Danyell Weaver joins Lyon faculty as economics instructor

September 5, 2006

Lyon College’s newest instructor will have her doctorate by the time she’s 35, but she’s already hoping to spend the rest of her career right here.

Danyell Weaver, Lyon’s new economics instructor, is a native of Saffell, Ark., who “caught the bug” while teaching business classes part-time at UCAAB. She continues to teach there part-time in addition to her full-time position at Lyon.

She joined the Lyon faculty in February and finished out that semester, and this term marks her first full semester in the position.

A graduate of Strawberry High School, she earned as associate’s degree in business from UACCB before going on to get a bachelor’s degree in business administration from American InterContinental University. She followed that degree up with a pair of MBAs from AIU, one with a concentration on accounting and one focusing on management.

“I’m working on my doctorate through Walden University right now,” she said. “It’ll focus on finance.”

Her doctoral thesis will be on the reasons for unemployment and ways to combat it.

Though she readily admits that she could earn a significant income in the business sector once she gets her doctorate, she plans to put it to work another way.

“I want to be a professor at Lyon,” Weaver said. “I’ll retire from here if they let me. I could make more money in the business world, but Lyon is where I want to be.”

She’s been married for more than 11 years to Jeff Weaver, a sales route driver for Airgas, and the couple has one son, Ethan, 9, and one daughter, Beth, 4.

Before getting the teaching “bug,” Danyell spent two years as a branch manager for Staffmark in Batesville.

Pursuing a doctorate while working and raising a family is an often daunting task, but Danyell said her family makes the job easier on her.

“My husband had to step up and take over the household duties,” she said. “The whole family supported me when I decided to get my degrees, and I couldn’t have done it without them.”