Diversity

For the first time, a UC Merced alumnus will serve on the UC Board of Regents.

Keith Ellis, who received his bachelor’s degree from UC Merced in 2012, will serve a two-year term beginning in July and continuing through June 2024. In addition to his new role, Ellis will be recognized as an active officer of the Alumni Associations of UC (AAUC).

Professor Katrina Hoyer ’s lab is helping UC Merced serve the San Joaquin Valley community through its studies of immune responses to Valley fever and other diseases.

Graduate students Susana Tejeda-Garibay and Nadia Miranda are exploring fungal and host immune interactions in Valley fever, and they have both earned prestigious research fellowships to further their work.

Rhondene Wint is one of 10 exemplary graduate students to be featured in the March 17 special issue of Diverse: Issues In Higher Education (Diverse) based on “standout scholarship thus far and their current trajectory toward a very promising future in academia and beyond,” according to the magazine’s press release.

The new UC Merced Bobcat STEM Scholars Program, funded by a $1.4 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), will provide four years of scholarship support for up to 10 eligible incoming students per year who declare majors within the university’s School of Natural Sciences (SNS).

Founded by the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE) in 1951, National Engineers Week is dedicated to ensuring a diverse and well-educated future engineering workforce by increasing understanding of and interest in engineering and technology careers.

This year, Engineers Week runs from Feb. 20-26, and to celebrate the students, faculty, alumni, programs and accomplishments, all nine UC campuses that have engineering schools or programs collaborated to present some of the most interesting stories from the past year.

A team of eight scientists from around the country is organizing a new project to foster belonging and participation among Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) students in the geosciences, supported by the National Science Foundation.

Paleoecology Professor Sora Kim is a member of the team that’s led by Professor Daniel Ibarra with Brown University’s Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Science, and Professor Kimberly Lau with Penn State’s Department of Geosciences.

Their community college experiences occurred hundreds of miles apart, but Kim Arellano Carmona and John Wilson each found the support and inspiration that would propel them to Ph.D. candidate studies at UC Merced.

Now they both have a golden opportunity to give back as awardees of a fellowship program that has them shadowing community college mentors and, in the spring semester, teaching classes at Bakersfield College.

This time around, what happened in Las Vegas will not stay there — at least for Cathryn Flores. The fourth-year undergraduate, who's working on a major in English and minor in writing, reached yet another milestone in her music career as she attended a major Latin music awards show recently to be part of a social media team.

2018 Nobel Peace Prize winner and human rights activist Nadia Murad was honored with the Alice and Clifford Spendlove Prize in Social Justice, Diplomacy and Tolerance during a virtual ceremony on Wednesday.

UC Merced’s commitment to the success of Latino students has been recognized with the prestigious Seal of Excelencia.