Written by Jake Epstein ’20 | March 18, 2020 | SHARE
Tim Davis ’11 started Lehigh as an engineer in 2007. He graduated with a double major in international relations and German, with a minor in applied mathematics.
Davis hails from Belgrade, Maine, but now lives in Berlin, Germany. During the 2018-2019 academic year, he was a recipient of the Fulbright scholarship to study geoinformation science (GIS), particularly in the humanitarian sector, at the Technical University in Berlin. The Fulbright U.S. Student Program provides grants for individually designed study/research projects or for English Teaching Assistant Programs in foreign countries.
Davis moved to Berlin in 2018 when the scholarship started, and in fall 2020, he’ll be looking for opportunities where he can apply his GIS studies.
“Fulbright was incredible,” Davis said. “University in Europe would have been expensive – having financial support was great. I enjoyed all the people I met – talented people – journalists and major newspapers, successful artists. A lot of bright minds. I'm excited to see what they do in the future.”
Davis still keeps in touch with a number of people he met in the scholarship.
At Lehigh, Davis said he had great professors. He was involved in Lehigh’s United Nations Partnership. Specifically, he was involved in a Twitter program where a bunch of students worked to retweet news about politics, in English and in other languages, centered on the ongoing conflict in Darfur, Sudan.
Davis also worked as a UN Youth Representative, working for a Philippine NGO. He went to the UN on a regular basis, participating in meetings led by the United Nations Department of Public Information.
After graduating from Lehigh, Davis moved back to Maine, where he worked for four years.
He then started to get into GIS and how it could help with international development. He took a course in GIS and after getting sick of working, moved to Australia for six months.
I wouldn’t be doing anything I’m doing today if it wasn't for Lehigh.
He then happened to fall into a job as a reporting officer in South Sudan in 2016 for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The following year, he headed for Iraq to work at Mines Advisory Group, a non-governmental organization that assists people affected by landmines, unexploded ordnance, and small arms and light weapons, as the Information Management and Systems Officer on a one-year contract.
After Iraq, Davis went to Berlin. He wanted to get more of an education. Now, as he reaches the end of his time in school, he is thinking of what the future may hold.
He said he is trying to keep an open mind, perhaps doing something that involves image processing. One option could be monitoring crop fields to analyze food security or insecurity where ground service may not be an option.
Davis said he enjoyed working in the field and is moving toward getting a GIS position with an NGO. Some options are taking coordinates of various places, surveying, sanitation projects and some private companies that do consulting.
“I wouldn’t be doing anything I’m doing today if it wasn't for Lehigh,” Davis said. “I got into humanitarian work after taking an international relations class at Lehigh. I got some good experience working at an NGO and got to go to the United Nations.”
He said he would definitely like to do international work for the next few years, and his 5- to 10-year plan is to get back to the U.S. and work himself in a position where he could do remote consulting work.
“Maine is a place that is very close to my heart, so I'd like to move back there someday,” he said.