Diversity

A team of eight scientists from around the country is organizing a new project to foster belonging and participation among Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) students in the geosciences, supported by the National Science Foundation.

Paleoecology Professor Sora Kim is a member of the team that’s led by Professor Daniel Ibarra with Brown University’s Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Science, and Professor Kimberly Lau with Penn State’s Department of Geosciences.

Their community college experiences occurred hundreds of miles apart, but Kim Arellano Carmona and John Wilson each found the support and inspiration that would propel them to Ph.D. candidate studies at UC Merced.

Now they both have a golden opportunity to give back as awardees of a fellowship program that has them shadowing community college mentors and, in the spring semester, teaching classes at Bakersfield College.

This time around, what happened in Las Vegas will not stay there — at least for Cathryn Flores. The fourth-year undergraduate, who's working on a major in English and minor in writing, reached yet another milestone in her music career as she attended a major Latin music awards show recently to be part of a social media team.

2018 Nobel Peace Prize winner and human rights activist Nadia Murad was honored with the Alice and Clifford Spendlove Prize in Social Justice, Diplomacy and Tolerance during a virtual ceremony on Wednesday.

UC Merced’s commitment to the success of Latino students has been recognized with the prestigious Seal of Excelencia.

Human rights activist Nadia Murad has been selected as the 14th recipient of the Alice and Clifford Spendlove Prize in Social Justice, Diplomacy and Tolerance. The 2018 Nobel Peace Prize recipient will be honored during a virtual ceremony on Nov. 3.

UC Merced understands and values the need to acknowledge the rich and diverse history of those who came before us and who are still with us today.

Delivering his first in-person State of the University campus address, Chancellor Juan Sánchez Muñoz outlined the progress UC Merced has achieved across many fields and laid out initial plans for investing a historic $20 million gift to the university.

“The state of UC Merced is indeed exceptional,” he pronounced in the address delivered Thursday to a group of external supporters and Friday to faculty and staff. “And because of our shared vision, our shared resources and our shared efforts, our shared future is boundless.”

The University of California, Merced, continues its historic climb in the venerable US News & World Report rankings of U.S. universities, with the 2022 list released this morning.

UC Merced remains in the top 100, rising to 93rd among national universities — up 72 spots over four years. The campus is 38th among public universities and 18th among R2 universities.

More than a few students have probably asked themselves why they have to take calculus — the course is notoriously difficult for some.

“People haven’t been taught math the way it should be,” Department of Applied Mathematics Professor Mayya Tokman said. “Math is practical. It’s there to solve problems and answer questions. But somehow, we lost that, and math is now taught as an abstract.”