celebrating black excellence

Black History Month

August 24, 2026

Graphic with five headshots of new faculty endowed chairs
Five faculty members in the UC Merced School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts have been appointed to endowed chairs, recognizing their scholarship and contributions to research that serve underrepresented communities, advance human rights and shape the future of communications. The newly...
Headshot Kunle Adewole
UC Merced doctoral candidate Adekunle “Kunle” Adewole has been selected as a 2026 Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings Fellow.  Adewole was also chosen as one of 18 participants in the...
Members of UC Merced's National Society of Black Engineers pose with their certificate at the convention in Baltimore.
UC Merced's chapter of the  National Society of Black Engineers was again honored as the Region VI Medium Chapter of the Year. It is the second consecutive year the organization received this...
To continue to execute and build a strong foundation for students of color to attend a four-year college, UC Merced held its first Black California Community Colleges CEO’s Retreat. The three-...
Science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields are particularly rigorous and demanding courses of study, and the difficulty for individuals pursuing degrees in these areas can be compounded...
Quantitative and Systems Biology Ph.D. student Tahirah Williams
Nervous but prepared, Tahirah Williams took the stage at UC Merced’s Grad Slam competition in March and delivered her three-minute talk, “More Than Slime: When Mucus Meets the Valley...
Collage of historical Black figures: Lorraine Hansberry, W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida Wells, Oscar Michaeux, Granville Woods
Black History Month often honors familiar names, leaders whose courage and determination changed the course of a nation. But many others have made groundbreaking contributions that exposed injustice...
Members of UC Merced's chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers are pictures with a plaque.
The National Society of Black Engineers, established at UC Merced in 2007, is one of the campus’s oldest and most active student organizations. It provides support, guidance and advocacy for...
Mechanical engineering Ph.D. candidate Justus Nwoke was awarded a competitive fellowship from the National GEM Consortium, giving him the opportunity to intern at Lam Research Corporation this summer...
Top nine Grad Slam finalists with graduate dean and associate graduate dean with R1 prop
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 “...

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