Undergraduate Students

Patricia Leslie is the first in her family to attend college. And the UC Merced senior is making the most of it, both on campus and beyond.

At two weekend ceremonies, UC Merced conferred degrees on more than 1,000 commencement candidates who said goodbye to the campus they called home for the past four or more years of their lives.

Growing up in Bangkok, Surabordin Prachumsri knew what he wanted to do at an early age. Now in his final year at UC Merced, that hasn’t changed for the 22-year-old.

“My mom is an anthropologist, and I always liked science as a kid,” said Prachumsri, who goes by “Ai.” “It’s one of the things I’m really good at, so I better stick with it.”

Students Jamie Sweet and Vanessa Estavillo have much more in common than a love of UC Merced, a legacy of leadership and being members of the Class of 2014.

Five words from one of American history’s most famous speeches inspired Dalton Rogers to contribute to society.

He was called to public service in high school when he read President John F. Kennedy’s call to action — "ask what you can do.”

For Helen Dahman, college was always more marathon than sprint.

Now 73, Dahman was just out of high school when she took her first college classes. But she wasn’t ready then and instead entered the workforce, married, raised a family and volunteered at her sons’ schools.

The entrepreneurial mindset is as much an inherent part of the atmosphere at UC Merced as it is at any start-up.

But now two students, Eduardo Rojas-Flores and Nick Fong, are on a mission to help bring even greater levels of innovation and venture activity to the campus.

Improvements for a ubiquitous device that cools high-powered electronics aboard military aircraft could do more than just earn a group of engineering students their senior capstone design credits.

It could also win a competition funded and hosted by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Office of Naval Research (ONR).

UC Merced students are now using some of the latest and most popular Microsoft Office applications without having to dig into their wallets.

TaNayiah Bryels didn’t get the lead role of Mary in her first-grade Christmas pageant, but it did spark a lifelong interest in theater.