Lorena Anderson

Three enterprising Global Arts Studies Program (GASP) students saw the empty UC Merced Art Gallery on campus and, worried the space would be reallocated, wondered why they couldn’t volunteer to run it.

So they started the Young Artist Movement (YAM) — a “guerilla” group that expanded through word of mouth to 17, then bloomed to more than 50 members. YAM was a finalist for the Division of Student Affairs’ Best New Club or Organization award.

Violet Barton remembers her teenage years doing quadratic equations by candlelight to a soundtrack of bombs and bullets as the Salvadoran Civil War raged around her.

She was forced to migrate to the United States 36 years ago but will go back to El Salvador later this year as a UC Merced graduate student and a Fulbright scholar.

Interdisciplinary Humanities Professor Arturo Arias was recently selected to edit a series of indigenous-studies books for the State University of New York (SUNY) Press.

That makes him the first UC Merced professor to be named editor of a book series for a major university press. He said it is an honor and a credit to the university and UC Merced programs that are meriting national recognition.

Professor Whitney Pirtle recently became the first researcher to win the prestigious Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship while employed at UC Merced — a grant that will help her finish writing a book and move her closer to gaining tenure.

“It’s a really big honor,” Pirtle said. “It comes at a great time in my career.”

Professor Irenee Beattie and graduate student Melissa Quesada have been awarded a $40,000 research grant from the California Teacher Education and Research Improvement Network (CTERIN) to study the factors associated with teacher retention in underserved schools.

“April ... hath put a spirit of youth in everything,” Shakespeare wrote in Sonnet 98. He might as well have been writing about this year’s Shakespeare in Yosemite production.

With Friday’s premiere — attended by high school students from Mariposa and several children of park employees and El Portal residents and performed by a troupe of players ranging from those experienced and trained in Shakespeare to brand-new actors — the 420-year-old “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” seemed new again.

Every 10 minutes, someone is added to the national organ transplant waiting list, and about once every hour, someone on the list is removed — either because they died while waiting or grew too ill for surgery.

The number of Americans on the waiting list totals more than 114,000 as of this writing, and about 30,000 transplants will be performed this year. In part, that’s because there are not enough organ donors.

The Society of Pediatric Psychology has recognized Professor Deborah Wiebe for her body of research on the psychology of adolescent health.

Project Wet, a program run by the Water Education Foundation, will offer area educators hands-on lessons in teaching children about the value of a sustainable future.

This is the first time such a class has been offered through UC Merced Extension Education Programs, and it takes place tomorrow(April 13) in classrooms at the recently opened Downtown Campus Center (DCC) in Merced. This is just one of many classes that will use DCC space.

Distinguished Professor Jan Wallander heads to New Orleans today (April 12) to attend a conference and receive the 2018 Lifetime Achievement Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Field of Pediatric Medicine and Behavioral Health from the Society of Behavioral Medicine Child and Family Health Special Interest Group.

“It’s a big honor to receive such an award,” he said. “It means your colleagues appreciate your work and feel it matters.”