Brenda Ortiz

UC Merced will celebrate World Food Day with its first Pop-up Produce program from 10 a.m. to 2 pm. Oct. 16 on Scholars Lane. The Pop-up Produce event provides students with free, local and organic produce twice a month for the academic year.

This month, students can garner fruits and vegetables like green beans, crookneck squash, Asian pears, pomegranates, cucumbers and jalapenos. The produce is purchased from Food Commons Fresno and supports local organic farms.

UC Merced’s Homecoming Oct. 20-22 will draw students, staff, faculty, alumni, family and friends together for a weekend of activities that highlight the campus and the community.

UC Merced’s sustainability office is seeking undergraduate students who are thinking about careers in energy to fill this fall’s Energize Colleges internships.

UC Merced is one of 12 college and university campuses across California that offer undergraduate students internships through Energize Colleges, a workforce development and training program led by nonprofit Strategic Energy Innovations.

Through a series of black-and-white photographic portraits taken 10 years apart, photographer Roger J. Wyan’s “Transitions” exhibit explores the journeys of some of UC Merced’s first students during an influential period of growth in their lives.

In 2005-06, Wyan photographed 220 students, mostly first-year undergraduates who were among the first to attend the newest UC campus. Ten years later, Wyan connected with 38 of the original students to capture in photos their physical changes and discover through interviews where life has taken them.

UC Merced students had the chance to gain knowledge and leadership skills for their personal and academic careers at the 2017 Leadership Conference, hosted by the campus’s Margo F. Souza Student Leadership Center on Sept. 23.

Now in its 11th year, the annual conference was redesigned to help facilitate deep transformational learning to increasing student leadership on campus and beyond.

Through a series of black-and-white photographic portraits taken 10 years apart, photographer Roger J. Wyan’s “Transitions” exhibit explores the journeys of some of UC Merced’s first students during an influential period of growth in their lives.

In 2005-06, Wyan photographed 220 students, mostly first-year undergraduates who were among the first to attend the newest UC campus. Ten years later, Wyan connected with 38 of the original students to capture in photos their physical changes and discover through interviews where life has taken them.

UC Merced students had the chance to gain knowledge and leadership skills for their personal and academic careers at the 2017 Leadership Conference, hosted by the campus’s Margo F. Souza Student Leadership Center on Sept. 23.

Now in its 11th year, the annual conference was redesigned to help facilitate deep transformational learning to increasing student leadership on campus and beyond.

Beginning this year, UC Merced’s fall graduates will have an earlier occasion to celebrate their outstanding accomplishments.

UC Merced is launching a new tradition with its first Fall Commencement. The intimate ceremony, which will be held at 11 a.m. Dec. 16 in the Art Kamangar Center at the historic Merced Theatre downtown, will include all the pomp and circumstance at spring commencement — caps and gowns, full regalia and crossing the stage in front of friends and family.

Members of the UC Merced Police Department visited several campus locations last week to play a new question-and-answer game called “Your Campus, Your Police.”

The University of California, Merced, received the largest incoming class of students in its 13-year history this semester, as total enrollment neared 8,000 for the first time.

The fastest-growing university in the nation, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education, UC Merced now enrolls 7,375 undergraduate and 592 graduate students for a total of 7,967 students — an 8.6 percent increase from 7,336 in 2016, as reported in the university’s fall census.