Staff & Faculty News

It’s the crown jewel of sustainability — a platinum certification signifying all the steps to making a space sustainable have been met.

For UC Merced, platinum certification had eluded the Green Labs and Green Offices programs. That changed recently when the Office of the Chancellor achieved platinum Green Offices status and biology labs directed by School of Natural Sciences instructional lab coordinator Jim Whalen secured platinum Green Labs certification.

As UC Merced continues to lead the way in sustainability on university campuses, a new wrinkle has been added to the process of certifying buildings.

Recently, the Science and Engineering 1 (SE1) building achieved gold certification under LEED Operations and Maintenance (LEED O & M) criteria. Certification is nothing new to the campus — every building at UC Merced is LEED certified or on track to be certified.

But who has begun to handle the certification process is groundbreaking.

Writing poetry can lead to increased innovation in science, according to a new article in BioScience that came about because of a Twitter connection between UC Merced and Swansea University in Wales.

UC Merced psychology Professor Anna Song and biology Professor Jennifer Manilay had a special dinner with UC President Janet Napolitano at her Oakland home recently to honor the faculty members for their work on first-generation student initiatives.

The Merced Sun-Star announced its 20 Under 40 honorees in 2018 and for the second consecutive year, numerous UC Merced alumni, staff and faculty members were chosen for their efforts to make the community a great place to live, work and learn.

Cognitive science Professor Teenie Matlock, the McClatchy Chair in Communications , has been appointed interim vice provost for the faculty at UC Merced.

A new two-year project at UC Merced aims to bring academic and non-academic researchers together to recast the role of the humanities in public policy and, ultimately, improve the lives of San Joaquin Valley residents.

The collaborative project, entitled “Building Research Partnerships in the San Joaquin Valley: Community Engaged Research and Graduate Mentorship in the Interdisciplinary Humanities,” involves scholars and community organizations.

As new director of the Center for the Humanities, Professor Mario Sifuentez ’ sights are set on a fuller understanding of rural communities and how best to help them.

First impressions count, maybe now more than ever. But what if those impressions are based on lies?

People’s willingness to believe even the most outrageous “information” they get is so remarkable that researchers have been studying this phenomenon — more recently given the current political divide in America — and trying to explain why facts don’t sway people’s beliefs.

Though illustrations have been used to convey ideas and information since before language existed, after Benjamin Franklin published the world’s first editorial cartoon in 1754, comics emerged a distinct avenue for visual storytelling.

Now, comic art has come into classrooms at UC Merced and abroad, as educators are using illustrations in new ways — to teach complex concepts and assess whether students grasp those lessons.