Campus Community

When Mario Banuelos was 12, his mother took him into the fields to tie grape vines.

The labor was tough and the wages were meager. After just one day on the job, Banuelos knew that his path in life would be different. He worked even harder in school and earned nearly straight As. His efforts paid off when he was selected for the prestigious Gates Millennium Scholars program.

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.

When prospective student-athletes visit UC Merced, soccer standout Abbie-Leigh Meneses is among the first people they meet.

Not long ago, Meneses was a recruit herself, touring the University of California’s 10th and newest campus. She fell in love with UC Merced and its central location within driving distance to Yosemite National Park and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Desperate lovers, a fairy king and queen, a woman with a donkey’s head and a scamp with Cupid’s arrow in flower form are taking over Yosemite National Park on Earth Day weekend.
Highlighting UC Merced’s special partnership with Yosemite, Shakespeare in Yosemite enters its second year with “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” adapted and directed by UC Merced Professor Katherine Steele Brokaw and Professor Paul Prescott from the University of Warwick in Coventry, U.K.

UC Merced Chancellor Dorothy Leland welcomed downtown business owners and members of the Merced Main Street Association for coffee and a chat at the new Downtown Campus Center on Friday.

“We are committed to decreasing the distance between the campus on the lake and the downtown,” Leland told the group. “Thank you for welcoming us.”

Working in education over the years, I have learned to never let inhospitable and toxic circumstances destroy one’s soul, but to use education as a way to empower, transform, radically heal and cultivate seeds of hope.

Besides being a groundbreaking research powerhouse, the University of California is an economic engine for California and the nation, providing an educated workforce and generating new knowledge, technologies, jobs, startup companies and spinoff industries.

Many of the state’s leading industries grew from UC research, including biotechnology, computing, semiconductors, telecommunications and agriculture, and our work in nanotechnology, clean energy, neuroscience, genomics and medicine is helping drive the next wave of California’s economic growth.

The University of California, Merced, has selected political commentator and public affairs professional Maria Cardona and civic leader and entrepreneur Lenny Mendonca to deliver keynote addresses at its 13th commencement exercises, May 12 and 13.

Driving past Merced Falls on the way to Lake McClure doesn’t usually inspire thoughts of a bustling mini-metropolis with its own movie theater.

But a new exhibit opening at the Merced County Courthouse Museum highlights a slice of Merced County’s past as an industrial center and showcases a new collaboration between the museum and the UC Merced Library and a graduate student.