1970
George Dilbeck
George (Gay) received a Ph.D. at Oklahoma State University. He was employed with EPA in Las Vegas for a number of years. He has recently moved to Alabama where he works in nuclear monitoring and cleanup for EPA. George died in his sleep in December of 2010.
Patsy (Yeats) Baynard
After graduation from UCA Patsy received a Ph.D. in Nuclear Chemistry from the University of Arkansas in 1973. She then completed a reactor engineering program through the Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory in 1977. She received an MBA from Florida Institute of Technology in 1979 and completed the Tuck Executive Program at Dartmouth in 1981.
Patsy has held a number of technical and managerial positions in government and industry primarily in the area of energy beginning with Nuclear Power. In the fall of 2010 she was employed by Wind Energy Transmission. This is a startup electric utility doing project development on electric power transmission facilities to support bringing the wind energy resources in West Texas to load centers. She started the company and has run it for the past 15 months, reporting to the Board of Directors. She is responsible for getting projects through the regulatory process, permitted, engineered, real estate, construction and ultimate operation. She spent three years working for St. Petersburg College in the 1990's building a new college campus focused on distance learning, running the campus for the first year and then going on to do their institutional effectiveness work. She left to pursue an opportunity to do consulting in nuclear for the Department of Defense.
She has two sons. William is at the University of Florida working on his PhD in Mathematics. Robert is at the University of South Florida working on a Masters in Media Studies and does consulting in technical writing and editing.
1972
John Mitchell
John worked for the Ecology and Pollution Department. He retired a few year ago.
Joe Barnes
Joe lives in Vilonia and is currently retired from the Arkansas Crime Lab.
Don Riddle
Don lives in Vilonia and works at the Arkansas Crime Lab.
Scotty Cook
Scotty received an MD from UAMS. He has practiced medicine and has also held a variety of faculty positions in medical schools including UAMS.
1973
C.C. Garner
C.C. received an M.D. degree from UAMS and when last heard from was practicing in Florida.
Gary Dallas
Gary obtained a position with the Arkansas State Crime Lab where he has been head of the drug section for a number of years.
1974
Carl Harris
Carl received a Ph.D. in nuclear chemistry from UA-Fayetteville. He was the training officer at the Arkansas Nuclear Reactor facility in Russellville for a number of years. Currently he is on the chemistry faculty at Arkansas Tech University.
He and his wife, Mira, live in Russelvile and he continues to play guitar and banjo in a band.
Jerry Wilson
Jerry worked as a musician after graduation, then joined the Navy and became a pilot. After his tour of duty Jerry became a pilot for a commercial airline.
1975
Richard Daily
Richard received an MD from UAMS and when last heard of was practicing medicine in Harrison.
David Matchett
David obtained a position with the Arkansas Department of Ecology and Pollution and has been employed there for a number of years.
Ron Shephard
I graduated from UCA in 1975. I went to graduate school at the University of Utah, and finished my PhD in 1980 in Physical Chemistry. I was a postdoc at Battelle Columbus Laboratories in Columbus, Ohio for a year, and then I was hired as staff there in 1981. I moved from there in November 1981 to Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago, Illinois, and I have been here since that time. Argonne is a Department of Energy laboratory, and our research group here studies combustion chemistry. We have both experimentalists and theoreticians in our group. I am a theoretician and I do mostly method development in electronic structure theory, but I sometimes do some applications and work in other areas of physical chemistry such as potential energy surface fitting, vibrational wave function calculations, or chemical kinetics. I also publish some applied mathematics and numerical methods work from time to time about things like data compression and eigenvalue calculations. Here is a link to our research group:
http://www.cse.anl.gov/people/people_fundamental_chemical.html
My wife and I have a son who is currently a senior in high school. My hobbies include playing pool in local leagues and in tournaments. I sometimes play in pool tournaments when I travel for work. Here is a link to some pictures from the tournaments I've played inhttp://www.azbilliards.com/thepros/2000showplayer2005.cfm? playernum=1879
I also referee some of the professional and amateur tournaments. Here are a couple of links to some stuff that I have written about pool and physics:
http://www.sfbilliards.com/shepard_squirt.pdf
http://www.sfbilliards.com/shepard_apapp.pdf
1976
John Alred
John was a physics major, but he took six semesters of chemistry and worked many hours as a chemistry lab assistant and stockroom clerk. After graduating from UCA John received an M.S. in physics from UT-Austin and a Ph.D. from Baylor. He joined NASA JSC in 1981 for several years, then taught at Texas A&M and Univ. Houston while being a consultant to NASA. After the aerospace depression of the 1990's, he worked a couple of years as a generic engineering/science consultant before being hired by Lockheed Martin in 1996 to work on a project in Denver. He transferred to LM in Houston working on the International Space Station. That led to a job at Boeing supporting ISS on space environmental effects on materials. After seven years, he rejoined NASA in 2006. His job now consists of three parts and threatens to add another with the new Lunar/Mars programs. He says, "All in all, it has been fun, however non-linear the path has been."
