Social Sciences

Professor Maria Martin has a lot going on.

On Feb. 18, she was the grand marshal and a speaker at a program and march honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in downtown Merced.

While growing up in the Sacramento area, Donald Carter ('21) said he didn't see many people who looked like him pursuing higher education. As the oldest of four boys in a single-parent household, he spent most of his time setting examples instead of learning from them.

But after graduating from John F. Kennedy High School and deciding to attend UC Merced, Carter realized he could use his experiences to guide other students who may have had similar upbringings.

Special Assistant to the Chancellor and sociology Professor Marjorie Zatz has been elected to the 2022 class of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), adding to the list of previous UC Merced recipients.

She is the first social scientist from UC Merced to be elected an AAAS fellow.

A new landmark study by the UC Merced Community and Labor Center shows farmworkers across California are facing serious health challenges on a daily basis.

The goal of the Farmworker Health Study was to examine agricultural worker health and well-being, in addition to health care access, local and state policies, and health and training needs.

The 2022 report of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change warns that global health is at the mercy of fossil fuels. An accompanying policy brief states that an estimated 32,000 people in the U.S. died due to air pollution in 2020 alone; 37% of those deaths were directly related to fossil fuels.

Linda Barreto ('08), Jessica Jaramillo Perez ('14) and Alejandra Tenorio Zurita ('20) all knew at a young age that they wanted to become lawyers. What they didn't know, however, was that UC Merced would play a pivotal role in merging their paths to create a powerhouse that advocates for hundreds of immigrants in the Central Valley.

UC Merced has awarded its second cohort of Chancellor’s Fellowship for Inclusive Excellence to four incoming Ph.D. students from the schools of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts, Natural Sciences and Engineering. Their studies will contribute to the representation of Black scholars in academia and beyond.

Just seven years after it began offering graduate degrees, UC Merced’s Sociology Department has already begun shaping the future of the professoriate by placing 11 of its graduate alumni in tenure-track positions — five of those in the 2022-23 academic year.

The Carnegie Corporation of New York announced that Department of Political Science Chair and Professor Jessica Trounstine has been named to the 2022 Class of Andrew Carnegie Fellows.

Most people are familiar with the adage "a picture is worth a thousand words." However, the message conveyed by an image may not always be factual.