Student & Alumni Success

A half-dozen UC Merced students and alumni are recipients of significant fellowships to help support their graduate education.

“We’re extremely proud of our undergraduate and graduate students and alumni who have earned prestigious fellowships,” Vice Provost and Graduate Dean Chris Kello said. “These awards will allow scholars to embark on or continue their graduate-level research opportunities.”

(Select the link below to learn more about the recipients.)

From graduate student Jose Zamora’s perspective, the CREST Center for Cellular and Biomolecular Machines (CCBM) has been a spectacular success.

A student can swing between confidence and uncertainty in the months between signing a university’s acceptance letter and the first day of classes. The people at UC Merced entrusted with helping smooth the path for Bobcats-to-be are constantly fine-tuning the tools of a student-first support system hard-wired into the university’s identity.

UC Merced master’s student Selina Brinkmann has been awarded a Rhodes Scholarship for study at Oxford University — a first for the campus.

In a record year for applicants to the entire University of California system, UC Merced has received a total of 30,105 prospective student applications among freshman and transfer students into the university — the highest number in the campus’s history. 

This comes as UC Merced hosted its largest-ever student population for fall 2020 — more than 9,000 undergraduate and graduate students.

For Xiaolong “Harry” Chen, UC Merced is more than a university. “It is a friend and a companion,” he wrote in his application to be student speaker at Fall Commencement. Together, they experienced pre-dawn hours at Lantern Café, early evening discourses with friends, and 11 p.m. sprints to complete homework.

Public Health doctoral student Sarah Alnahari was awarded a UC Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program (TRDRP) Predoctoral Fellowship to continue her community-driven research examining tobacco use among Arab Americans in the San Joaquin Valley.

The TRDRP is an initiative created through tobacco taxes and administered by the Research Grants Program Office at the UC Office of the President.

UC Merced will host its second virtual ceremony for the Fall 2020 Commencement on Dec. 19, with a host of changes meant to confer upon students the distinct importance of the achievement.

5:15 a.m.: Wake up. My phone is my alarm, placed under my bed so I must get up to turn it off. Make my bed. Stretch.

Ish Verduzco has a weekday routine. It rarely varies more than 20 to 30 minutes a day.

5:20 a.m.: Listen to an audiobook while I brush my teeth and prep for my morning workout.

About 70 percent of people with COVID-19 suddenly lose their sense of smell, although fewer of them seem to realize it, according to a new “living analysis” by a research team that includes a UC Merced graduate student.