Patty Guerra

Key Points

• UC Merced is one of the first 14 institutions nationwide to earn the new Carnegie Elective Classification for Sustainability, recognizing its comprehensive commitment to sustainability and climate action.

• The university is the only four-year California institution and the only UC campus to receive the classification, adding a fourth Carnegie recognition to its distinctions for research, student opportunity and community engagement.

Many organizations claim sustainability is baked into their DNA. Nowhere is that truer than at UC Merced, where the approach to sustainability, climate action and ecological conservation is part of everything from the buildings on campus to the research in its labs to the way it conducts business.

UC Merced's chapter of the  National Society of Black Engineers was again honored as the Region VI Medium Chapter of the Year. It is the second consecutive year the organization received this recognition. The NSBE, established at UC Merced in 2007, provides support, guidance and advocacy for its members through their college journeys and beyond.

Frida Quinto Ruiz went to Sweden with a curious mind. She came home with a plan.

"Studying abroad completely reshaped the direction of my college career in ways I never expected," she said. "I went to Sweden already curious about the world, but I came back with a much clearer sense of where I want to go."

During a tour of the European Union in Brussels, Quinto Ruiz learned about the Fulbright Binational Business Program. The fourth-year economics major applied to the program and recently interviewed to join it after she graduates in May.

Kevin Arrieta got into robotics to avoid getting into trouble.

Arrieta said he joined the robotics club at Dominguez High School in Compton high school after Gloria Esiobu, the teacher who ran it, gave him an ultimatum.

"I had gotten in with the wrong crowd," he said. "I had a physics teacher who told me, 'Join my robotics club or I'm calling your mom.'"

In the club, Arrieta found he loved working with sensors and doing programming, and he was good at it.

"You have an engineering mind and you don't even know it," his teacher said.

More than two dozen educators from kindergarten through college converged at UC Merced to discuss the challenges they're facing and the opportunities ahead.

UC Merced has long been a place where students can thrive.

Now the university has been recognized for its commitment to increase the abundance of native and other pollinators.

The campus has become an affiliate of the Bee Campus USA program, joining other cities and campuses across the country in a united effort to improve their landscapes for pollinators.

Fifteen years ago, UC Merced was designated as a Hispanic-serving institution. And though recent developments at the federal government have left what that designation means in limbo, the mission of serving the university’s largest demographic has remained unchanged.

More than 53 percent of undergraduate students are Hispanic, and 71 percent of enrolled students identify as first-generation (a student whose parents did not complete four-year college degrees).