Campus Community

The University of California Board of Regents today (May 16) voted to approve President Janet Napolitano’s appointment of systemwide Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Nathan Brostrom as interim chancellor of UC Merced.

Brostrom will succeed Chancellor Dorothy Leland, who earlier this week announced her intention to step down effective Aug. 15. He will serve until a nationwide search for a permanent successor is completed.

Undergraduates Victoria Arias and Cydney Caradonna entered UC Merced through different doors.

Arias was a freshman impressed with the campus and community. Caradonna was a transfer student and athlete sold on UC Merced’s championship women’s basketball team.

When Anna Ocegueda walks across the stage at UC Merced’s 2019 commencement, it will be not only a powerful moment for her, but for her family, too — and for the thousands of people who identify with her story.

Ocegueda is the daughter of migrant farm workers from Mexico and as one of five children, is the first in her family to graduate from a four-year university. This weekend, she receives her bachelor’s degree in psychology and a minor in Spanish.

The undergraduate engineering curriculum at UC Merced offers students professional experience by participating in the senior capstone project, the Innovation Design Clinic (IDC). The IDC culminates in the Innovate to Grow event on Friday, May 17, from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. in an annual showcase of student talent and ingenuity, highlighting the culture of entrepreneurship in UC Merced’s School of Engineering .

Dorothy Leland announced today (May 13) her intention to step down as chancellor of the University of California, Merced, effective Aug. 15, 2019.

“These have been the most gratifying eight years of my long professional career,” said Leland, who was appointed by the Board of Regents in 2011 to serve as the third Chancellor of the then 6-year-old campus. “The decision to step down is not easy, but the moment is right, both for the campus and for me.”

UC Merced welcomed more than 500 students from across the San Joaquin Valley to campus Wednesday to celebrate College Signing Day.

Every student was a high school senior who will move on to higher education in the fall. Seven colleges and universities were represented, including UC Merced, Fresno State, Stanislaus State and CSU Bakersfield.

The event at UC Merced coincided with a larger College Signing Day event at UCLA — put on by former First Lady Michelle Obama’s Reach Higher foundation — and Obama gave the keynote address.

Quantitative and Systems Biology (QSB) graduate student Anh Diep will represent UC Merced at the University of California Grad Slam finals in San Francisco on May 10.

Most people wouldn’t think sharks can teach researchers about the planet’s distant past and its more immediate future.

UC Merced paleoecologist Professor Sora Kim isn’t most people.

There’s a connection between data in fossilized shark teeth and climate change, and thanks to a grant from the National Science Foundation, she aims to use that information to better understand climate change.

Unlike traditional theater productions, there was no red curtain, special lighting, microphone feedback or elaborate stage makeup at Shakespeare in Yosemite.

Instead, squirrels scurried across the stone stage and among the audience members’ feet. Birds cawed in the nearby trees, as the last of the winter leaves fell between the wooden bench seats of Lower River Amphitheater near Yosemite Falls.

It really feels like you’re a world away, but that’s the goal.

The number of people being deported from the United States is at a historic high and one UC Merced professor is on the ground-level, meeting with family members of those affected to better understand the traumatic consequences of deportation.