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UC Merced Achieves R1: Highest Tier of Research Classification

February 13, 2025
UC Merced has assumed its place in the top echelon of research institutions in the nation by earning R1 status from Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. The announcement was made Thursday morning by the American Council on Education and comes less than 20 years after the...

Student-driven Center Offers Safe Space for Community, Resources and Programs

February 13, 2025
This story is part of a series for Black History Month. Read more stories highlighting Black excellence at UC Merced. The Black Scholars Resource Center might be one of UC Merced’s best-kept secrets, although its leaders hope that changes soon. It takes up two rooms – 101 and 102 – on the...

5 Questions for Indigenous Author of Acclaimed Memoir Coming to UC Merced

February 11, 2025
Deborah Taffa, an Indigenous author and educator whose book about growing up in a mixed-race home and struggling with social acceptance was hailed as one the best memoirs of 2024, will make a special visit to Merced this month. Taffa will make two appearances Tuesday, Feb. 18 to read from her book...

Nicotine and Cannabis Policy Center Enlists Wastewater Tests in Fight Against Smoking

February 10, 2025
UC Merced's Nicotine and Cannabis Policy Center has embarked on an innovative partnership with university researchers who can track an entire community’s health and habits with samples of human sewage. The project aims to determine trends and levels of nicotine use in San Joaquin Valley...

UC Merced’s Black Excellence Symposium to Honor Legacy and Inspire Future

February 6, 2025
"A Legacy of Triumph and a Vision for the Future" is the theme of this year's Black Excellence Symposium at UC Merced. The event, part of the university's Valuing Black Lives Initiative, has aimed to advance racial justice and Black liberation since 2021. The symposium is set for 9 a.m. Saturday,...

UC Awards Support Tackling Big Questions in Health, Physics, Agriculture and Climate

February 5, 2025
Faculty members at UC Merced are taking the lead on four Multicampus Research Program Initiatives (MRPI), working with colleagues around the University of California system to address challenges around labor and agriculture, active matter, Indigenous health and fusion energy. “The MRPI program...

Multinational Research Project Shows How Life on Earth can be Measured from Space

February 3, 2025
Measurements and data collected from space can be used to better understand life on Earth. An ambitious, multinational research project funded by NASA and co-led by UC Merced civil and environmental engineering Professor Erin Hestir demonstrated that Earth's biodiversity can be monitored and...

Study says climate change made conditions that fed California wildfires more likely, more intense

January 30, 2025

World-spanning Art for Earth Kicks Off UC Merced Arts Spring Season

January 30, 2025
An exhibition that collects artistic visions from five continents and weaves them into a compelling plea to protect our planet has found the perfect home for the first few months of 2025. At least that’s how Grace Garnica, manager of UC Merced’s La Galería, sees it. And she has a point: The Central...

COVID Lockdown Disrupted Preschoolers’ Social Skills, Trailblazing Research Shows

January 29, 2025
Lockdowns. Social distancing. Shuttered schools and businesses. The COVID-19 pandemic and its sweeping disruptions set off a stampede of “what it’s doing to us” research, focused largely on schoolchildren. How were students’ academics affected? Their mental health? Their social development? Left...

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