Every Tuesday and Thursday during the school year, elementary, middle and high school students from around the region travel to a special lab at UC Merced designed just for them.

It’s the CalTeach Learning Lab, and in just one year more than 2,200 students from the community have experienced hands-on lessons there in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), including chemistry, coding and robotics and spectro analysis.

New students or those who have not yet chosen their majors will have an array of options before them.

Five new majors and several new emphases, ranging across all three schools, are all coming online in 2024 and are recruiting students now.

New bachelor’s of science degrees:

• chemical engineering
• data science and computing
• public health

New bachelor’s of arts degrees:

• data science and analytics
• environmental humanities

New emphases:

In the mechanical engineering major:

Chemistry Professor Aurora Pribram-Jones is looking for undergrads to help her get the lead out — out of drinking-water pipes.

Professor Sora Kim has received a CAREER award for her project that bridges concepts between modern and ancient marine ecosystems by integrating geochemical and modeling approaches with paleobiology.

Kim is the 34th researcher from UC Merced to earn a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Aneelman Brar wants to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

The Chemistry and Chemical Biology Ph.D. student’s three-minute talk entitled “From Pollutant to Fuel and New Products: Recycling Carbon Dioxide” earned her bragging rights as UC Merced's Grad Slam champion and a $5,000 prize, plus the opportunity to represent the campus at the UC systemwide finals on May 5.

UC Merced continues to be recognized nationally, with some programs leaping forward, according to U.S. News & World Report’s 2023-2024 edition of Best Graduate Schools released on April 25.

Student researchers in experimental physics Professor Jing Xu’s lab have played a critical role in a study that will help understand Alzheimer’s and other diseases that progressively destroy brain tissue.

Solar films developed by a graduate student in the Department of Physics at UC Merced while on an internship at NASA Glenn Research Center (GRC) not only survived 10 months in space with minimal degradation, but the little damage they did incur was more than 90 percent reversible.

You know that warm, uplifting feeling you get when you see someone going out of their way to help other people? You might get goosebumps or even a tear in your eye, and something inside you might make you want to be like them, support others and try to be a better person.

That feeling isn't happiness, awe or pride. It’s not even love, although it is related. Until recently, that feeling didn't have a name in English. Now, it is known as “moral elevation,” a unique emotion linked with trust, compassion and a desire to help others.

At UC Merced, mercury is a regional challenge that student and faculty researchers have been tackling for several years. Mercury was used to extract gold during the Gold Rush in California, and the element was also mined at the New Almaden site, at one time the second-largest mercury mine in the world near today’s Silicon Valley.