Writing

Among the UC Merced students’ impressive creations in the dimly lighted room — dioramas, poems, photo collages, paintings in bold colors — Derek Miller’s creation attracted attention.

Because it gurgled.

It was a tall box open on one side. Balanced on top was a miniature footbridge made of red Popsicle sticks. Through the open side you could see clear beads dangling from the lid. At the bottom of the box, water trickled noisily into a tray glowing in sky-blue light.

Deborah Taffa, an Indigenous author and educator whose book about growing up in a mixed-race home and struggling with social acceptance was hailed as one the best memoirs of 2024, will make a special visit to Merced this month.

Thirteen graduating students were honored by UC Merced’s School of Social Science, Humanities and Arts for outstanding academic careers.

It’s a pair of special birthdays for UC Merced’s two student-run journals for undergraduates. The Vernal Pool , which publishes creative stories, poems and images, turned 10 this academic year. Meanwhile, it’s the sweet 16th for the Undergraduate Research Journal , which provides an early taste of the lifeblood of graduate and post-grad research — peer-reviewed publication.

Cognitive Science Professor Zenaida Aguirre-Muñoz has a passion for biliteracy that has driven her to improve the quality of learning in both English and Spanish at schools in Texas and Central California.

A $3 million National Professional Development grant from the U.S. Department of Education funded her work in the small Merced County town of Livingston. This summer, she worked with Livingston Unified School District teachers interested in developing their biliteracy knowledge and teaching practices.

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."

This time around, what happened in Las Vegas will not stay there — at least for Cathryn Flores. The fourth-year undergraduate, who's working on a major in English and minor in writing, reached yet another milestone in her music career as she attended a major Latin music awards show recently to be part of a social media team.

It’s a new school year, which also happens to be a new chapter of the UC Merced Writing Project.

The UC Merced Writing Project is a local affiliation of the National Writing Project, which aims to improve writing skills among students as well as the art of teaching writing among educators.

The National Writing Project’s mission is to enhance student achievement by improving the teaching of writing, and therefore learning, in the nation’s schools.

Desperate lovers, a fairy king and queen, a woman with a donkey’s head and a scamp with Cupid’s arrow in flower form are taking over Yosemite National Park on Earth Day weekend.
Highlighting UC Merced’s special partnership with Yosemite, Shakespeare in Yosemite enters its second year with “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” adapted and directed by UC Merced Professor Katherine Steele Brokaw and Professor Paul Prescott from the University of Warwick in Coventry, U.K.

UC Merced’s Vernal Pools and Grassland Reserve has become a hallmark of the campus — acres of preserved lands that contribute to the university’s mission of environmental conservation and while offering unique research opportunities to students and faculty.

One of the campus’s best-kept secrets, though, might be The Vernal Pool, a scholarly journal for undergraduate students’ creative writings, from poetry to plays.