Academic Distinction

May 13, 2026

A graduate student eagerly anticipates her hooding ceremony.
UC Merced is abuzz with celebration as students, families, friends, staff and faculty finish last-minute preparations for the largest commencement in university history. Across three outdoor ceremonies, 1,649 undergraduates and 112 graduate students will walk the stage at Spring Commencement...
Photo depicts the blue and gold UCM art installation and professors Chih-Chun Chien, left, and Xiaoyi Lu
A new program led by UC Merced in collaboration with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory aims to train graduate and undergraduate students to work in the rapidly growing industry of quantum...
Instructor Kristen Hogue works with a class of high school students in New York City.
Recently, more than 150 students at 10 high schools in Los Angeles, New York City and Washington, D.C. completed Climate Justice, a UC Merced course , through a unique partnership between the...
UC Merced sociology graduate students
Only 10 years after it began, the Ph.D. program in UC Merced’s Department of Sociology made an impressive debut in U.S. News & World Report’s latest rankings of graduate-level...
Group of five female graduates at commencement
UC Merced has earned two 2025 Carnegie distinctions, the Student Access and Earnings Classification “Opportunity Colleges and Universities” and the Institutional Classification by the...
UC Merced political science mock legislative hearing
UC Merced’s School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts made a splash in the latest rankings of university graduate programs compiled by U.S. News and World Report. The university...
two males with a drone
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....
Huntington garden and two UC Merced professors
The Huntington Library in San Marino is one of the world’s greatest sources for independent research in the humanities, with documents and artifacts that span 11 centuries. Scholars from more...
UC Merced has assumed its place in the top echelon of research institutions in the nation by earning R1 status from Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. The announcement was...
A lot happened in 2024. Thankfully, we have some very talented photographers to document it all! Enjoy this look back at some of the images of the past year. 

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