Jay was born in Dayton, Ohio in 1967 but grew up in Grand Forks, North Dakota. He attended West Elementary School, Valley Junior High School and Central High School there before going to college at Wabash in 1985. He finished a PhD at University of California at Berkeley in 1993. Jay has been active in the Episcopal church all his life. He attended the National Youth Science Camp in 1985 as the North Dakota delegate and later as a counselor in 1989. He was involved in speech, debate, theater, academic competitions, choir, band and newspaper in his high school days. At Wabash, Jay focused his extracurricular efforts in the theater, taking a part time position there for 10 - 20 hours each week building sets, hanging lights and doing other technical staff assignments. As well at Wabash, Jay was a member of TKE fraternity and worked as the treasurer for the alpha-alpha chapter for three semesters. At Berkeley, Jay met his wife Julie (Duckart) and they were married in 1993. Jay worked long hours in the Pines research group in the chemistry department there but he played hard as well, helping to found the Pines/Wemmer "Magnetic Fielders" chem league softball team. He also was involved in the graduate student organization as both social director and co-chairman in 1991 and 1992. In California, Jay had lots of excitement from mother nature, including the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989 (his first) and the Oakland Hills Firestorm (1991) which consumed the rental house he lived in with Brian Volkman and Tony Huff.
    Jay and Julie have a new dog in their lives named Cosette. She is a tiny Maltese (about 4 total pounds in weight) and is a friendy puff ball of energy. She cannot fetch like our previous dog (Indy, who passed away recently after an unfortunate collision with a flag pole playing fetch) but she is still a lot of fun. Jay returned home to Grand Forks for his 10 year high school reunion the summer of 1995 between working at Ohio State University and Stanford University as a visiting research professor at each institution. Jay enjoys seeing his old classmates and looks forward to more reunions. Jay and Julie travel regularly to Columbus, Ohio to visit Jay's aunt, uncle and brother who live there. Jay's brother was married in May of 1997 and Julie and Jay both were in the bridal party on that wonderful and fun occasion. Julie did her level II fieldwork in Occupational Therapy during the summer and fall of 1997. She did this as part of a Master's degree in Occupational Therapy from Eastern Kentucky University. She worked at both Welborn Hospital in Evansville and Children's Hospital in Cincinnati. Julie will continue with classes at EKU until August of 1999 and is doing outstanding as usual. Julie is working the spring of 1999 as a graduate assistant in the department of Occupational Therapy at EKU. She teaches classes and labs and really seems to enjoy the work. Maybe this means she'll head to academia for a job in the future? Jay recieved news in the spring of 1998 that his NSF grant proposal was funded through the ILI program to buy a new NMR spectrometer at Berea ($200,000). The most exciting summer event was the birth of Katarina Margaret Baltisberger. She was a 9 pound, 2 ounce baby girl born at 5:18 AM on June 19th. Katie came home on the 21st and mom and daughter are recovering well. This wil be a major life focus for the next...oh...18 years we assume!
    At this writing (November 20, 1998), Katie is now up to almost 16 pounds and a 27 inch length.  She is learning many new things each day, including how to say "bla bla bla" and roll over.  The biggest feat recently is the arrival of two teeth on the bottom of her jaw (inside her mouth, silly).  She is fun and games and also a little more active to boot!  See some photos of her all dressed up below!
    At a later writing date (August 20, 1999), Katie is now about 23 pounds and 36 inch long.  She walks, runs, and is really starting to gain a vocabulary that has words like di-dah, ma-ma, da-da, doh, etc.  Not that she is putting any sentences together yet, but soon...  Recent pictures from this week are below!
As the new year (2001) is underway, Katie is growing fast as always. has a large vocabulary now and can sing her alphabet and numbers to fifteen or twenty. She loves to play on the computer and the Seasame Street and Reader Rabbit series of games are her favorite. She also changes favorite movies on a regular basis, but for now it seems Toy Story (original and 2) as well as most other Disney movies keep her happy. We still haven't figured out how to get her to eat veggies well, but we keep trying. Katie is now starting her pre-school/daycare and just loves playing with the other kids.

URL: http://chemistry.berea.edu/~jhb/personal/personal.html