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Posts Tagged: In memoriam
In memoriam: George Goodall
George Goodall, emeritus UCCE farm advisor and county director, passed away June 22, 2020, at age 98.
A fourth-generation Southern Californian, Goodall grew up on a diversified farm in Canoga Park. After serving four years in the Army Corps of Engineers during World War II, he earned a degree in subtropical horticulture from UCLA in 1947. Goodall was hired the same year as a UCCE subtropical fruit farm advisor for Ventura County, then in 1951 moved to serve Santa Barbara County as a farm advisor specializing in avocados, citrus, walnuts and wine grapes. He later earned a master's degree in agricultural economics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. In 1974, he became director of UCCE in Santa Barbara County until he retired in 1987.
“George was instrumental in the creation of the Williamson Act and in establishing the avocado industry amongst a lot of other things,” said Ben Faber, UCCE subtropical crops advisor for Ventura and Santa Barbara counties.
“As important as his knowledge and experience, it was his manner, attitude, personality, sense of humor, etc. that made him an ideal Extension agent,” Faber said. “He was equally comfortable in the world of academia as he was in the real world of farming and people. And he loved good food, a good bottle of wine and good company. I'll never forget his laugh and his stories. He and John Evans and Bud Lee were like the three musketeer county directors who were all excellent extension administrators and at the same time outstanding farm advisors.”
In 1972, Goodall received the Award of Honor of the California Avocado Society. Among other industry honors, he received the Distinguished Service Award from the California Chapter of the Soil Conservation Society of America, the Commendation Award from the Soil Conservation Society of America, and a gold watch from Calavo Growers of California.
During his career, he authored nearly 30 papers on avocado production and many more papers on subtropical fruits.
He was a member of the American Society for Horticulture Science, the American Agricultural Economics Association, the Soil Conservation Society of America, and was a past president of the California Chapter of the Soil Conservation Society of America. A member of the California Avocado Society since 1949, he also belonged to the Lemon Men's Club, The California Citrus Nurserymen's Society, and the Santa Barbara County Farm Bureau.
According to his family, Goodall once bestowed a Medal of Honor to former Governor Ronald Reagan for soil conservation.
After retiring from UC, Goodall did agricultural consulting in the Mediterranean, Latin America and Africa. He also became active in the Santa Barbara Rotary Club and his local genealogical society, tracing his ancestry to the origins of man and giving presentations on genealogy.
Goodall is survived by his wife Jeanne, son Stephen (Jane), grandchildren Emily (Cheyne) and Jason and great grandchildren Lyndee and Jaxton O'Gorman.
In memoriam: Betty Hewitt
After graduating with a bachelor's degree in home economics from Colorado A&M College, Hewitt served three years in the WAVES as a laboratory technologist in San Diego and Hawaii during World War II.
In 1947, Hewitt began her UC Cooperative Extension career as a home demonstration agent in Sonoma County. In 1949, Hewitt became the first woman home economist and a founder of 4-H in El Dorado County, which is celebrating its 100-year anniversary. As the UCCE 4-H advisor, Hewitt expanded the program to serve more than 10,000 4-H members in countywide 4-H clubs over the years until her retirement in 1982. She also taught families nutrition, cooking, sewing, homemaking and personal finances.
“Numerous newspaper articles chronicling Betty's work and achievements, dated from as early as 1949 can be found in archive scrap books preserved at the county UCCE office,” wrote her niece, Lorraine Larsen-Hallock, an active 4-H volunteer and 4-H alumna. “Betty did not have children of her own, but always considered the 4-H youth as her children, to be nurtured through the 4-H program to help them become future leaders.”
Read more about Hewitt's life at https://www.mtdemocrat.com/obituaries/betty-hewitt.
'We are UC ANR' public awareness campaign launches
A month-long public awareness campaign titled "We are UC ANR" launched June 1. The campaign was designed to help those who have struggled to wrap their arms around all that UC ANR does. It features two new website products: A three-minute video that explains UC ANR's origins and current activities, and an interactive map that shows the locations of UC ANR programs across the state.
