A UC Merced first-year student’s essay about the challenges of living in the San Joaquin Valley with a respiratory illness earned him the 2025 Karen Merritt Writing Fellowship Award.
Peter Nguyen, who majors in biological sciences with an emphasis on human biology, will receive $1,000 with the award, which recognizes an undergraduate who demonstrates analytical skills, creativity and research promise in first-year writing.
Nguyen was nominated by lecturer Bay VanWagenen , his Writing 10 course instructor in the university Merritt Writing Program.
The essay title is “The Impact of Growing Up and Living in the San Joaquin Valley on Asthma and Respiratory Illnesses.” Professor Lora Burnett, the Merritt program’s associate director, said VanWagenen’s nomination said Nguyen identified a research need, used several scholarly sources, organized the information effectively, and presented it all with accessible prose that demonstrated creativity and rhetorical awareness.
Nguyen said his mother offered memorable advice when he thought essay writing was too daunting a task. Just keep trying, she said, and do your best.
“Now, at UC Merced, I continue to embrace this thinking, always eager to face challenges that build my confidence in expressing new and complex ideas,” he said.
The Merritt Writing Program offers courses in first-year writing; creative and professional writing; and upper-division academic writing. There also are Spark seminars that sharpen the art of inquiry through multiple perspectives and experiences.
