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 1980s
| 1986Lori Bettison-Varga, M.S., Ph.D. ’91, was appointed provost and dean of the faculty at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Wash. Before her appointment, she served as president of the Council on Undergraduate Research, director of the Keck Geology Consortium, professor of geology and associate dean for research and grants at the College of Wooster in Ohio. Her husband, Robert Varga, Ph.D. ’80, is Shoolroy Chair of Natural Resources, associate professor of geology and chair of the geology department at the College of Wooster. The couple has three children. (appeared in the Spring 2007 issue) • Stacie Strong has written several articles on tap dance for Dance Spirit magazine and edited the book Top Tap Tips, which pairs photographs of internationally renowned Chicago Tap Theatre performers with instructional and inspirational quotes from the masters of tap dance, both past and present. The book is available through www.chicagotaptheatre.com. (appeared in the Fall 2007 issue) • Gary Woods was selected as superintendent of schools for the San Marino Unified School District in Los Angeles County. The district was recently ranked as one of the top in the state. Woods and his wife, Blanca, have four children. (appeared in the Fall 2007 issue) • Roland Portman, M.S., and his wife, Kim, have been living and working in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1978, where they have raised three children. His oldest daughter, Megan, graduated from UC Davis in 2006 and his son, Jonathan, is a current UC Davis student. His daughter Whitney is finishing her nursing degree at California State University, Chico. (appeared in the Winter 2008 issue) • Todd Toepfer, a math and physical science teacher at Fairdale High School in Louisville, Ky., received the Ashland Teaching Achievement Award from chemical company Ashland Inc., in October. This award, given in partnership with the Kentucky Department of Education to honor exemplary teachers, qualified Toepfer as a semifinalist for the Kentucky Teacher of the Year Award for 2008. The nomination came from a group of his students. (appeared in the Spring 2008 issue) • Mike Kobayashi was recently promoted to group senior vice president of supply chain and chief information officer for Ross Stores Inc. Kobayashi lives with his wife, Dayna, and his two children in Alamo. (appeared in the Summer 2008 issue) • Steven Weiss opened the Weiss Group, a marketing consulting firm in Sacramento. The firm focuses on business development, marketing and fundraising. Weiss is the former vice president of marketing and public affairs for The Sacramento Bee. Before his work at the Bee, Weiss was director of University Cultural Programs at UC Davis. (appeared in the Summer 2008 issue) • Jamie Lewis Graff is director of Nimbus Arts in St. Helena. Nimbus Arts offers a wide variety of art and science classes, including, this fall, a "Napa Valley Bee Hive Tour," which explored beekeeping culture and hive management. (appeared in the Fall 2008 issue) • Glenn Croston has written 75 Green Businesses You Can Start to Make Money and Make a Difference (Entrepreneur Press), in which he describes how to be ecologically friendly while making an income. He is also the founder of Starting Up Green, a support resource for green entrepreneurs. (appeared in the Winter 2009 issue) • Thomas Bachand recently had a book of his landscape photography, Lake Tahoe: A Fragile Beauty, published by Chronicle Books. The book includes an introduction by Charles Goldman, professor and director of UC Davis’ Tahoe Research Group. (appeared in the Spring 2009 issue) • Andrew “Hoang” Do was elected to the Garden Grove City Council in November. He also serves as chief of staff for Orange County Supervisor Janet Nguyen. He has been a senior litigator for the law firm of BriggsAlexnder in Anaheim since 2007. Do is a former resident of Beckett One Dormitory and can be contacted at Andrew.Do@ocgob.com. (appeared in the Spring 2009 issue) • A book by Stacie Strong, Research and Practice in International Commercial Arbitration: Sources and Strategies, was recently published by Oxford University Press. She also wrote an article on international class arbitration for the University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law. When not writing or teaching international dispute resolution at the University of Missouri Law School, Strong performs in the mid-Missouri area with her jazz band, Tappuccino, which features her tap dancing as a core musical element. (appeared in the Spring 2009 issue) • Lauren Bjorkman wrote her first young adult novel, My Invented Life (Henry Holt and Co.), released in October. She lives with her husband and two sons in Taos, N.M. (appeared in the Winter 2010 issue) • Marc Greendorfer recently founded Tri Valley Law, a transactional corporate law firm in San Ramon. He had previously been special counsel at Thelen LLP. (appeared in the Winter 2010 issue) • Gay Powers, Cred. ’02, a Davis artist, recently sent a limited-edition print of The Island Girl, which she drew as an art student in 1983, to the White House as a gift. It was accepted for consideration to hang on a White House wall. (appeared in the Winter 2010 issue) • David Pascualy is the president, CEO and founder of Pacific Solar Energy construction and development company in Pleasanton. He lives in Pleasanton with his wife Julie (Barsten) Pascualy ’87 and two daughters. (appeared in the Spring 2010 issue) • Stacie Strong won an Outstanding Professional Article award from the International Institute for Conflict Prevention & Resolution. Her article, “The Sounds of Silence: Are U.S. Arbitrators Creating International Enforceable Awards When Ordering Class Arbitration in Cases of Contractual Silence or Ambiguity?” was also cited in a class-action arbitration case heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in December, Stolt-Nielsen, S.A. v. AnimalFeeds International Corp. She is a senior fellow at the Center for the Study of Dispute Resolution and associate professor of law at the University of Missouri. (appeared in the Spring 2010 issue) • N. Louise Glass, Ph.D., a professor of plant and microbial biology at UC Berkeley, has been elected a fellow in the American Academy of Microbiology. (appeared in the Summer 2010 issue) • Chris Hardt, an Edward Jones financial adviser in Westlake Village, was recently named a principal with the firm’s holding company, the Jones Financial Companies. He and his wife, Lydia, have two children, Kasey and Spencer. (appeared in the Summer 2010 issue) • Terri Roth, M.S. ’88, vice president of conservation and science and director of the Lindner Center for Conservation and Research of Endangered Wildlife at the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden, was honored in May at a YWCA Salute to Career Women of Achievement luncheon in Cincinnati. The first female vice president at the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden, Roth manages a state-of-the-art research facility and directs a postdoctoral program for young scientists. She is a reproductive advisor with the Conservation Breeding Specialist Group of the World Conservation Union and its Species Survival Commission, research team leader for Polar Bears International’s Polar Bear Sustainability Alliance, an adjunct biology professor at the University of Cincinnati and a distinguished off-campus scholar at Miami University. (appeared in the Summer 2010 issue) |