Brenda Ortiz

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.

Ten graduate UC Merced students will take the stage on April 10 to compete in the Graduate Division’s Grad Slam finals.

Grad Slam is an annual University of California competition that aims to make research accessible to all by providing emerging scientists and scholars with the skills to engage the public in their work. Nearly 30 UC Merced graduate students competed in the qualifying round in March and the top 10 are advancing to the campus’s finals.

Sexual Assault Awareness Month (SAAM) is a national campaign held in April that raises awareness and education about sexual assault. At UC Merced, the Campus Advocacy, Resources and Education (CARE) office holds a range of SAAM events all month in collaboration with students, other campus offices and community organizations to highlight the campus’s commitment to standing in solidarity with and empowering survivors.

This year’s SAAM events include:

When three buses rolled onto campus on one chilly winter morning, UC Merced gave the occupants a warm Bobcat welcome.

More than 100 undergraduate students and faculty members from Universidad Autónoma Chapingo — an agricultural institution in Texcoco, Mexico — visited the UC Merced campus on March 1 to learn about research programs and graduate studies.

Fourth year Environmental Systems Ph.D. student Elena Bischak has been named a research fellow by the American Farmland Trust (AFT).

Cognitive and Information Sciences (CIS) Ph.D. student Ben Nguyen spent last summer working as a data analyst at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

After transferring from a Sacramento community college to UC Merced in 2007, Maxine Umeh-Garcia was unsure of her future career. She admits she hadn’t looked at the majors the newest UC offered before applying and imagined she’d teach high school math.

She met with her academic advisor and learned the campus offered an applied mathematics major, not pure mathematics. They discussed other options and came to a stalemate.

Vice Chancellor for Research, Innovation and Economic Development Gillian Wilson has been named a 2023 American Astronomical Society (AAS) Fellow — the preeminent organization of professional astronomers in North America.

Teenie Matlock, Cognitive and Information Sciences professor and the McClatchy Chair in Communications, has been awarded the fourth Jeffrey L. Elman Prize for Scientific Achievement and Community Building — one of the highest honors in the Cognitive Science Society.

For Matlock, it’s a true honor to be selected for this prestigious international award.

Special Assistant to the Chancellor and sociology Professor Marjorie Zatz has been elected to the 2022 class of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), adding to the list of previous UC Merced recipients.

She is the first social scientist from UC Merced to be elected an AAAS fellow.