Brenda Ortiz

Founding UC Merced Staffer Wraps Up 45 Years in Law Enforcement

August 28, 2025

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

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, her role included managing records and evidence, overseeing the police dispatch center and hiring....

Community Garden Gets Facelift From Students

Warmer weather gave students the opportunity to spring to action to replant the community garden located next to Little Lake. The “Plant-A-Day” event, held March 18, was a collaboration between...

Dietitian Helps Students Improve Nutrition, Eating Habits

UC Merced students have a new resource on campus as they navigate the often tricky world of food and nutrition. Jennifer Hobbs just completed her first year as the registered dietitian with Student...

Students' Spanish Skills Aid Valley Crisis Center

In the fall semester, UC Merced Senior Lecturer Virginia Adán-Lifante offered extra credit to students who volunteered to translate a portion of the Valley Crisis Center website into Spanish. The...

Undergraduate Applications for Fall 2015 Rise 14 Percent

The University of California, Merced, received 19,932 undergraduate applications for Fall 2015, the campus’s largest pool of applicants in its first 10 years and a 14 percent increase over last year’...

Golf Tournament Breaks Fundraising Record

The 18th annual Ma Kelley Memorial Shoot-Out and the fifth annual Building Future Champions Dinner, presented by Merced Honda in October at the Stevinson Ranch Golf Course, netted more than $56,000...

Day of Giving Nets $40,000 for Scholarships

On Dec. 2, UC Merced alumni, parents, staff, faculty members and friends of the campus came together for the first #GivingTuesdayUCMerced, in an effort to create a positive effect on the lives of ...

Six UC Merced Students Awarded UC Food Initiative Fellowships

As part of the University of California Global Food Initiative, 54 students — including six from UC Merced—have been awarded fellowships to fund projects that will address issues ranging from...

Ph.D. Student Beats Odds to Put Science and Community First

The odds were stacked against Ruben Rodriguez. When the 27-year-old UC Merced student was still in high school, he was confronted with a sobering statistic that Hispanics receive only 5 percent of...

Scholarship Helps UC Merced Senior Fulfill Dream of Studying Abroad

Lorraine Sturdevant always wanted to explore other countries, but finances were always an obstacle. But winning a Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship allowed her to take her first...