Chancellor

With cheers, hugs and leis, more than 1,500 UC Merced graduates received a celebratory sendoff to their bright futures as a prominent keynote speaker told them to make the most of the here and now.

Hundreds of families and friends joined the graduates in three days of commencement ceremonies at the university’s Recreation Field. White picket fences lined the processional path for graduates, faculty and campus leaders of the San Joaquin Valley’s only research institution.

UC Merced has earned two 2025 Carnegie distinctions, the Student Access and Earnings Classification “Opportunity Colleges and Universities” and the Institutional Classification by the Carnegie Foundation and the American Council on Education.

“It speaks to the mission and values we uphold as a student-centered, academically rigorous research institution,” said Chancellor Juan Sánchez Muñoz.

UC Merced has assumed its place in the top echelon of research institutions in the nation by earning R1 status from Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. The announcement was made Thursday morning by the American Council on Education and comes less than 20 years after the university opened its doors.

UC Merced will celebrate hundreds of graduates alongside their friends and families in the Art Kamangar Center at the Merced Theatre this weekend. There are 402 Bobcats set to participate in the fall commencement ceremonies in downtown Merced.

The festivities begin at 6 p.m. Friday, Dec. 20, with the Graduate Division commencement ceremony.

Between 70% and 80% of students who start classes at community colleges plan to transfer to four-year universities. But only between 20% and 30% do.

In California, that number is closer to the lower end of that spectrum, a University of Wisconsin researcher told a room full of higher education representatives.

Philanthropist and community leader Ed Kashian was awarded the UC Merced Chancellor’s Medal, the university’s highest honor, at the campus’s State of the University event on Oct. 9.

UC Merced is being recognized from coast to coast as an institution that “redefines academic excellence, Chancellor Juan Sánchez Muñoz said Wednesday in the annual State of the University address.

“As chancellor of this magnificent institution, I tell you that the state of our university is strong, and growing stronger year after year,” Muñoz said.

UC Merced on Wednesday unveiled a striking monument to a university on the rise.

A crowd of students, faculty and staff gathered in the early evening’s long shadows at University Plaza to get their first look at Big Rufus, a 10-foot-long bronze vision of UC Merced’s bobcat mascot. The sculpture paws its way up three staggered concrete-and-steel pillars, gazing resolutely to the horizon.

A memorandum of understanding signed between University of California, Merced, and the Los Angeles Community College District this week will extend access for transfer students through the Merced Promise Pathway Program.

UC Merced said “welcome” to its 2,400 new students Tuesday as only UC Merced can, with a joyous and colorful Scholars Bridge Crossing ceremony that symbolizes their transformation into Bobcats at the San Joaquin Valley’s only research university.

Hundreds of those first-year or transfer students gathered in yellow T-shirts on the lawn next to the Pavilion dining hall in preparation for the crossing.