School of Social Sciences Humanities and Arts

Writer-in-Residence Mark Arax Chronicles California's Lifeblood: Water

September 18, 2025

UC Merced has debuted a writer-in-residence program with one of California’s premier chroniclers of its history, especially the titanic power plays for land and water that have shaped the state’s growth and loom over its future. Mark Arax, a Fresno native, author and former Los...

Campus Celebrates 10th Annual Leadership Awards

The 2015 UC Merced Leadership Awards were held this evening (April 30) at the Wallace-Dutra Amphitheater. Presented by the Margo F. Souza Student Leadership Center, the awards recognize and celebrate...

Grad Student Examines Use of Social Media in Health Care

The use of images and direct questions by health communicators on Facebook tends to increase user engagement, though linking to external websites and videos does not. Posts conveying positive...

Peer Learning Support Boosts Student Success

From the moment students walk onto campus, they have access to countless resources, including the Peer Assisted Support Learning Support (PALS) program, which is part of the Calvin E. Bright Success ...

Journalist to Speak on Immigration at Campus Conference

Journalist Roberto Lovato will give the keynote address this week at “Blurring the Border: Deporting Denizens in the 21st Century,” an interdisciplinary conference on immigration, deportation and...

Study: Real-World Negotiators Bargain More Fairly

Experienced policymakers are more likely to make fair offers in bargaining than the average person, and less likely to accept low offers — even if it means both sides get nothing. Such were the...

Cognitive Science Student Earns IBM Ph.D. Fellowship

UC Merced graduate student David Vinson recently obtained an intensely competitive IBM Ph.D. Fellowship Award, which will provide $30,000 to support his research in computational social science...

Sociologist Earns Fulbright Scholar Award to Study in Honduras

Paul Almeida, a sociology professor at the University of California, Merced, has been awarded a Fulbright Scholar grant to study non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and their role in community well...

Student Group Presents Two-Part Lecture Series on Race

The African Diaspora Student Association at UC Merced will present a two-part lecture series on race, culture and history in April. The series — entitled “Where Do We Go From Here?” — will begin...

Sociologist Earns Prestigious Award for 2014 Book

UC Merced Professor Paul Almeida has been selected by the Pacific Sociological Association (PSA) as the 2015 recipient of its Distinguished Scholarship Award for his book, “Mobilizing Democracy:...