Campus Life

"Romeo and Juliet" is considered William Shakespeare's most famous romantic tragedy. But this Earth Day weekend, it will be transformed into a new production that will offer hope for the future of the environment.

UC Merced is hosting its annual open house event Saturday, April 22, to give admitted, prospective and transfer students the opportunity to learn more about what the university has to offer.

Bobcat Day kicks off at 9 a.m. with a campus information fair, as well as tours of the campus, housing and labs. Attendees are invited to the Carol Tomlinson-Keasey Quad, where Chancellor Juan Sánchez Muñoz will provide welcome remarks.

One question students considering attending UC Merced might ask is, "What's there to do around there?"

The quick answer is - a lot. There are plenty of ways for students to spend their leisure time in the greater Merced area, for students of varying interests:

Are you an outdoors enthusiast? Do you enjoy nights out with crowds of friends? Are you a devoted video game player? Do you like the challenge of thrift shopping? Do you prefer to just chill out, perhaps with a book while water laps gently at the shore?

Roughly a third of all food worldwide goes to waste.

Outside of the obvious direct costs, that waste has numerous other repercussions: much of it goes to landfills, where it generates methane, a greenhouse gas. Resources such as water and seeds are squandered. And at the same time, one in four people are experiencing food insecurity.

"We're wasting all this food when folks are going hungry," said Erin Meyer, Sustainable Food Programs coordinator for UC Merced.

After weathering a pandemic shutdown and some fairly withering criticism, UC Merced's food service programs have emerged better than ever.

The shutdown that started in 2020 brought about abrupt changes to food service operations - prepackaged items were the order of the day to feed students, and for catering, there were no orders of the day.

For the second year, UC Merced's Student Alumni Association (SAA) and Office of Alumni Relations have partnered to host Student Philanthropy Month in March. The monthlong initiative is dedicated to building a culture of philanthropy and awareness at UC Merced.

UC Merced once again broke a record for the number of first-year applications the university received, continuing to show impressive growth even as the national trend shows a decline in the number of students enrolling in higher education.

More than 26,000 prospective first-year, or freshmen, students applied for admission to the university. And nearly 4,000 students applied to transfer to UC Merced. Most of the applicants are from California.

The setting for the celebration marking 20 years since the groundbreaking for UC Merced was markedly different in many ways from the event it commemorated.

Wednesday's ceremony, attended by hundreds of faculty and staff - including dozens from when the university opened - took place in the Dr. Vikram and Priya Lakireddy Grand Ballroom. It was a scene far removed from the empty field where ground was broken for the 10^th University of California campus in October 2002.

Longtime UC Merced supporters Dr. Vikram and Priya Lakireddy were recently honored as part of an intimate event to mark the official dedication of the campus ballroom bearing their names.

Innovate to Grow is a twice-yearly celebration of student ingenuity hosted by the School of Engineering (SoE). In a way, it's a science fair for college students to help solve problems that businesses and nonprofit organizations face, and potentially gain partnerships to see their projects utilized in real-world applications.