One of UC Merced’s original students, Enid Picart — soon to graduate from the UCSF San Joaquin Valley Program in Medical Education (SJV PRIME) — represented the San Joaquin Valley in a big way last week by attending the State of the Union address in Washington, D.C., as the guest of Congressman Jim Costa.

Together, the two reminded people of the need for ongoing medical education in the Valley and of the dedication of many UC Merced alumni to give back to their communities.

UC Merced students who are active in the community are encouraged to apply for the University Friends Circle Distinguished Volunteer Scholarship for the upcoming 2020-2021 academic year.

Chia Thao was a teenager when she arrived in Fresno with her family to begin a new life. She was born in a refugee camp in Thailand, where her Laotian parents had fled after the Vietnam War.

“Our parents brought a skillset to the U.S., found a home in the Central Valley and began farming,” Thao said. “This connected them back to their homeland.”

Over the years, she witnessed the challenges small-scale farmers faced and it prompted her research interests. Now, she is using her cultural knowledge of her community to help improve health outcomes.

Nearly 200 students took part in the campus’s Fall Commencement exercise Sunday at the Joseph Edward Gallo Recreation and Wellness Center as friends and family cheered them on.

Jessica Anderson ’10 served as the commencement speaker, continuing the tradition of having alumni speak at fall commencement. Shavone Charles ’12 and David Do ’09 were the speakers at the previous two fall commencement ceremonies.

Anderson encouraged students to discover what they are passionate about and to take their pioneering spirit with them as they enter the workforce.

Like many young women, Calista Lum absorbed the message that she was not as capable as her male peers when it came to science, technology, engineering and math.

Teachers in her Fairfield high school engineering classes often asked if male classmates had done her work for her.

“I just assumed the boys were so much better at it than me,” she said.

When Denzal Martin started his undergraduate work at UC Merced, he wasn’t thinking about a career in physics, interning with NASA or attending graduate school.

The Los Angeles native was studying computer science and engineering. One day, though, he decided to attend a materials science and engineering lecture by visiting NASA scientist Cheol Park.

“It was a very obscure subject to me, but I was interested to learn more,” Martin (’18) said. “The pictures he showed — it seemed like magic how they were fabricating these materials.”

The Class of 2009 were pioneers of the Bobcat spirit, overcoming obstacles and defying the odds. Ten years later, we look back at UC Merced’s formative beginnings from the perspectives of those who lived the journey. 

Click the link below to read the story.

Audio has become a top form of entertainment over the past several years, in large part due to the rising popularity of podcasts. UC Merced graduate students are seizing the opportunity to help improve science literacy.

A group of Quantitative and Systems Biology (QSB) graduate students started RadioBio, a science podcast that discusses biology topics, in 2016. The podcast sparked from a discussion between the students and Professor Fred Wolf during a graduate professional skills development course.

Lauren Schiebelhut credits the support and opportunities afforded to her at UC Merced with opening the door to her research career.

Schiebelhut — a first-generation transfer student from Fresno — earned a bachelor’s degree in biological sciences from UC Merced in May 2009 but was uncertain about her future.

Since his undergraduate days in Environmental Studies at Humboldt State University, Ivan Soto has aspired to produce research with a positive impact on the public — not just to benefit the academic community.