The communications team is asking everyone – UC ANR staff and academics, farmers, 4-H members, volunteers, agency representatives and all other stakeholders – to share their ANR stories through social networks, with the hashtag #WeAreUCANR. To make this easy, the team developed a toolkit that includes sample posts and tweets, images, short video trailers and messaging.
We are all problem-solvers, catalysts, collaborators, educators and stewards of the land. UC ANR is a bridge between the people of California and trusted, science-based answers to everyday questions. Please help us bring UC ANR alive to current and future stakeholders.
We are UC ANR webpage (with video and map)
We are UC ANR social media toolkit
Names in the News
Macon named livestock and natural resources advisor
Macon, who operates a small-scale commercial sheep enterprise near Auburn, brings a combination of hands-on livestock production experience and applied scientific research and education/outreach experience.
Having been the herdsman at the UC Sierra Foothill Research and Extension Center, and most recently serving as an associate specialist for rangeland science and management in the UC Davis Plant Sciences Department, Macon is a familiar face to many in ANR. He is currently collaborating on a variety of research efforts, including on-ranch impacts, management and planning horizons following California's historic drought. He has also led producer enrollment, data collection and grazing-water-nutrient management tracking for a statewide integrated research and extension project on irrigated pasture. He is also leading a long-term project that will quantify direct and indirect impacts from predators on rangeland livestock operations across northern California.
Macon has also worked for the Natural Resources Conservation Service and the California Cattlemen's Association, and was the founding executive director of the California Rangeland Trust. He is currently the vice president of the California Wool Growers Association and is a past president of the California-Pacific Section of the Society for Range Management.
Macon earned a Master of Agriculture in integrated resource management from Colorado State University and a Bachelor of Science in agricultural and managerial economics from UC Davis.
“I have finally recognized that the parts of my earlier jobs that I most enjoyed involved the things I'll be doing on a daily basis as a farm advisor - teaching and doing research,” Macon wrote in his Foothill Agrarian blog. “Along with raising sheep, I feel as though I've finally figured out what I'm supposed to do in life!”
“I have enormous shoes to fill - Roger Ingram and Glenn Nader, who have proceeded me in these four counties, were incredibly productive and successful advisors.”
Macon will be based in the Auburn office and can be reached at (530) 889-7385 and dmacon@ucanr.edu. Follow him on Twitter at @flyingmulefarm and Instagram at @flyingmule.
Spinelli named vegetable and irrigation advisor
Before joining UCCE, Spinelli had worked as agricultural specialist for the Resource Conservation District of Santa Cruz County since 2015. He performed irrigation system evaluations, implemented an irrigation water and soil moisture monitoring project, and provided recommendations for irrigation management and improvements in irrigation systems, assisting the strawberry, lettuce, apple, vegetable and blackberry industries.
From 2010 to 2015, Spinelli was a graduate student researcher in the Plant Sciences Department at UC Davis, where his research focused on water stress and water use at the leaf and canopy level in almond orchards in California.
Spinelli grew up on an olive and vegetable farm on the hills overlooking Florence, Italy. He left Italy in 2007 to work in Honduras on an irrigation development project providing technical assistance for smallholder corn and watermelon growers, and in London designing and installing landscape irrigation systems. He also lived in Lebanon, where he introduced integrated pest management in apple and olive production, rebuilt irrigation channels for tobacco and vegetable growers, implemented a queen bee breeding program and built sewage lines for the Wavel refugee camp. In addition to English, he speaks French, Italian and Arabic.
Spinelli earned a Ph.D. in horticulture and agronomy and a M.S. in international agricultural development from UC Davis and a M.S. in tropical agricultural development and a B.S. in agricultural sciences and technologies from the University of Florence, Italy.
Based in Modesto, he can be reached at (209) 525-6806, (530) 304-3738 (cell) and gspinelli@ucanr.edu.
Vela to lead News and Information Outreach in Spanish
Before joining UC, Vela was the news director and main anchor for KVER-TV Univision in Palm Springs. Vela launched his journalism career in the third grade by starting a school newspaper in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. He was the news correspondent for Univision News in Los Angeles bureau for over 10 years, then moved to San Diego where he was the news anchor/producer for the Univision affiliate for 14 years. In 2014, Vela moved to his hometown of El Paso, Texas, to be the news anchor/producer for KTDO-Telemundo 48.
