Advisory Council Members

Kay Bains (Chair)
Birmingham, AL

Kay Bains, a native of Birmingham, AL, is a member of the law firm Bradley Arant. She is with the firm’s Real Estate Practice Group and the Banking and Financial Services Practice Group. In her commercial lending practice, she represents state and national banks in connection with construction and business loans, as well as lenders in the national permanent healthcare market.

In her commercial real estate practice, Kay regularly represents sellers and buyers, landlords and tenants. Kay has developed a specialized real estate practice representing banks in the acquisition and disposition of bank sites throughout a bank's market. She has solved zoning, survey, use, permitting, access, signage and other problems faced by clients in real estate transactions. Kay has been listed annually in The Best Lawyers in America since 1995 for her work as a banking lawyer, and is past president of the Real Estate Section of the Alabama Bar. She is a member of the American College of Mortgage Attorneys.

Dan Ennis
Conway, SC

Dan Ennis has a BA from the College of Charleston, an MA from Appalachian State University, and a PhD in English from Auburn. He is currently Associate Professor of English at Coastal Carolina University in Conway, South Carolina, where he also directs the Honors Program. His teaching and research centers on British literature.

Gwin Copeland
Atlanta, GA

Gwin Copeland earned her degree in English at Auburn University and her JD at the University of Georgia. After graduating from Georgia, Copeland worked for the Georgia Senate Research Office as a policy analyst to the state senate. Now an Associate General Counsel for the Georgia Municipal Association, Copeland lobbies the Georgia Legislature and the Georgia Public Service Commission on behalf of city governments in Georgia. Her primary policy areas there are finance, taxation and utilities.

Patsy Fowler
Spokane, WA

Patsy Fowler received her PhD from Auburn University in 2002,
specializing in Restoration and 18th C British literature. She is
currently an Assistant Professor at Gonzaga University where she teaches courses in literature and women's studies and is the Academic Scholarship Coordinator for graduate study. She is the book review editor for the Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies and has co-edited a collection of essays entitled "Launching Fanny Hill: Essays on the Novel and Its Influences" (2002).  Her other publications and research focus on the works of Eliza Haywood and other early women writers.

Alise Chabaud-Hagan
Baton Rouge, LA

In 2003 Alise earned a Master's degree in Technical and Professional Communication (MTPC) from Auburn University. Prior to joining the Auburn family, Alise earned a Bachelor's degree in English literature from Louisiana State University in 2001. She credits her skills as a researcher, communicator, and analytical thinker to her academic backgrounds.

Immediately after graduating from Auburn, Alise accepted a position at TSYS, a credit card processing company headquartered in Columbus, GA. There she worked as an instructional designer and developed and edited online courses. In her one year at TSYS, she helped to more than double their online course offerings, and was instrumental in directing courses from development through final delivery.

In May of 2004, Alise accepted a position with the National Center for Biomedical Research and Training – Academy of Counter-Terrorist Education (NCBRT-ACE) at Louisiana State University. She began in the technical communications department where she contributed to all phases of the document design process. Her main responsibilities were to develop, design, edit, proof, and print course manuals for the nation's first-responders. In March of 2005, her responsibilities shifted and she became the Grants Coordinator. In this capacity, Alise researches funding opportunities and develops responses to RFPs and other funding sources. She continues to embrace the department's motto, “Fighting terrorism, one comma at a time.”

Paul Hotchkiss
Atlanta, GA

Paul Hotchkiss, an Auburn native, attended Auburn University and received a BA in English in 1997. He received his law degree from the University of Georgia in 2002. Following law school, Paul served a two-year clerkship as a staff attorney with the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit and clerked for United States Chief Magistrate Judge Gerrilyn G. Brill. He is currently an associate in the law firm Hancock, Dempsey, & Everett, LLP, in Forest Park, GA (in the greater Atlanta area). The firm specializes in local government law and civil litigation. He lives in Atlanta with his wife, Maggie, and their two dogs.

Max Jones
Auburn, AL

Max Jones attended Auburn University, where he received a BA in English in 1995, followed by an MEd in Secondary English Education in 1996. He is currently teaching International Baccalaureate English, Advanced Placement Language and Composition, and Special Education Inclusion English at Auburn
High School, where he has been on the faculty since 1997. He enjoys reading, running, and receiving news that his former students have decided to major in English when they get to college.

Bill Koon
Clemson, SC

Bill Koon received his M. A. in English from Auburn in 1966. He went on to earn a PhD at the University of Georgia and then joined the English faculty at Clemson University where he has been teaching since 1972.

He has chaired that department twice and is now its senior professor. Bill's books are a two-volume collection, Classic Souothern Humor; a collection of Civil War fiction,
Old Glory and the Stars and Bars; and a biography, Hank Williams, So Lonesome.

He had a senior Fulbright appointment to Austria and has been the director of an NEH seminar in southern studies.

Dan Retzer
Birmingham, AL

Dan Retzer is the Senior Vice President of Product Development and Software Engineering for XcitekSolutionsPlus, Inc.- a Financial Services software development company located in Birmingham, AL. He is currently responsible for managing the strategic and day-to-day operations of the company's Software Architects, Software Engineers, Programmers, and Technical Writers, and for setting and meeting product quality and delivery goals. He manages the entire product lifecycle.

Dan is a speaker on the topics of Enterprise Architectures for the Magic City Technology Council and the Society for Design and Process Sciences. He is the co-creator of the Service-Oriented Enterprise Engineering Lifecycle (SOE2L) - a lifecycle for managing enterprise-wide implementation of Service-Oriented Architectures that is used to streamline the operations of global corporations and government agencies alike.

Dan graduated from Auburn with a BA in Technical Writing in 1996 and MS in Electrical Engineering from UAB in 2006. He began his career as the Web Master for Colonial BancGroup in Montgomery, AL. He later assumed management responsibilities at Colonial as the Web Services Manager, where he was responsible for spearheading the development of a best-of-breed corporate intranet and overseeing the implementation of Internet Banking products.

Dan currently lives in Hoover, AL with his wife and two children.

Molly Smith
South Orange, NJ