“Their commitment to undergraduate education and residential living really resonated with me and what I value in higher education,” Davis said by phone Thursday. “It’s very similar in nature to what we do at Baylor, just a lot smaller scale . . . it seemed like a great opportunity for me.”

She spent Thursday in Greenville in receptions with students, faculty and Furman’s administrative leaders and board of trustees.

Davis, who graduated from Baylor in 1984 with a bachelor’s degree in business administration, first joined Baylor’s faculty as an accounting professor in 1992.

By 2004, she had become the university’s vice provost for financial and academic administration.

She was named interim provost in 2008 during the university’s restructuring after the firing of president John Lilley and was fully elevated to the position by Starr when he became president in 2010.

Most recently, Davis played a key role in guiding the development of Baylor’s new Pro Futuris strategic plan, which emphasizes expanding Baylor’s engineering and science programs and focusing efforts to become a top-tier research university.