Alumni

man wearing dark pants and gray vert standing outside in front of a tree with pink blossoms

Book Informed by Alum’s Experience in Haiti Wins Maurice Prize

  • by Jeffrey Day
  • November 16, 2022
Kirk Colvin spent a year as U.S. Coast Guard attaché to the American Embassy during the final months of the brutal Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier regime in the 1980s. His time there informed his novel Bloodless Coup, winner of the Maurice Prize for Fiction. The $10,000 prize is awarded to UC Davis alumni and was established in 2005 by bestselling author John Lescroart in honor of his father.
Seat Older man with gray hair with glasses, hand on chin, wearing tan suit

Wayne Thiebaud’s Profound Impact on UC Davis

  • by Jeffrey Day
  • April 26, 2022

When Wayne Thiebaud arrived at UC Davis in 1961, the university had been an independent campus for only two years. The art department was in an embryonic stage. Then in 1962, Thiebaud had a groundbreaking exhibition in New York and, during the decades that followed, his reputation only grew. Along the way he was joined by other art faculty who soon developed national reputations as well, and UC Davis became nearly as well-known for art as for agriculture.

images of three women standing together, one holding a plaque

In Memoriam: Jo Ann Stabb, Professor Emerita and Namesake of Design Collection

  • by Jeffrey Day
  • March 01, 2022

Jo Ann Stabb, a founding member of the UC Davis Department of Design and a widely recognized scholar of textiles, died Feb. 13 in Walnut Creek, California. She was 80.

“Jo Ann Stabb essentially started the textile and fashion curriculum in the department,”  design professor Susan Taber Avila said in a 2017 interview. “She captured the zeitgeist of the wearable art movement and brought that creativity into her teaching. She understood and championed the value of studying actual textiles and artifacts.”

photo of four people young woman on left, adult male next, then adult woman with blond hair, and young man with dark hair. Standing on a law with dress in background.

UC Davis Alumnus Brings Attention to Armenian Genocide With Lecture Series

  • by Jeffrey Day
  • February 28, 2022
When Shant Garabedian was a student at UC Davis, he and a few others founded the Armenian Student Association to draw attention to the Armenian Genocide of the early 20th century. Garabedian and his wife, Robin, recently made a donation to establish a lecture series as part of the Human Rights Studies program. “This is a way to continue what I started 30 years ago,” said Garabedian.
image of the cover of a newspaper showing a cartoon of a woman being pulled from two sides by men.

Art History Colloquium Examines Women’s Representation in 20th-Century Western Asia

  • by Jeffrey Day
  • February 08, 2022

The annual Templeton Colloquium in Art History at UC Davis this year brings together scholars speaking about the women’s movement and how women were portrayed in the media during 20th-century modernization in Tehran, Cairo, Istanbul and Beirut.

The presenters, coming from around California, Michigan, Indiana and Lebanon, will show the shifting ways women activists and organizers were encouraged to be modern, then criticized and satirized for doing so.

1974 - Jack de Golia

  • October 15, 2021

Jack de Golia (BA, dramatic art, ’74) has been working in his "post-career career" as a voice actor since 2009. An audio novel he narrated, Noble Chaos, received a 2020 Best Team Award from Audio Book Reviewers. The book, set at the University of Kansas in 1969–70, brought back vibrant memories for him of his freshman year at UC Davis. He has narrated more than 140 audiobooks, all available at Audible.com.

UC Davis College of Letters and Science alumnus Scott Lay, standing in front of the California flag inside a room

In Memoriam: Alumnus Scott Lay

  • by Kathleen Holder
  • September 24, 2021

Thousands of people kept up with California political news by reading The Nooner, a daily nonpartisan email newsletter produced by UC Davis alumnus Scott Lay. This week, readers learned from The Nooner that Lay had died at age 48.

The Najafi family

Alumni Honor Father With Gift to Department of Chemistry

  • by Becky Oskin
  • May 24, 2021
When it came to commemorating their father’s life, two alumni and another sibling followed his lifelong example by giving back. Emery Pharma founder Ron Najafi (Ph.D., chemistry, ’89), ophthalmologist Kathryn (Katy) Najafi-Tagol (B.S., chemistry, ’90), both pictured above, and brother Alex established the Dr. Mohsen Najafi Pharmaceutical Chemistry Research Fund in the UC Davis Department of Chemistry.  
Food aid workers distributing packaged food

Alumnus Part of Nobel Peace Prize-Winning Organization

  • March 29, 2021
Humanitarian work has taken Jon Brause (B.A., international relations, ’83) all over the world — to North Korea, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, the Philippines and more. As director of the Washington Liaison Office at the United Nations World Food Programme, he is immersed in global crises the organization was created to address. That work was rewarded in December, when the WFP won the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize.
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