology program and had enough transfer credits to start out as a junior.
Davis said she chose sociology because of her interest in people and cultures. Even though she was halfway to her degree, it still took some time to complete because she was only taking two classes at a time. The COVID pandemic pushed back graduation timeline, but she finally reached her goal in December 2024.
Davis and her husband Dwayne at graduation
“My husband Dwayne was my rock while I completed both degrees. He along with friends, family, coworkers, instructors and even my student workers kept the encouragement coming. That meant a lot and kept me from throwing in the towel on a few occasions. Especially when I struggled with a particular math class,” Davis said.
She said if she ever decided to pursue a different career path with her degree, she would want to continue working with students in some capacity.
“I am grateful for the opportunities from being part of the Clemson Family has provided over the years. The employee tuition assistance program was key to my continuing and finishing my bachelor’s degree and I have marked that goal off of my bucket list!” said Davis.
Now that she has graduated, Davis had a bit more free time, much of which she plans to spend taking advanced pastry and candy making classes, volunteering and bass guitar lessons. She also enjoys reading, traveling and spending time with her cats, Luna and Stella.