Undergraduate Students

It's been more than a year since UC Merced joined the 1300 Campaign partnership, continuing its efforts to help students of color attend and succeed at four-year universities. Now it's time for a review and a look ahead.

Veterans with aspirations to pursue higher education will have access to new resources and support through the Veterans Upward Bound Program at UC Merced.

This year, the university was selected as one of the recipients of the Department of Education (DOE) grant, which helps to provide first-generation and low-income veterans with assistance from the application process through commencement. The DOE website states, "the program's primary goal is to increase the rate at which participants enroll in and complete postsecondary education programs."

Ed and Jeanne Kashian, longtime UC Merced donors who have supported the campus since its earliest days, have made a $5 million gift to advance the university's medical education efforts.

Distinguished rankings, new academic offerings, world-class research and campus expansions were among the highlights of the UC Merced State of the University address delivered by Chancellor Juan Sánchez Muñoz.

"The state of this 20-year-old institution is unparalleled in the history of American higher education," said Muñoz. "And now I would like to invite you to join me in imagining an even more impactful future for our campus, faculty, staff and students."

Writing is still the most important, and most-used, form of communication in the world.

"Writing is crucial in that it's both a product and a process. It's in the fabric of what we do," said Paul Gibbons, teaching professor of writing studies at UC Merced. "Writing is a way of doing things in the world, of asking for things. It's still a major coin of the realm."

Compelling storytelling is vital to ensuring the action needed to secure a habitable planet for future generations, according to an increasing amount of research.

UC Merced is recruiting students now to become the next environmental storytellers.

Students who are interested in creatively conveying the urgency of environmental issues can make that mission the focus of their studies when the new environmental humanities (EH) major begins at UC Merced in fall 2024.

Dozens of UC Merced students took their oaths as members of the College Corps recently. The program, which provides stipends to students in exchange for working with community partners, is in its second year.

The second cohort of UC Merced's College Corps was sworn in Sunday, Aug. 28.

It's more than just a way to help these students pay for college, explained Assistant Vice Chancellor for Student Engagement Brian O'Bruba, who administered the oath. It's an opportunity to develop a service mindset that will last a lifetime.

UC Merced and Merced College will jointly build a 488-bed student housing project for community college and transfer students. The California Legislature gave final approval to the $100 million funding mechanism for the project on Wednesday, Aug. 30.

Big-wave surfing is a thing these days, but hardly anyone is riding a wave as big as the one Biviana Oseguera is on.

The physics major is studying the 9,000-light-year long Radcliffe Wave, a structure made of clouds of dust and young stars that form a wave-like structure through the Milky Way.

So far, it is the largest structure of interacting nebulae described.

The rising senior recently won the Chambliss Astronomy Achievement Award, one of only two awarded to undergraduates at the American Astronomical Society meeting.

A delegation of dignitaries from the University of California Office of the President, UC Merced and UCLA were recently treated to a presentation that included the astrophysicists from UC Merced at the William M. Keck Observatory headquarters in Waimea, Hawaii.