Julia Couzens, M.F.A., will be a visiting artist at the San Francisco Art Institute for the fall 1998 semester. She was also awarded an artist-in-residence fellowship for the Putah-Cache Creek Bioregion Watershed Project at UC Davis for the 1998-99 academic year.

Lisa Paganini recently received an M.B.A. degree from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and plans to move to Philadelphia to take a business analyst position with Merck and Company.

Michael Chang accepted a position as corporate legal counsel at Seiko Epson Corp. in Nagano, Japan, where he is responsible for international commercial, corporate and intellectual property matters. Epson manufactures printers, computers and integrated circuits. Chang is the new father of a baby girl, Alyssa Hirakata Chang. Bergen (Achtel) Filgas is a social worker at the Stanislaus County Department of Social Services. She received her master's degree in counseling from California State University, Fresno, and passed her marriage, family, child counseling state boards last year. She and her husband, Todd Filgas, whom she met at UC Davis, had their first child, Griffin Steven, in January. Kenneth Price has accepted a position as special assistant for field outreach for Los Angeles County District Attorney Gil Garcetti, after previously working as deputy state director for U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein. He will begin studies at Loyola Law School in the fall. His wife, Stephanie (Diebert) Price '94, is a public affairs representative for Kaiser Permanente's West Los Angeles Medical Center. They were married in 1996. Elizabeth Sanders has been promoted to call center product manager for NEC America Inc., where she works with voice and data communications in the computer networking industry. She lives in Dallas, Texas. Alex Sandoval has been named representative of the disabled community for the Affirmative Action Advisory Committee by the Sacramento City Council and a Natomas Community Planning Advisory Council member by the Sacramento County board of supervisors. Sandoval received a master's degree in public administration from the University of Southern California. He has served as a consultant in Oakland for the state of California and has worked for the U.S. Attorney's Office, Eastern District of California, and for former California assemblyman Jerry Eaves. Ben Takahashi received an M.B.A. from the Darden School at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Originally from Piedmont, he is returning to the state to work for Toyota Motor Sales, USA, Inc. in Torrance. Roxene M. Thompson has received a Southern Regional Education Board Fellowship to pursue her doctoral studies in civil engineering at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, where she completed her master's degree this spring. The fellowship is intended to increase the number of minority students who earn Ph.D.s and become faculty members at institutions of higher education.Thompson worked for nine years for the California Department of Transportation before entering graduate school. She is a member of the national Society of Black Engineers.

Julie H. Harlan is a new associate attorney at the law firm of Weintraub Genshlea & Sproul in Sacramento. A Regents Scholar, she studied in Madrid, Spain. She specializes in health-care and technology industries litigation. David Lindenbaum, a certified financial planner, is a vice president at Bear, Stearns & Co. in New York. Jack Sylvan recently completed the Master of City and Regional Planning program at UC Berkeley. He has received a Fulbright scholarship to conduct his research in Barcelona, Spain, where he will focus on the impact of the Olympics on low-income development in the city. Mark S. Wilson received a doctor of medicine degree from the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee this May. He is now serving a urology residency in the University of New Mexico Program in Albuquerque, N.M.

Kendra Blair recently graduated from the University of Southern California with a Ph.D. in physical therapy. She is working with Sundance Rehabilitation Corp. in Torrance. Cody Laine Knight graduated from San Diego State University with a master's degree in public health, health services administration and relocated to Carson City, Nev., to work for the Nevada Division of Mental Health and Mental Retardation as a quality assurance specialist. Luu Phuc Nguyen received a doctor of medicine degree from the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee this May. He is serving an internal medicine residency in the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center Program in San Jose. Steve Wilbur received his M.S. in clinical psychology in May from San Jose State University. He now lives in San Francisco where he recently completed the Escape from Alcatraz Triathlon.

Emily Burns and Chris Keck were married in May in Palo Alto. Burns works as a technical writer for Etak Inc. in Menlo Park, and Keck is an engineer at Humphrey Systems in San Leandro. They are moving east this fall so that Burns can begin Ph.D. work in oceanography at the University of Rhode Island. Kresta N. Daly received her J.D. degree this May from the University of Pacific, McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento. Tiffany (Ledenbach) Scott, a professional photographer, and Sean Scott '96, a free-lance writer, recently relocated from Elk Grove to Portland, Ore., where Sean plans to begin graduate work on a degree in comparative literature at Portland State University. Sean's articles have appeared in Comstock's, The Daily Recorder and Whole Life Times, and he's been a frequent contributor to Sacramento News & Review, which published in its June 18 issue his review of Sturgeon Tales by fellow alum Charlie Soderquist, Ph.D. '78. Tiffany's photographs have appeared regularly in Sacramento Magazine and in Comstock's, The Sacramento Bee and Sacramento News & Review. The two were married in May 1997 in Davis, where they met as students.

Susan Taber Avila, M.F.A., was one of four fiber artists featured in Threads on the Edge, an exhibition at the Gallery of Design at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, this spring. Avila has also taught for the UC Davis design program. Javier R. Betancourt is teaching third grade at Mango Elementary School in the Fontana Unified School District. When not teaching, he enjoys traveling around California and hiking in the desert with his wife, Linda. Jennifer M. Grange, J.D., is a new associate attorney at Weintraub Genshlea & Sproul law firm in Sacramento. Grange was the executive editor of the UC Davis Law Review and is an active member of the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys. Laura Holl received her master's degree in social work in May from the School of Social Work at the University of Southern California. Holl now works at the Edelman Westside Mental Health Center in West Los Angeles as a psychiatric social worker/psychotherapist. Brian Kempf has founded the Screw Tight Post Co. to market his invention, the Reddy Stake system. The stakes are twisted into the ground--not hammered--and are primarily used to support newly planted trees.

Matthew Brutlag left in June for his Peace Corps volunteer position in Cameroon. Brutlag is teaching math to local high school students. Tracy Caldwell, Ph.D., is one of 25 members of the astronaut candidate class of 1998 who are beginning one year of training and evaluation at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. After training, Caldwell will receive a space flight assignment. Caldwell was named the outstanding Ph.D. graduate from the UC Davis chemistry department in 1997 and was elected to membership in the Davis chapter of Sigma Xi last year. Kerry Justine Lum began a Peace Corps volunteer assignment in June in the West African nation of Burkina Faso. She holds a degree in biochemistry and will spend two years teaching science at a local high school. Lum has traveled extensively in Asia and Europe but says she is looking forward to the challenge she meets in Africa. Robert Tracy, Ph.D., received the 1997 Nat L. Sternberg Thesis Prize from the American Society for Microbiology for the most outstanding Ph.D. thesis in the field of prokaryotic molecular genetics.