1979-1984 Jay Barton

Jay Barton II, former UA president, dies at age 78, Sequim, Washington (AP) September 12, 2000

Photo of Jay Barton II
Photo of Jay Barton II

Jay Barton II, an educational administrator and promoter of international development who headed the statewide University of Alaska system for five years, is dead after a brief illness. He was 78.

Barton, a biologist by training, died Aug. 21 at his home in this Olympic Peninsula community.

After working as a professor at Washington University in St. Louis, Columbia University in New York City and at several other schools, he became vice president and provost of West Virginia University from 1968 to 1979, president of the University of Alaska system from 1979 to 1984 and vice president for academic affairs at the University of Missouri from 1985 to 1989.

Barton also worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Pakistan, spent two years in Peru as an adviser to the National Agrarian University, helped administer an agricultural training program in Tanzania and lectured at Milan, Italy.

Barton was born in Chicago and received a doctorate in zoology from the University of Missouri in 1951. He was awarded an honorary doctor of science degree by the University of Alaska in 1984.

He served with the U.S. Army in the Pacific from 1943 to 1946.

He is survived by his wife of 54 years, Ann Taylor Barton of Bainbridge Island, Wash.; seven children, 11 grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

A private family memorial was held Aug. 26.