October 2015 — James Barrall (B.A., philosophy, ’72) has been selected to receive the Cal Aggie Alumni Association's Distinguished Achievement Award. He will be honored at the 43rd CAAA Awards Gala at 6:30 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 5, 2016, at the Presidio Golden Gate Club, along with seven other award winners. Barrall is one of the country's leading tax attorneys, with more than 30 years of experience specializing in employee benefits and executive compensation. In 2012 he created the Barrall Family Philosophy Scholarship, which was the UC Davis philosophy department’s first endowed fund. He is active on UCLA Law School’s board of advisers and works with the Inner City Law Center, a nonprofit that provides legal services to the underserved.
January 2016 — Larry Keeton (B.A., political science, ’73) has retired after serving nearly a decade as director of the Kitsap County Department of Community Development in Port Orchard, Wash. Efforts overseen by Keeton to speed the county's review of permits for single-family homes earned his department awards from the National Association of Counties in 2013 and 2014. He told the Kitsap Sun newspaper that he plans to write military history mystery novels. Before before going into county administration, he spent 28 years in the Army, leaving as a colonel.
April 2017 — Tom Nesbitt (B.A., psychology, ’75, and M.D. ’79) is stepping in as interim vice chancellor of UC Davis Human Health Sciences while the university conducts a search for permanent leadership for UC Davis Health.
December 2016 — Tom Garrison (M.A., political science, ’76) released Hiking Southwest Utah and Adjacent Areas, Volume Two. The book provides a guide to 25 different hikes, with maps, photos and other details about each hike.
July 2017 — Jerry Fletcher (M.A., economics, ’79), a professor of agricultural and resource economics at West Virginia University, died of cancer June 19 at his home in Morgantown, West Virginia. He taught at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, before joining West Virginia University in 1989. At WVU, he was founding director of the Natural Resource Analysis Center, past director of the Division of Resource Management, and director of a federally funded U.S.–China Energy Center. Over his career, he served as principal or co-principal investigator on nearly $60 million in research grants, wrote hundreds of peer-reviewed articles and other papers, and mentored dozens of students and young faculty from around the world. In addition to his economics master’s degree, he earned Ph.D. in agricultural economics at UC Davis and a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the University of Wyoming. Survivors include his wife, Marsha; four children; two grandchildren; and three siblings.
