Campus Community

Ph.D. Student Awarded Fellowship to Advance Environmental Health and Harmful Algal Bloom Mitigation

December 18, 2025

Collage photo of Black male with dark hair and beard wearing blue and gray long sleeve shirt and photo of campus signage and palm trees.

Public health Ph.D. student Felix Agyemang Opoku has been awarded the UC Global Health Initiative Center for Planetary Health Water and Health Summer Research Fellowship. The research fellowships are designed to provide students with funding to conduct research on water and health. Opoku...

A woman seated, behind the alumna keynote speaker at fall commencement, smiles.

Campus Hosts First-Ever Fall Commencement

More than 80 undergraduate and graduate students gathered in downtown Merced on Dec. 16 for UC Merced’s first-ever Fall Commencement. Graduates — along with their family and friends,...

Shavone Charles' interest in technology started during a summer internship with Google, where she served as a student ambassador liaison between the technology company and UC Merced students.

Alumna Shavone Charles Continues to Blaze a Path in Music and Tech

It’s been five years since Shavone Charles walked across the stage at commencement. On Saturday (Dec. 16), she will return as UC Merced’s first alumni keynote speaker at Fall Commencement...

Marcus Shaw will celebrate his dream of earning a Ph.D. in sociology at the university’s first Fall Commencement ceremony Dec. 16.

Former Street Kid Fulfills Educational Promise with Ph.D.

As a teenager in Merced, Marcus Shaw lived a life marked by poverty, poor choices and indifference to education. The idea of college — especially at the new UC Merced campus — seemed...

Five Students Score Big at SACNAS Conference

Five UC Merced students brought home awards for their research at this year’s Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) Diversity in STEM conference...

Sociology Faculty, Students Gaining National Recognition

With race, immigration, rising inequality, gender discrimination and collective mobilization grabbing current headlines, the work of the UC Merced sociology unit — always relevant locally...

Sociologist to Discuss Hate Speech and Free Speech

The Bias Incident Response Team at UC Merced presents sociology Professor Nella Van Dyke, speaking on “Hate Speech and the Limits of Free Speech,” from 3-5 p.m. Nov. 29 in the California...

#GiveTueUCM Aims for 1,000 Donors in a Day

For the past three years, members of the UC Merced community and friends have made the Tuesday after Thanksgiving a showstopper for our campus. Give Tue UC Merced (#GiveTueUCM), the annual 24-hour...

Campus Voices: Serving Community Brings Benefits to Students

When it came time to apply for college, so many of us scrambled to compile those lists of community service hours to bolster our resumes. Was there enough? Could I explain in my personal statement...

Alumna Shavone Charles heads global music and youth culture communications at Instagram.

Shavone Charles is First Alum Chosen for Commencement Keynote

UC Merced is welcoming back its first alumni keynote speaker, Shavone Charles, to address December 2017 graduates at its first Fall Commencement ceremony on Dec. 16. Charles received her bachelor...