School of Social Sciences Humanities and Arts

In creating scholarships to help future generations of Bobcats succeed, UC Merced staff members and alumnae Monique de Villa (’16) and Danielle Armedilla (’12) are cementing the legacy they are leaving for campus.  

De Villa and Armedilla were honored for their generous contributions at last month’s scholarship signing ceremony on Bobcat Day — a thank-you tradition that began a few years ago.

Violet Barton remembers her teenage years doing quadratic equations by candlelight to a soundtrack of bombs and bullets as the Salvadoran Civil War raged around her.

She was forced to migrate to the United States 36 years ago but will go back to El Salvador later this year as a UC Merced graduate student and a Fulbright scholar.

UC Merced’s exuberant spring graduates got the chance to demonstrate their gratitude during the 13th Spring Commencement ceremonies this weekend as many of them paused to thank the faculty members and loved ones who helped them through their college journeys.

During the two ceremonies, UC Merced graduated more than 1,200 students, conferring 1,151 bachelor’s degrees, 18 master’s degrees and a record 49 doctoral degrees.

This weekend, 1,250 UC Merced undergraduate and graduate students, including 52 doctoral candidates — the most in the campus’s 12-year history — are expected to cross the commencement stage and embark on the next chapter of their lives.

“Commencement is the culmination of years of determination and is an exciting time for graduates and their families,” Chancellor Dorothy Leland said. “We are thrilled to celebrate the courage, commitment and spirit of UC Merced students.”

The odds of Tomanik’e Banks graduating from college were slim — only slightly lower than the odds she’d go to college at all.

But Banks had one thing going for her that many others don’t. Determination.

When Banks crosses the commencement stage May 12, she’ll be one of only about 3 percent of foster youth to graduate from college.

Professor Whitney Pirtle recently became the first researcher to win the prestigious Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship while employed at UC Merced — a grant that will help her finish writing a book and move her closer to gaining tenure.

“It’s a really big honor,” Pirtle said. “It comes at a great time in my career.”

“April ... hath put a spirit of youth in everything,” Shakespeare wrote in Sonnet 98. He might as well have been writing about this year’s Shakespeare in Yosemite production.

With Friday’s premiere — attended by high school students from Mariposa and several children of park employees and El Portal residents and performed by a troupe of players ranging from those experienced and trained in Shakespeare to brand-new actors — the 420-year-old “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” seemed new again.

Kimberly Ramirez Gonzalez has been advocating for youth for four years and she is committed to dedicating the rest of her life to doing so.

Every 10 minutes, someone is added to the national organ transplant waiting list, and about once every hour, someone on the list is removed — either because they died while waiting or grew too ill for surgery.

The number of Americans on the waiting list totals more than 114,000 as of this writing, and about 30,000 transplants will be performed this year. In part, that’s because there are not enough organ donors.

UC Merced graduate student Danielle Bermudez will spend the next 10 months in El Salvador, conducting research and serving as a cultural ambassador for the campus as a Fulbright U.S. Student Researcher.

She is the campus’s first student winner of the Fulbright U.S. Student Program. There are other types of Fulbright grants, but this one is specific to students.