John is married and has three sons. "The oldest is in college and plans to be a doctor; the middle son wants to major in biomedical engineering; and the youngest wants to be rich (lawyer). So, within two years, I will have three kids incollege at the same time - what was I thinking!!"
Bob Beaton
Bob received a masters degree from ASU-Jonesboro and then received an MD from UAMS.
William Deese
After graduating from UCA in 1976 Bill attended graduate school for five years in Fayetteville (Ph.D, 1982), . He has taught at Louisiana Tech University in Ruston, Louisiana since the fall of 1981 where he is now the C. W. Ray Johnson Professor of Chemistry in the College of Engineering and Science. Since the late eighties, his research interests have been mainly in chemical and science education. He spends summers conducting professional development institutes for middle school and high school science teachers. For exercise he enjoys playing basketball and juggling. He has been married to Evelyn "Archer", whom he met in Dr. Manion's organic class, since 1979. They have one daughter, Nicole who shares his passion for juggling. Bill won the 2010 Helen M. Free Award for Public Outreach which recognizes outstanding achievements in the field of public outreach by a member of the ACS . This award was made at the Fall, 2010 ACS meeting in Boston.
Mike Houchens
Mike obtained a position in the laboratory for Maybelline in Lonoke and he currently has overall responsibility for quality control at the plant.
Elizabeth Howard
Elizabeth also obtained a position in the laboratory at Maybelline.
Alan Irby
Alan has been employed by Abbott Laboratories for the past 25 years working in North Carolina, Texas and New Orleans. He currently is part of international supply chain management for Hospira, the hospital products division of Abbott in Lake Forest, IL. His children are grown and he and his wife of 27 years enjoy living in the Chicago area. He remembers New Orleans fondly and visits there frequently. He hopes to retire to the Hot Springs area.
Jim Justus
Jim obtained an MD at UAMS and practiced for several years. He became seriously ill and died several years ago.
Gerhard Laule
Gerhard Laule teaches chemistry at Seminole State College, where he has been since January, 1988. He received my M.S. from the University of Arkansas Graduate Institute of Technology in 1986 and then spent a year working on his doctorate in Physical Chemistry at the University of Oregon. As a faculty member at SSC, he has served as chair of the Math/Science/Engineering division and has continued graduate work at Oklahoma State University in Inorganic Chemistry and Chemical Education. Currently He devotes most of his time to teaching Gen Chem I and II and Intro Chem as well as serving as an Adjunct Chemistry Instructor at Oklahoma Baptist University where he teaches the Nursing Chem labs. Hobbies include competitive bicycling racing, hiking, camping etc. Check out his web site at www.gerhardl.phpwebhosting.com.
Laquetta Moore Purkiss
Laquetta and her husband,David, live in Lubbock, TX where they are both employed by Texas Tech University. Laquetta is responsible for laboratory classes in general and organic chemistry.
John Shore
John received a PhD from the University of Arkansas - Fayetteville. He has been employed in the chemistry industry.
Ricky Stamps
After receiving an M.S. degree from the University of Alabama in 1981, Ricky went to work in Texaco’s research labs in Port Arthur, TX where he worked in industrial lubricant and grease development. He transferred to Shell’s Westhollow Technology Center in 1988. He is currently a Senior Chemist, Lubricants with Shell’s global technology organization, Shell Global Solutions, where he is a team leader supporting industrial, transport and aviation greases. He also serves informally as the building computer geek. His work with a global unit has allowed him to travel extensively. Ricky and his wife live in Katy, Texas and have three sons (two in college and one in high school). Ricky’s hobbies include building computers, refurbishing vintage hi-fi speakers, and playing an occasional game of casino black jack.
1977
James Duke
I graduated from the University of Arkansas School of Medicine in 1981 and practiced Emergency Medicine until I entered a 3-yr Residency in Anesthesiology at the University of Texas Southwestern in Dallas, TX in 1989. I moved to Colorado in 1992 and I’m currently an Associate Professor of Anesthesiology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and Associate Director of Anesthesiology, Denver Health Medical Center. My responsibilities include educating medical students and supervising residents in anesthesiology in the operating room. I am the editor of two anesthesia textbooks, "Anesthesia Secrets" currently in third edition, and "Anesthesia Pearls." I have just been accepted into the Executive MBA program in Health Administration at the University of Colorado.
