UC Merced - Profiles

Home > Profiles > Graduates

UC Merced 2007 Graduate Profiles

This year's Commencement happens on May 18th. We are profiling many of our graduates on our Web site, so check back often to meet more of them.

Name: Khotan Novini

Age: 30
Hometown: Tehran, Iran
Major: Computer Science and Engineering

What are your post-graduation plans? Working for a year or two and then go for a master’s.

Where do you want to be in five years? In a management position at an engineering firm.

How did UC Merced help prepare you for your future? The small and cozy setting of UC Merced provided the opportunity to know the professors in person. They were very helpful and caring, and I had the chance of getting the kind of education that you get in small private school without having to pay the hefty tuition.

What advice would you offer to incoming students? Try to make the most out of your stay in this still-small school. Try to look at the full part of the glass as opposed to the empty part. Every single experience adds to the education that you’re getting here, even if it isn’t directly a part of your academic endeavor.

Name: Salvador Contreras Cornejo

Age: 30
Hometown: Capilla de Milpillas Jalisco, Mexico, and Los Angeles, CA
Major: World Cultures and History (Anthropology)

What are your post-graduation plans? Research and earn my Ph.D.

Where do you want to be in five years? Teaching and doing research.

How did UC Merced help prepare you for your future? It introduced me to the theories that inform current scholarship in my field and other fields in the social sciences.

What advice would you offer to incoming students? Get involved on campus, make networks and make a revolution!

Name: Heidi Kang

Age: 23
Hometown: Sacramento, CA
Major: Psychology

What are your post-graduation plans? To attend CSU Sacramento to get my teaching credentials, or maybe work for Child Protective Services.

Where do you want to be in five years? I hope to be settled with the occupation that I have chosen, and maybe to be engaged.

How did UC Merced help prepare you for your future? A BA in psychology helps me be more competitive in my field – it gives me an edge over other job applicants.

What advice would you offer to incoming students? Take advantage of all the opportunities and resources that are available to you at UC Merced.

Name: Matiel Holloway

Age: 26
Hometown: Jamestown, CA
Major: Environmental engineering

What are your post-graduation plans? Start a career in the engineering field.

Where do you want to be in five years? I want to be a senior engineer and /or have my professional engineering license.

How did UC Merced help prepare you for your future? Not to be intimidated by new experiences or expectations.

What advice would you offer to incoming students? Use the campus resources. You will never have this much opportunity for face-to-face interaction with the faculty or administration at any other university.

Name: Emily McKeighen

Age: 28
Hometown: Sacramento, CA
Major: World Cultures & History, with the emphasis in history

What are your post-graduation plans? For the summer I plan on substitute teaching for the Elk Grove District to pay off student loans while I research grad schools. Then I want to go to grad school to get an M.A. in history. Depending on how I feel after I get my master's, I might go on to get a Ph.D. I have yet to decide on that though. Getting my MA is a definite, though.

Where do you want to be in five years? I expect I will have received my master’s and be teaching at a junior college or working on a Ph.D.

How did UC Merced help prepare you for your future? I have received a very good background in American history, specifically the Cold War, which I really didn’t know much about. I feel that with the basis in the process behind being a historian, I have a great background to pursue an academic career in history. I won't have just memorized facts about history, I will have graduated with a keen understanding of the intense, lengthy and difficult process that studying history requires.

What advice would you offer to incoming students? We're not like the other UCs. We're smaller, more intimate, almost like a private school, but we hold to the same rigorous standards that makes a UC a UC. Do not come here thinking you're going to a lesser school. Do not come here thinking you're going to an easy school. You're not. UC Merced is hard and demanding, and the professors demand excellence. They competed to teach here and, in time, students will be fighting to get in here, too. Coming here, especially this early in the game, is a treat.

Here's a list of all of our featured Graduate Profiles.

Note to Graduates: If you want to be featured, contact Lorena Anderson in the Office of Communications at (209) 228-4408 or landerson4@ucmerced.edu.