School of Social Sciences Humanities and Arts

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...

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...

Vice Chancellor Ed Klotzbier, Monique de Villa (’16), Danielle Armedilla (’12), and Chancellor Dorothy Leland

Alumnae Staff Members Honor Family With Endowed Scholarships

In creating scholarships to help future generations of Bobcats succeed, UC Merced staff members and alumnae Monique de Villa (’16) and Danielle Armedilla (’12) are cementing the legacy...

Campus’ Second Fulbright Student Scholar Prepares for a Homecoming

Violet Barton remembers her teenage years doing quadratic equations by candlelight to a soundtrack of bombs and bullets as the Salvadoran Civil War raged around her. She was forced to migrate to...

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...

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...

Prestigious University Press Signs Professor as Book Series Editor

Interdisciplinary Humanities Professor Arturo Arias was recently selected to edit a series of indigenous-studies books for the State University of New York (SUNY) Press. That makes him the first...

Beattie and Graduate Student Awarded Research Grant to Study Teacher Retention

Professor Irenee Beattie and graduate student Melissa Quesada have been awarded a $40,000 research grant from the California Teacher Education and Research Improvement Network (CTERIN) to study the...