Chris Davids ’10 is a psychology professor, a licensed psychologist, and a friend.
In his 10th year of teaching psychology full-time at a liberal arts college, he has reached a point where he can set aside two days a week for his private practice, in addition to traveling extensively with friends.
In fact, it’s friends who have taken priority in his life.
“What I found is that work wasn’t going to be what sustained me,” said Davids, a Colorado native who landed in Salt Lake City, Utah, on a clinical internship as a doctoral student. He had no connections there but built close friendships and decided to stay, taking a faculty position at Westminster University.
Divesting from his career as his top priority was a hard lesson, he said. His family values were focused on work and it was natural for him to seek satisfaction there.
“Now my goals are to be a really good teacher and a really effective therapist. I supplement the desire for achievement through the volunteer work that I do—setting high goals and pushing myself to see those through and feel like they’re making a direct impact,” Davids said.
Davids’ career path coalesced at Cornell around his psychology and Spanish majors, his social justice and student life-related work, and international study, he said. For three years he conducted research with former Psychology Professor Melinda Green, publishing five papers together. He spent a semester studying in Chile. He helped run Cornell’s Relay for Life fundraiser for two years and worked alongside former college chaplain Catherine Quehl-Engel ’89 to help migrant laborers after Iowa’s 2008 flood.
“Cornell amplified my desire for doing service work and civic engagement work. It has played out doing a lot of national service,” he said.
Davids chaired the annual fundraising dinner for the Utah chapter of the LGBTQ+ advocacy organization Human Rights Campaign last year, raising $200,000. He served on the board of the Society for the Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity and was treasurer for the Society for Counseling Psychology’s section on LGBTQ+ issues.
In his practice he primarily sees LGBTQ+ clients. That practice complements his teaching—and vice versa. What he loves about both jobs are the relationships.
“I’m at a liberal arts institution similar to Cornell. I can leverage relationships to push students to go beyond what they believe they can do,” he says. “And it’s the same in therapy, where the foundational aspect of us doing that work is having a strong therapeutic relationship where I can help guide them and push them to make the change that they want.”
His sweet spot, though, is relationships with friends. That is where Davids puts his free time, including traveling internationally with different friend groups two to three times a year and domestically once a month.
“When I think about what I’m proud of,” he said, “it’s the friendships I have and that I spend time with—and show up for—the people in my life.”