Academic Distinction

UC Merced’s reputation as a world-class research university continues to grow, as the university rose to No. 3 among U.S. universities in the 2020 Times Higher Education Young University Rankings released this week.

Since the onset of many governors’ stay-at-home orders, there are fewer cars on the road as fewer people are driving to work. While some people can work from home, sadly, some are not working at all.

The global pandemic has caused record unemployment in the United States and the future of the economy and the American workforce is unclear. Economics Professor Greg Wright weighs in on the impact COVID-19 has had on the nation’s economy and what we can expect moving forward.

When UC Merced began transitioning to emergency remote instruction in late March, hoping to lessen the spread of COVID-19, Jackie Shay didn’t waste any time jumping in to help her fellow teaching assistants (TA) make the shift.

Arturo Arias, a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation professor in the Humanities at UC Merced, has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for his ground-breaking study of contemporary indigenous novels from Guatemala and Mexico.

Arias was one of 173 American and Canadian fellows announced Wednesday by the Board of Trustees of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

U.S. News & World Report has ranked six of UC Merced’s engineering graduate programs in its 2021 Best Graduate Schools rankings released today, a sign that the university’s reputation is continuing to build.

The Whiting Public Engagement Program has awarded a $50,000 fellowship to Professor Ma Vang for her efforts to integrate the experiences of refugees into education for high school students in Merced County and beyond.

Professor Clarissa Nobile has been named the newest Kamangar Family Endowed Chair in Biological Sciences and will be honored at a private ceremony with the donors this fall.

“I am so pleased and honored to have been named to this chair,” Nobile said. “Thank you for investing in me and the future of biomedical research on infectious diseases at UC Merced.”

When Alyssa Young returned to Long Beach after earning her bachelor’s degree in psychology from UC Merced in 2017, she didn’t imagine she would be back in Merced just one year later.

The fastest-growing public research university in the nation is the fastest-rising university in U.S. News & World Report’s Best Colleges rankings.

UC Merced moved into the top 10 in the country in first-generation student performance in the Washington Monthly 2019 College Guide and Rankings released last week. The university — with more than 73 percent of the undergraduate student population being first generation, double the national average and the highest percentage in the UC system — ranked No. 8, jumping five spots from No. 13 in the 2018 rankings.