In 1992, he won an Emmy for his story about a Latino family coping with their last days before dying of AIDS and preparing their children for their loss. In 2005, Vela received an Emmy for a news feature, “Los Trovadores del Siglo 21.”
In 2001, Hispanic Business Magazine named Vela one of the 100 most influential Hispanic journalists in the country for his journalistic vision to voice the needs of the Hispanic community in San Diego. He expanded his commitment to the community by writing a weekly column for the El Latino newspaper about issues pertinent to Hispanics in San Diego. In 2004, The San Diego Press Club honored his newspaper column and morning radio talk show, Voces de San Diego, which had been on the air only a few months, and he was named one of the 10 most influential Latinos in San Diego by Tijuana's Frontera newspaper.
On Feb. 28, 2006, the City of San Diego honored him with a proclamation of “Ricardo Vela Day” for his contributions to the Latino community through his radio show.
Vela earned a bachelor's degree in business administration at Instituto Tecnologico de Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, and a bachelor's degree in mass communications/journalism at the University of Texas at El Paso. He also studied film and video at the Art institute in Chicago.
Vela is based at the Rubidoux Building in Riverside and can be reached at (951) 781-2151 and ricardo.vela@ucr.edu.
ANR women graduate from UC Women's Initiative Program
They were among a group of mid-career women, both staff and faculty, selected from all UC locations to participate in this special program created to improve the professional development and advancement of women at UC.
The four-session program was designed by the Systemwide Advisory Committee on the Status of Women and UC Systemwide Talent Management, and delivered by CORO, a nonprofit leadership development organization.
- Cultivate a vibrant, professional network of women that spans the UC system
- Give women access to top UC leaders—women and men—so they can interview and learn from them about their diverse leadership approaches and journeys
- Strengthen participants' skills and confidence through hands-on practice with a range of tools and skills in the areas of:
- Professional development and impact
Robin Sanchez - Strategic relationship building
- Developing and delivering a compelling narrative regarding one's professional accomplishments and vision
- Negotiating at work
- Peer coaching
The program is designed for mid-career women, both faculty and staff, who demonstrate the potential to advance their careers at UC. Last year, Katherine Webb-Martinez and Tunnyalee Martin participated in the training.
For more information about the program, visit the UC Women's Initiative website at http://ucop.edu/human-resources/womens-initiative.
Van Eenennaam tapped for national research strategy
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine sought nominations for scientific leaders across various disciplines to be part of an activity that will develop a compelling strategy for food and agricultural research for the next decade and beyond. Nominations were sought for transformational thinkers across the scientific enterprise (including but not exclusively limited to the agricultural sciences) to be considered for the study committee. These include individuals on the frontier of scientific disciplines that would be of value but are not traditionally associated with food and agriculture.
In addressing its statement of task, the study committee will offer a strategic and ambitious view of the opportunities for fundamental and applied interdisciplinary research that is both grounded by a deep scientific understanding of food and agricultural challenges and elevated by the breakthrough potential of insights and tools from newly converging disciplines in the food and agriculture setting.
Susan Wessler, the Neil A. and Rochelle A. Campbell Presidential Chair for Innovations in Science Education and distinguished professor of genetics at UC Riverside, is co-chair of the committee.
For more information about the study, visit http://nas-sites.org/dels/studies/agricultural-science-breakthroughs/who-we-are-agriculture-breakthroughs/committee.
UC ANR's Strategic Plan has its own website
- Direct link: http://ucanr.edu/sites/anrstaff/2016-2020_Strategic_Plan/
- “Squished” link: http://ucanr.edu/strategicplan
- Mini URL: http://ucanr.edu/p/58630
- Keyword search of any ANR website for "strategic plan."
The website is designed to give UC ANR academics and staff updated information on the plan and its ongoing implementation, and their role in reaching the plan's goals. It's also a place where stakeholders can offer feedback to leadership. Please let your stakeholders know about the site.
For more information about the Strategic Plan, read AVP Wendy Powers' blog post Updates on implementation of the strategic plan.
