4 minute read
Couple Invests in UCM’s Bright Future
You never know where you might meet a fellow Mule. Mike Davidson, ’72, worked with several UCM alumni during his three and a half decades with State Farm Insurance.
The team headed up by Mike and Rand Harbert, ’85, conceived one of the industry’s longest-running, most successful advertising campaigns: “Jake from State Farm.” The campaign saw a golden resurgence this NFL season as actor Ryan Reynolds arranged for the current “Jake” to sit next to Donna Kelce at an Eagles game in Philadelphia a week after singersongwriter Taylor Swift was spotted at her side at a Chiefs game in Kansas City.
Rand and Mike also launched the State Farm Marketing and Sales Competition, which is now an annual event where students from universities across the country have come to Warrensburg to test their sales skills and marketing prowess. When Mike retired in 2012, Rand replaced him as State Farm’s vice chairman and chief agency and marketing officer.
Despite Mike’s aptitude for marketing, it was not the career path he expected to take. Mike and Patti Davidson, ’72, were high school sweethearts growing up in Richmond, Missouri. Mike initially enrolled at Missouri Valley College after receiving scholarships in football and baseball. However, the couple couldn’t stay apart long, and Mike transferred as a sophomore to join Patti at what was then Central Missouri State College. He proposed at Pertle Springs, and they were married during winter break of their junior year. Patti moved out of Yeater Hall and Mike left the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity facility to spend the remainder of their time in married student housing.
“If one of our kids would have told us that they wanted to get married at 20 years old, we would probably have gone ballistic,” Patti says. “But after over 50 years of marriage, I guess it worked out for us.”
In 1972, Patti and Mike both became the first in their families to graduate from college — Mike with a degree in Physical Education and Patti with an Elementary Education degree. After graduation, they taught for a few years in Excelsior Springs before fraternity brother Jim Kenney encouraged Mike to become a State Farm agent in his hometown of Richmond. Mike’s career culminated in a move to State Farm’s headquarters in Bloomington, Illinois, where he later retired as the company’s vice chairman and chief agency and marketing officer.
In 2007, Mike received the UCM Alumni Foundation’s Distinguished Alumni Award. That same year the couple founded the first named professorship at UCM: the Mike and Patti Davidson Distinguished Marketing Professorship. The Davidsons recently made an unrestricted (greatest need) planned gift from an Individual Retirement Account. Establishing this gift was as simple as making the university the beneficiary of an existing IRA. The Davidsons also give annually to the Central Annual Fund supporting initiatives to enhance the student experience and serve the university’s greatest needs.
In addition to investing financially in UCM, the Davidsons give back by volunteering. From November through April, they reside on Marco Island, Florida, and serve on the leadership team for the MuleNation Florida chapter. They also attend mid-Missouri chapter events when staying at their home in Osage Beach and encourage other alumni to attend an event in their region as one of many ways to reconnect to their alma mater.
One of the most significant ways Mike has connected is by serving for the past eight years on the UCM Alumni Foundation Board of Directors.
“You really are privileged to get a firsthand, real-time snapshot of what the situation is on campus,” he says of the perspective serving on the board provides. “You get a firm idea of what the needs are. … The university is very well-run and is definitely not an organization that is satisfied with the status quo. The future of UCM is undeniably bright.”
