Campus Life

It started with a simple off-hand comment, one that would likely be met with a chuckle at any other institution. At UC Merced, it became a ripple that has changed the academic and social strata of an entire school.

At the northern tip of the UC Merced campus, an unremarkable aluminum gate leads into a field that extends, seemingly, into infinity. Perpendicular to the gate, the LeGrand Canal, drawn from Lake Yosemite, snakes around campus into the emerald pastures, through farm rows and almond orchards across the highway. It’s the rainy season and bulbous cumuli foreground the rippled line of the Sierra Nevada that slices across the open sky.

Wastewater methane reclamation for the City of Merced. Odor abatement in BART Plazas. Solar collection for oxygen generation on Mars. UC Merced campus drone tour. Skin test analyzer for Valley Fever patients.

This might sound like a list of cutting-edge, high-tech inventions, which they are, but they are also a sampling of the projects featured at UC Merced’s Innovate to Grow event — I2G — held earlier this month by the School of Engineering.

Clouds loomed over the Carol Tomlinson-Keasey Quad last weekend, but nothing was going to rain on the parade of the more than 1,300 Bobcats who walked the stage at UC Merced’s commencement.

It was not my intention to be your commencement speaker this morning, and you were no doubt looking forward to having California’s First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom share her wisdom with you today. I am sorry that she could not be here, but I understand and respect her decision not to attend this ceremony, as the University of California system continues important contract negotiations with one of its labor unions.

In Ms. Siebel Newsom’s stead, as your chancellor, it is my great honor to formally address the UC Merced graduating class of 2019.

The undergraduate engineering curriculum at UC Merced offers students professional experience by participating in the senior capstone project, the Innovation Design Clinic (IDC). The IDC culminates in the Innovate to Grow event on Friday, May 17, from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. in an annual showcase of student talent and ingenuity, highlighting the culture of entrepreneurship in UC Merced’s School of Engineering .

It is one of the largest and, arguably, most complex social infrastructure projects in the nation. Now, every building in the award-winning Merced 2020 Project is completely topped off.

Chancellor Leland, UC Merced senior leadership and members of Webcor and Plenary — the project’s construction and development partners — signed the final beam that will be placed on the Student Wellness and Counseling Center building on Tuesday. The building is part of the third delivery phase of the project, set to open in fall 2020.

UC Merced welcomed more than 500 students from across the San Joaquin Valley to campus Wednesday to celebrate College Signing Day.

Every student was a high school senior who will move on to higher education in the fall. Seven colleges and universities were represented, including UC Merced, Fresno State, Stanislaus State and CSU Bakersfield.

The event at UC Merced coincided with a larger College Signing Day event at UCLA — put on by former First Lady Michelle Obama’s Reach Higher foundation — and Obama gave the keynote address.

It is often said in sports that you have to struggle and overcome adversity before being able to bask in the glory of success.

UC Merced athletics has faced adversity since first transitioning from a recreation program to a NAIA member eight years ago.

But the wait for success was, well, not long at all.

It’s before dawn on a Saturday morning in mid-May — not a time anyone would expect the UC Merced campus to be busy. But it is.

This is Spring Commencement, and there is much work to do.

Parking and transportation staff are placing signage and temporary fencing. In the kitchens, dozens of dining and catering workers are preparing breakfast for thousands of people, including the police officers and transportation employees who will spend the morning guiding traffic, answering questions and maintaining order.