Campus Community

Open Arms, Open Skies: Students Welcomed at Spirited, Soggy Scholars Bridge Crossing

August 26, 2025

Spirits were high and futures bright while all else was soaked in a summer storm that made Tuesday morning’s Scholars Bridge Crossing, UC Merced’s traditional greeting to new students, a welcome unlike any before. Call them Thunder ‘Cats. The ceremony embraced about 2,000...

Undergraduate Applications to UC Merced Surge 14 Percent

Editor’s Note: As of mid-February, UC Merced’s graduate student applications increased by 6.6 percent over last year. This press release reports a 41 percent increase, which at the time (Jan. 18) was...

UC Merced Caps Successful Year with an Eye on the Future

MERCED, Calif. — Though UC Merced looked back this year to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the campus’s groundbreaking, signs of what the future will hold continue to come into focus. Those signs...

Professor Looks Inside Trees for Answers

Professor Carolin Frank is concerned with the inner lives of trees. She looks inside them to see whether microbes are part of – and perhaps even critical to – life functions such as growth. “It’s a...

Engineering Students Solving a Wild Problem

Students with a variety of skills and perspectives make up a team that’s taking engineering principles into some of the area’s wildlands to further education and promote awareness about the ...

Gaming Graphics Changing How Computational Science is Conducted

Professor Christine Isborn is doing quantum chemistry at the speed of graphics. Isborn is using the same graphics computer cards (graphical processing units, or GPUs) that make your Playstation...

Applying Creative Solutions to ‘Impossible’ Problems

The tougher a problem, the more creative a solution it needs, from the increasing power in orbiting satellites and saving tigers to saving state parks and catching thieves. And when a problem seems...

Center Promotes Student Self-sufficiency

Students who visit the UC Merced Students First Center (SFC) in the lobby of the Leo and Dottie Kolligian Library will see it’s different from other student services offices. For one thing, the...

Graduate Student Uses Llamas to Continue Research in Yosemite

Graduate student Kaitlin Lubetkin and several sure-footed assistants spent much of the summer in Yosemite National Park. Her frequent hiking companions were Toronado and Bravo — llamas who shouldered...

Campus Bunnies Still at Home Here

They sleep in secret, fuzzy beds and have questionable dietary habits. They prefer to be active in the evenings and early mornings. They are easily startled and can, if the situation calls for it, do...