Class Notes Archive 1931-2014
Class Notes are searchable back to our spring 2000 issue. You can browse the notes by decade (click on a decade to view its class notes):
Class notes from the 1970s
| 1979Bruce Pavlik, M.S., Ph.D. '82, has written The California Deserts: An Ecological Rediscovery (University of California Press), which explores the diversity of life in the deserts. Pavlik is currently a professor of biology at Mills College in Oakland. (appeared in the Winter 2009 issue) • David Pefley was elected president of the Los Altos School District Board of Trustees. He lives with his wife, Shirley, and their two children, Shelby and Daniel. (appeared in the Spring 2009 issue) • Bill Raynor was recently featured in Nature Conservancy’s magazineabout his conservation work and reputation as a “yam king” in Micronesia. He has lived on the island of Pohnpei for the past 28 years. (appeared in the Spring 2009 issue) • Amy Samuels, M.S. ’82, died of cancer in December at her home in West Falmouth, Mass. She was 57. As an animal behavior researcher, she traveled to Hawaii, Africa, Australia and other places around the world to study animals. She worked on groundbreaking research in using sign language with chimpanzees, but much of her focus was on dolphins and how tourism affected their behavior. In 2000, she wrote a children’s book called Follow that Fin: Studying Dolphin Behavior. She is survived by her sister, Joan, of Switzerland; her brothers, Peter, of New York City and Matthew, of Searsmont, Maine; and her daughter, Caiming, of West Falmouth, Mass. (appeared in the Spring 2009 issue) • MARIAN KEELER wrote the first textbook in the U.S. on ecologically friendly building, Fundamentals of Integrated Design for Sustainable Building (Wiley & Sons). It was written partially as a result of the environmental advocacy group Architecture 2030’s 2010 Imperative, which proposes that all architecture schools embed sustainability into their curricula by the year 2010. (appeared in the Summer 2009 issue) • Two more Aggies have been inducted into the Vintners Hall of Fame—Randall Grahm ’79, owner of Bonny Doon Vineyards in the Santa Cruz mountains, and Zelma Long, who did master’s studies in enology and viticulture in 1968–70 and now produces wine in California at Long Vineyard and in South Africa under the Vilafonte label. Grahm and Long were among five winemakers in March to receive the honor from the St. Helena-based Culinary Institute of America. According to the institute, Grahm “proved that it was possible to craft and sell great Rhône wine blends from California.” And Long, who worked for Robert Mondavi and Simi wineries before starting her own wineries, helped break the glass ceiling for women in the California wine industry. Twenty-seven people have been inducted into the Vintner’s Hall of Fame since it was established in 2007. Among them are three renowned faculty members from the Department of Viticulture and Enology—professor emeritus Carole Meredith, inducted in 2009, and the late professors Maynard Amarine ’35 and Harold Olmo, both inducted in 2007—as well as alumnus Justin Meyer ’67, M.S. ’68, the late winemaker at Silver Oak Cellars, inducted in 2009. Two other Hall of Fame members have helped shape the future of UC Davis’ viticulture and enology program—the late winemaker Robert Mondavi, inducted in 2007, who helped establish the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science, as well as the Robert and Margrit Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts, and Jess Jackson, head of Kendall-Jackson wines, whose gifts are helping to making the new teaching and research winery a model of sustainability. To read more about the Vinter Hall of Fame inductees, visit ciaprochef.com/winestudies/vintners.html. (appeared in the Summer 2010 issue) • Oran Hesterman was featured in the 2008 winter edition. Oran Hesterman by Rachael Bogert Occupation: President and chief executive officer of the newly established Fair Food Foundation, which ensures that locally grown foods are more readily available in low-income areas. Change at the corner store: Regardless of their unnaturally long shelf life, Hostess Twinkies still do not count as fresh food, and Oran Hesterman ’79, M.S. ’81, knows it. According to Hesterman, high-quality produce and other fresh foods should be available to everyone. To that end, the Fair Food Foundation awards grants to nonprofits and other organizations to bring fresh foods to inner city areas where locally grown produce is usually spare. Not afraid to get his hands dirty: As a former program director of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s Food and Society Initiative and as a former professor of crop and soil science at Michigan State University, Hesterman has long studied cropping systems and advocated sustainability. In the early ’90s he helped initiate the Kellogg Foundation’s sustainable agriculture program. This was achieved in a time when sustainability was still an emerging field and lacked widespread credibility. Hesterman brings these ideas to the Fair Food