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Annual Alumni Association Meeting

Annual Meeting: October 3, 2009

Saturday, October 3, 2009
10:30 a.m. - 11:00 a.m.
Giannini Hall Foyer

Agenda Items:

Eva St. Clair
posted September 25, 2009 11:14 AM

From CRS to Chocolate, and so much in between!

A lot has happened since graduating from Cal in 1999. I was one of those re-entry students when I arrived at Cal in 1997 and had been involved with the Golden Gate National Recreation Area’ s park restoration program and had also been deeply involved in City College of San Francisco’s biology and ecology departments. At one point I was the college liaison for the Park Service, conducting class presentations in order to entice students to volunteer for restoration activities in the Marin Headlands. It helped that some instructors offered extra credit for such noble activities. Not to mention that views of the city from the Headlands were amazing!

After arriving at Cal, I immersed myself in classes and campus life, enjoying the fact that I did not have to work while going to school full-time-wow what a concept. My two years at Cal went very quickly and I often found myself wishing that I could have been there for the full four years - but I guess there is always graduate school. I was part of the well known CRS program (Conservation and Resource Studies) and was able to construct my own curriculum around my passion at the time, which was wetlands and wetland restoration.

During my last semester, I took a class taught by some outside environmental consultants that focused on the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). I liked the fact that the class focused on various aspects of the environmental world, including policy, permitting, planning, and various environmental resource areas.

chocolates1.jpg

Upon graduation, I hit the ground running trying to find an entry-level job in the environmental consulting field. I eventually landed a job with a small consulting firm in Oakland that was working closely with the Navy on clean-up activities at various Navy facilities in the Bay Area. I quickly learned that not all environmental consulting was created equal. This particular firm focused on health and risk management-which meant lots of number crunching, something I did not find very interesting. Several months later I left after taking a job with yet another firm, doing more of the type of work I was interested in - my first project included working with US Coast Guard.

Fast forward several years and I found myself feeling unchallenged creatively; much of consulting work includes reviewing documents written by specialists in other fields (e.g. traffic specialists, geologists, hydrologists, etc) and incorporating that information into a document that will ultimately be used by lawmakers to approve or deny a project.

I ultimately figured out that I needed to find something creative in order to balance out the more cerebral part of my life. I started baking, something I used to do when I was a kid, in the kitchen with my grandmother. I also started taking classes in baking thinking that I might want to become a pastry chef. Somewhere along the way, I also began incorporating chocolate into the recipes and was constantly asked by friends to provide the chocolate desserts for their special events.

Continue reading "From CRS to Chocolate, and so much in between!" »

Dennis Kearney
posted September 23, 2009 10:15 PM

Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences

I can't believe that I've been in medical school for more than a month now. Here at Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences, Kansas City, Missouri, I've been learning everything from anatomy, biochemistry, embryology, histology, immunology, microbiology, pathology, pharmacology, and physiology. With my Molecular Toxicology background, most of the subjects come to me quite easily. The hardest ones for me are Immunology and Anatomy. I've never been good at blatant memorization (Anatomy/Microbio). The end part of immunology is great for me because we learned alot about apoptosis and necrosis (yay death domains!) with NST 110. For anyone with a MolTox major, take an extra upper div class in Immuno. Microbio in medical school takes a semi-different perspective from the Microbio I had (the PH one~one of the two microbio major req fullfilling classes that we have as a MolTox) since that one was more about etiology and currently in med school we're going from the lab test perspective. I did my first Gram stain two days ago. The hardest part about being well prepared for med school is... LAZINESS. I had my buddy change my facebook account pswd because I was getting ... sidetracked. We have a final on Tuesday (and another on Thursday). ^^ hahah. yay..... ::cries in the corner:: I'm sure y'all at Berkeley don't have any exams until the end of this month right?

Have fun meeting people still while I suffer here.

Miss y'all.

Pray for me!

Kristin Lee
posted September 10, 2009 9:30 AM