Sometimes public service at UC Merced looks like finding ways to grow crops with a changing water supply. Or delving into how children translate for their non-English-speaking parents.
And sometimes it looks like picking up a paintbrush and refurbishing park benches and curbs at Lake Yosemite.
The newest major in UC Merced's School of Engineering is one of the most exciting subjects in - and out of - this world.
Aerospace engineering, one of the fastest-growing industries in the state, will be available as a major area of study at the university in fall 2025.
The adoption of an aerospace engineering major at UC Merced is exciting for all the romantic reasons you might expect - visions of alumni working on satellites and spacecraft and taking part in missions to explore the vast frontier.
A UC Merced undergraduate student's work at NASA helped ensure the space agency will have cost-effective and efficient communications.
Tejas Bhartiya, who recently graduated from the university after only 2.5 years, also last month concluded an internship with NASA's Goddard Space Center.
The Goddard Space Flight Center, based in Greenbelt, Md., is home to the nation's largest organization of scientists, engineers and technologists who build spacecraft, instruments and new technology to study Earth, the sun, the solar system and the universe, according to its website.
Editor's note: In honor of Black History Month, the UC Merced newsroom is highlighting some of the organizations, services and people who serve or represent the Black community on campus.
UC Merced's Black Student Coalition has tripled in size in just the past year.
Editor's note: In honor of Black History Month, the UC Merced newsroom is highlighting some of the organizations, services and people who serve or represent the Black community on campus.
An organization that was created in a time of tragedy and crisis has been a force for good for UC Merced's Black community.
Using magnetic resource imaging, or MRI, to harmlessly detect seeds in Mandarin oranges. Identification of pathogens in an image library with artificial intelligence (AI) to diagnose plant disease. Creating a robot to more efficiently manufacture a robot. Building a user-friendly database to organize information for a global tech organization. Production-grade employee coaching and training applications for a large cold chain industry and a multinational computer storage company.
UC Merced police officers Enrique Rodriguez and Brian Carbaugh were on routine patrol July 26. Carbaugh had recently joined the department and was undergoing field training with Rodriguez.
At 6:22 p.m., they were dispatched to the Joseph Edward Gallo Recreation Center on campus for a medical aid call. A gentleman who had been involved in a pickup basketball game had collapsed.
"The report was that someone was having a heart attack," said Chief Chou Her. "When they arrived, people were performing CPR and attaching the automatic external defibrillator."
Nearly 65 percent of UC Merced's undergraduate students are the first in their families to go to college. Being a college student of any kind can be a thrilling, confusing, challenging, exciting, overwhelming experience, sometimes all at once. When you're the first in your family to go to college, there can be an added degree of uncertainty, as well.
In advance of First-Generation Student Week activities, the UC Merced newsroom asked some first-generation alumni and current students to share some advice for those following in their trailblazing footsteps.
Writing is still the most important, and most-used, form of communication in the world.
"Writing is crucial in that it's both a product and a process. It's in the fabric of what we do," said Paul Gibbons, teaching professor of writing studies at UC Merced. "Writing is a way of doing things in the world, of asking for things. It's still a major coin of the realm."
The new feature film "A Million Miles Away" is a universally relatable story of resilience and achievement, depicting Jose Hernández's journey from working the fields of the San Joaquin Valley to fulfilling his life-long dream of being a NASA astronaut.
But it's also a story with a very personal tie to UC Merced. Hernández, who went on to head an aerospace company and operate a vineyard, is a graduate of the University of California system and serves on the UC Board of Regents, and his son Antonio is a student at UC Merced.
