Faculty

From Soil to Climate Solutions: Berhe Leads Sierra Nevada Research Institute into its Next Chapter

September 11, 2025

When Professor Asmeret Asefaw Berhe arrived at UC Merced in 2009, she and her husband, Professor Teamrat Ghezzehei, were leaving major research institutions to join a brand-new campus in California’s Central Valley. It was a leap of faith — one made easier by the Sierra Nevada Research...

Young Artist Movement Making Room for More Art on Campus

Three enterprising Global Arts Studies Program (GASP) students saw the empty UC Merced Art Gallery on campus and, worried the space would be reallocated, wondered why they couldn’t volunteer to...

Children’s Museum Pop-Up Arrives Friday

A team of educators, policy makers and community members are working to bring a children’s museum to Merced. To celebrate the museum’s first pop-up exhibit, Merced For Kids, museum...

A woman in pink scarf and dark jacket stands in front of a table covered with posters and car prototypes.

Qattawi Named Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer

The Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) named Professor Ala Qattawi one of this year’s Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineers. “I am honored to receive this award,”...

Bobcats Can Catch Some Bass

A pair of UC Merced students showed off their bass-fishing skills by winning a Fishing League Worldwide event last weekend, earning themselves a spot in next year’s finals. Herbie LeBlanc of...

More than 1,200 degrees were conferred last weekend, pushing the campus's alumni total over 9,000.

Perseverance, Leadership Key Themes of Campus’ Spring Commencement

UC Merced’s exuberant spring graduates got the chance to demonstrate their gratitude during the 13th Spring Commencement ceremonies this weekend as many of them paused to thank the faculty...

Engineering Students Get an Inside Look at Wastewater Treatment

Three field trips this semester gave Professor Marc Beutel’s students an up-close understanding of biological wastewater processes used in treatment plants across the country. Most recently...

UC Merced graduates are wrapping up finals and getting ready for UC Merced's 13th Spring Commencement ceremonies this weekend.

Campus Conferring its Highest Number of Doctorates at Commencement

This weekend, 1,250 UC Merced undergraduate and graduate students, including 52 doctoral candidates — the most in the campus’s 12-year history — are expected to cross the...

Tomanike Banks will receive a bachelor's degree in public health on May 12, then a month later her journey will take her to Sierra Leone with the Peace Corps.

Grad’s Ambition Continues to Motivate Her Success

The odds of Tomanik’e Banks graduating from college were slim — only slightly lower than the odds she’d go to college at all. But Banks had one thing going for her that many...

Professor’s Fellowship Allows Renewed Focus on Sociology of Race in South Africa

Professor Whitney Pirtle recently became the first researcher to win the prestigious Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship while employed at UC Merced — a grant that will help her finish...