UC Merced has received the 2024 Higher Education Excellence in Diversity (HEED) Award, making it the second straight year the university has earned the distinction. The award, given by Insight Into Diversity magazine, recognizes institutions of higher education for their outstanding commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
Every Thursday, Chef Maria Maravilla arrives on campus at 5 a.m. In the kitchen, she carefully grinds spices and chops vegetables, both for her special creation and to top it off. She boils 300 pounds of barbacoa before placing all the ingredients into a large kettle.
When the Pavilion Dining Center opens for lunch, about 600 people will get to savor the rewards of Maravilla’s labor: homemade pozole.
In recognition for its continuing efforts to advance Latino student success, UC Merced has earned recertification of the prestigious Seal of Excelencia. The Seal is a national certification for institutions that strive to go beyond enrollment and more intentionally serve Latino students.
Ph.D. student Micah Oeur has been awarded a 2024-2025 UC President’s Pre-Professoriate Fellowship to support her physics research and boost her goal to be a professor.
PPPF’s goal is to enhance faculty pathways for historically underrepresented groups, particularly Chicanx/Latinx, African Americans, American Indians/Native Americans, Filipinx and Pacific Islanders in all disciplines; women in STEM; and Asian Americans in the humanities and social sciences.
Four UC Merced graduate students can focus fully on their research and academic studies this year thanks to a generous gift from the Northern California Chapter of the Achievement Rewards for College Scientists (ARCS) Foundation.
ARCS, a national organization established and operated entirely by women, is committed to the advancement of science in the United States by financially supporting distinguished graduate students in science, technology, engineering and medical research disciplines at its partner institutions.
Graduate Division’s Competitive Edge Summer Bridge program for incoming Ph.D. students was identified as a Program to Watch by Excelencia in Education, a national effort to identify evidence-based programs that improve Latino student success in higher education.
UC Merced has received a $12.5 million grant funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop the Biology Integration Institute (BII): INSITE — the INstitute for Symbiotic Interactions, Training and Education — a research collaborative that aims to expand the fundamental knowledge of symbioses and inform immediate and long-term conservation strategies
UC Merced has awarded its second cohort of Chancellor’s Fellowship for Inclusive Excellence to four incoming Ph.D. students from the schools of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts, Natural Sciences and Engineering. Their studies will contribute to the representation of Black scholars in academia and beyond.
Just seven years after it began offering graduate degrees, UC Merced’s Sociology Department has already begun shaping the future of the professoriate by placing 11 of its graduate alumni in tenure-track positions — five of those in the 2022-23 academic year.
July was a transition month for UC Merced’s Graduate Division as interim Vice Provost and Graduate Dean Chris Kello passed the baton to Professor Hrant P. Hratchian — an Armenian name pronounced Her-ahnt Heratch-yahn — who now leads the division.
“Dr. Hratchian’s appointment is another signifier of our momentum in research excellence,” said Chancellor Juan Sánchez Muñoz. “He will be an essential leader and contributor as we accelerate our drive toward R1 status.”
