Brenda Ortiz

UC Merced Receives $1 Million Award to Support Postdoctoral Fellows

March 11, 2026

UC Merced has received a $1 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to strengthen postdoctoral fellowships and expand research in the natural sciences. Awarded through the foundation’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Commitment, this distinction places UC Merced...

UCM letters in blue and yellow on Pavilion lawn

Prospective Graduate Students Invited to Diversity Forum at UC Merced

For students considering a master’s or doctoral degree, the 2025 California Forum for Diversity in Graduate Education is the place to be on Oct. 18. Eight hundred undergraduate and master...

A collage of photos depicting Tamela Adkins and other staff during the past 20 years.

Founding UC Merced Staffer Wraps Up 45 Years in Law Enforcement

On Aug. 12, 2005, less than one month before UC Merced opened its doors to undergraduate students, Tamela Adkins joined the campus’s Police Department as support services manager. Intially,...

Buhach Valedictorian Pursues Environmental Engineering at UC Merced this Fall

This is part of a series of profiles of new UC Merced Bobcats enrolled for the fall 2025 semester. Drake Ledford was an exemplary high school student, earning a 4.29 GPA. The Merced...

Interdisciplinary Humanities Ph.D. graduate Nicolette Lecy and her 4-year-old son, Alejandro

Humanities Alum Advocates for Student Parents

When Nicolette Lecy began her graduate studies at UC Merced, life was anything but typical. It was August 2020, in the heart of the COVID-19 pandemic. Lecy’s classes were held remotely, and...

Two UC Merced graduate students wearing blue

Students Awarded Prestigious NSF Graduate Research Fellowship

Two UC Merced graduate students and an alum from the School of Natural Sciences were recently awarded fellowships from the highly competitive National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship...

Top nine Grad Slam finalists with graduate dean and associate graduate dean with R1 prop

Chemistry Ph.D. Student Wins Campus Grad Slam Top Prize, Advances to UC-wide Final

Adekunle “Kunle” Adewole isn’t a stranger to the spotlight, having grown up singing at family functions and performing in theater productions. He also has fervently watched “...

Group of five female graduates at commencement

Carnegie Recognizes UC Merced for Student Access, Grad Earnings

UC Merced has earned two 2025 Carnegie distinctions, the Student Access and Earnings Classification “Opportunity Colleges and Universities” and the Institutional Classification by the...

Sociology Ph.D. Student Examines Why Workers Protest in El Salvador

UC Merced Sociology graduate student Luis Rubén González Márquez has a new first-authored article titled “The Glocal Foundations of Threat-Driven Labor Resistance to Authoritarian Capitalism,...

Three Engineering Programs Ranked in Top 100 by U.S. News

UC Merced’s School of Engineering and its programs continue to be recognized by U.S. News & World Report as demonstrated in the release today of its 2025 Best Graduate Schools rankings....