Foundation, which aims to creat, as he says, “a food system that reconnects us to the food we eat, our families, communities and the earth.” “Where I live in Ann Arbor, a person with economic means has access to high-quality produce. If I go 40 miles east to the city of Detroit, it’s a very different situation, one that’s been described as a 'food desert.'” (appeared in the Spring 2008 issue) • Margaret (Mitchell) and Mark Landucci celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary in May. They met at church while attending UC Davis. Margaret teaches second graders at Leo G. Pauly Elementary in Bakersfield, and Mark teaches seventh grade science and math at Cecil Avenue Middle School in Delano. They live in Bakersfield and have three daughters—Elizabeth Landucci ’07, Rebecca and Mary. (appeared in the Fall 2010 issue) • The Cal Aggie Alumni Association awarded Terrence Smith an Emil M. Mrak International Award for his volunteer work at the Mae Tao Clinic in Thailand, where he treats displaced ethnic migrants and refugees from Burma. He has been volunteering internationally since 1999 in countries such as Mexico and Vietnam. When he is back home in Clarksburg, he is a part-time physician at the Davis Community Clinic. (appeared in the Fall 2010 issue) • Jeff Johnson ’79 died in Woodland in April after a lengthy illness. After graduating, he earned an M.B.A. from the University of Southern California. Survivors include his sisters, Laurie Gagnon of Woodland, Susan Philip of Davis and Jody Bukavich of Pennsylvania. (appeared in the Summer 2011 issue) • Joyce Bezazian, a marriage and family therapist since 1983, created a short film, The Breakup, about a Sacramento Kings fan’s journey as the NBA team threatens to leave town. It debuted in October at the A Place Called Sacramento film festival, where it won the Audience Favorite award. As a therapist, she has appeared on Sacramento television and contributed to an advice column for the Davis Enterprise as well as an advice book for teenagers, If You Print This, Please Don’t Use My Name (1992). (appeared in the Winter 2012 issue) • John Hoffmire is the first director of the Saïd Global Entrepreneurship Network at Oxford University’s business school. He remains director of the Center on Business and Poverty, which he founded at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He also serves as chairman of the nonprofit Progress Through Business. (appeared in the Winter 2012 issue) • Rick Browne, senior vice president for grain marketing at CHS Inc., was selected in December to lead the company’s expansion in the Asia-Pacific region. Browne will be based at CHS’ new office in Singapore. Browne joined the farmer-owned cooperative in 1979 as a grain merchandiser and has held a variety of positions in St. Paul, Minn., and Portland, Ore. (appeared in the Spring 2012 issue) • Vicki (Nelson) Garcia and John Garcia run Marketing À La Carte in Benicia. Founded in 2006, the freelance marketing firm was named by DiversityBusiness.com as one of the top-100 women owned businesses in California of 2010. The Garcias’ team works with organizations and businesses from the San Francisco Bay area to Sacramento—among them the Cal Aggie Alumni Association. (appeared in the Summer 2012 issue) • Physician scientist David Kaslow joined PATH (Program for Appropriate Technology in Health) in March as director of the nonprofit organization’s malaria vaccine initiative. He previously oversaw vaccine projects at Merck Research Laboratories and spent more than a decade as a scientist at the National Institutes of Health, where he founded the Malaria Vaccine Development Unit. (appeared in the Summer 2012 issue) • Carolyn Shelton recently received the Conservation Lands Alliance’s first Jeff Jarvis Conservation Leadership Award for her efforts in promoting science, education and research at the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah. She is assistant manager for science and visitor services at Grand Staircase, nearly 1.9 million acres of public land and the first monument established under the National Landscape Conservation System. (appeared in the Summer 2012 issue) • Debby Stegura was recently appointed to a four-year term as a trustee of the Palos Verdes Library District. She also serves on the board of directors of the Cal Aggie Alumni Association. (appeared in the Summer 2012 issue) • John Stewart-Savage, Ph.D. ’84, a biology professor at the University of New Orleans, died of natural causes in New Orleans in June. He was 55. His research focused on fertilization in marine invertebrates and mammals. (appeared in the Fall 2012 issue) • Patrick Mock and Teresa Hilleary ’80 have lived in San Diego for 25 years. He is a principal scientist at URS Corp., an engineering and environmental consulting firm. She is a clinical dietitian at the VA Medical Center in La Jolla. (appeared in the Summer 2013 issue) • Robyn Parnell’s middle-grade novel, The Mighty Quinn, was released by Scarletta Press in June. Read more about her and her other works at robynparnell.net. (appeared in the Summer 2013 issue) |