UCOP

Professor Rebecca Ryals has made campus history by being named UC Merced’s inaugural Presidential Chair in Climate Change. The appointment was recommended by her peers and Dean Betsy Dumont from the School of Natural Sciences in recognition of Ryals’ outstanding research, teaching and service.

To ensure the youngest students are ready for the K-12 education system, UC Merced is leading a joint effort to attract and prepare more transitional kindergarten (TK) teachers to serve in classrooms in the Central Valley and across California.

For the first time, UC Merced faculty members from each of the campus’s three schools have been chosen as principal investigators on some of the 21 exciting new projects that are being funded through UC’s Multicampus Research Programs and Initiatives (MRPI).

In addition, UC Merced researchers are collaborating on 10 of the other projects.

Distinguished Professor Roland Winston was among the first eight faculty members at UC Merced in 2003, two years before the campus opened. When he retires July 1, at age 86, he will be the first of those eight to leave — but his work on solar energy applications will continue.

It's not hyperbolic to say Winston is a really big deal in the worlds of physics and solar energy.

Undergraduates will have a new, one-of-a-kind class they can sign up for this fall — Climate Justice — a hybrid course that features lectures by faculty from all 10 UC campuses.

UC Merced’s top 10 Glad Slam finalists went head-to-head earlier this month to share their research in three minutes, in a format meant to share their scholarly work in a manner that is accessible for the general public.

For the first time, a UC Merced alumnus will serve on the UC Board of Regents.

Keith Ellis, who received his bachelor’s degree from UC Merced in 2012, will serve a two-year term beginning in July and continuing through June 2024. In addition to his new role, Ellis will be recognized as an active officer of the Alumni Associations of UC (AAUC).

UC Merced's Nicotine and Cannabis Policy Center (NCPC) and California State University, Stanislaus, are partnering on a large project as part of California Endgame's goal to end tobacco use in the state by 2035.

Founded by the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE) in 1951, National Engineers Week is dedicated to ensuring a diverse and well-educated future engineering workforce by increasing understanding of and interest in engineering and technology careers.

This year, Engineers Week runs from Feb. 20-26, and to celebrate the students, faculty, alumni, programs and accomplishments, all nine UC campuses that have engineering schools or programs collaborated to present some of the most interesting stories from the past year.

The University of California Office of the President awarded three out of only seven UC-Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) Initiative grants to UC Merced faculty members.

The initiative has fostered faculty partnerships with HBCUs to support enhanced diversity and representation of Black scholarship in graduate education and the professoriate since 2017.