I have been married to Renee for over 10 years and serve at the beck and call of 2 cats, Desi and Audrey. I enjoy roaring through the Colorado mountains on my Harley Davidson Road King and I’m taking 2-step country dance lessons at the Grizzly Rose, recently named the Country Music Association Honky Tonk of the Year! I ski a little, garden a lot, read all the time and try to get a nap in every day, though sometimes this doesn't work out. I have the fondest of memories of my times in the UCA Chemistry department and if I had to do it again, I would.
Jim Fraser
After graduation in '77 , Jim worked briefly as a lab tech in a private waste water lab in Little Rock and in quality control at Maybelline. He worked in R&D at Reynolds Metals for five years until they relocated and then two years for a petroleum refinery in Shreveport, LA. He returned to Arkansas, to work for AP&L as a chemist in the lab at the nuclear plant in Russellville. He moved from there to the corporate tech support group in Little Rock after a couple of years and was there 6 years until Entergy relocated that group to New Orleans. He began work in 1992 for Calgon selling water treatment chemicals to power plants. Calgon has since merged with Nalco for whom he is currently involved with water treatment in a variety of industries. In1996 he received a MS in Operations Management form the University of Arkansas. Jim and his wife, Debby, live in the middle of 200 wooded acres outside of Batesville where he is an avid bow hunter with an emphasis in turkeys. His children, Ryan and Lana Lawrence, live in Vilonia along with his 4 grandchildren.
Steve Graham
Gerald Hook
After graduation Gerald obtained employment in the chemical industry in the St. Louis area where he has been very active in the local ACS section.
Bill McKelvey
Bill taught school at Heber Springs for one year before going to the State Crime Lab, where he was a Chemist for two years. In 1981, he moved to Russellville and joined the staff at Arkansas Nuclear One as a chemist. At Nuclear One he has served as Chemistry Supervisor, a Chemistry Superintendent and Industrial Safety Superintendent. He has been the Employee Concerns Coordinator since 2004. He describes this as kind of a camp counselor, complaint department and whistleblower office all rolled up into one.
Bill's wife, Shelia, is a 1980 graduate of UCA, with a degree in early childhood education. They have been married for 28 years and have two sons. Tim is a senior education major at UCA (and is going to be a great football coach). Philip is a freshman at the University of Arkansas majoring in business.
Susan Rongey
Eddie Shiller
Eddie went to work for Alcoa in Benton upon graduation.
Tim Thomas
1978
Rusty Degges
Tom Ezell
After serving in the military Tom returned to UCA to take a teacher training program.
William (Bobby) Floyd
Bobby's goal when he came to UCA was to return to Nashville and work in the concrete manufacturing plant there. He did so and had been there ever since. His son, Tyler,entered UCA in the fall of 2007.
Mike Jones
Jay Kemper
Jay has held chemist positions at the Arkansas Crime Lab and at the Plant Board.
Rosalyn Riding
Rosalyn taught high school chemistry northeast part of the state for a number of years.
Becky Stewart
Becky completed dental school and is currently practicing dentistry.
Carol Wiedower
1979
Joe Allison
Joe received a PhD degree in inorganic chemistry from Purdue University in 1983. He then obtained a job with Conoco (now Phillips-Conoco) where he has held a number of positions and is currently the Director of Catalysts Development for the Gas-To-Liquids R&D Department. Joe was selected as the outstanding chemist in Oklahoma in 2008 and was recently promoted to research fellow at Conoco-Phillips which provides him with wide latitude in the choice of projects on which he works. In 2010 Joe was named as an ACS fellow at the Fall National Meeting in Boston. He also was recognized as a 2010 outstanding alumnus by the Chemistry Department at Purdue University where he earned his Ph.D. degree.
Chet Barber
Chet is currently employed as a pharmacist.
Richard Davis
Laura Hollenbeck Allison
After grauating as the 1979 top overall UCA graduate Laura attended Purdue University on an NSF predoctoral scholarship in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacognosy. After receiving an M.S. degree in Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacognosy in 1981 Laura worked at BioAnalytical Systems as a Research Chemist from 1981 to 1983. Since 1983 she and Joe have lived in Ponca City, Oklahoma in 1983 where she is a Senior Scientist in the Analytical Services Department specializing in Mass Spectrometry for Conoco (now ConocoPhillips). Joe and Laura have two children: Brent, 22, at Oklahoma State University majoring in Finance; and Tara, 19, at Hendrix College (yes, ironically she is in Conway) majoring in English/Anthropology.
Charles Stotts
Charles worked in Huntsville, AL for a number of years for a company that manufactured solid rocket fuels. He is currently employed in a more mundane plant in Fort Smith and enjoys a piece of land he bought on the Mulberry river.
Richard Walser
Richard taught in the public schools for several years and has been active in the Arkansas National Guard. Most recently he is the manager of Ricks Armory in Little Rock.