Jody Murray

Young people whose parents or caregivers aren’t acclimated to their community’s dominant language and culture play a valuable role in bridging communication gaps, including unspoken misunderstandings triggered by a gesture or facial expression.

These interpreters, who range from pre-schoolers to young adults, can extract pride from the role, defining it as an important family duty or a way to pay back their elders for years of love and sacrifice. However, negative feelings such as resentment or embarrassment can seep into the process, increasing the risk of depressive symptoms.

The head of one of the largest municipal housing authorities in the United States and the first undocumented resident to earn at Ph.D. at UC Merced will be keynote speakers at the university’s fall commencement ceremonies.

Lourdes M. Castro Ramírez, president and chief executive officer of the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, will address undergraduates. Yuriana Aguilar-Sánchez, a professor of biology at Texas A&M University, will speak to advancing graduate students.

Katherine Cai is on stage, reminiscing about high school.

“My dad tried to teach me geometry. You know how that goes. The questions get more and more difficult and Dad gets more and more frustrated, which leads to both of us having a crisis.”

“We’re all just victims of word problems.”

Laughs ripple through the 100 or so students, faculty and friends in the audience. They can relate.

Cai, a UC Merced psychology major, is halfway through her standup comedy routine, a final performance for Writing 122. And she’s crushing it.

Tsitsi Dangarembga spread the spirit of ubuntu over UC Merced on Wednesday night, imparting its message of “how we can be good people who live well together.”

Information – how it is shaped, delivered and received – is a thread that runs through three dynamic new majors at UC Merced.

Communication and media; neuroscience; and science, technology and ethics will be available to undergraduate students in the fall semester 2025. The majors are centered in the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts but tap into knowledge from the School of Natural Sciences and School of Engineering.

Here’s a rundown:

Tsitsi Dangarembga, a renowned Zimbabwean filmmaker, novelist and cultural activist, was selected as the 16th recipient of the Alice and Clifford Spendlove Prize in Social Justice, Diplomacy and Tolerance.

Tsitsi Dangarembga is best known for her critically acclaimed 1988 debut novel, “Nervous Conditions.” The first book by a Black Zimbabwean woman to be published in English, it won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and is celebrated for its incisive portrayal of colonialism, gender and identity in postcolonial Africa.

UC Merced is being recognized from coast to coast as an institution that “redefines academic excellence, Chancellor Juan Sánchez Muñoz said Wednesday in the annual State of the University address.

“As chancellor of this magnificent institution, I tell you that the state of our university is strong, and growing stronger year after year,” Muñoz said.

Every year, UC Merced’s UpstART music series ignites the senses by bringing far-ranging genres to the stages. In 2024-25, take a seat for acts ranging from revolutionary mariachi and hip hop/Caribbean/Latin fusion to an improvising, story-weaving cellist … for a start.

Black and Hispanic faculty members seeking promotion at research universities face career-damaging biases, with their scholarly production judged more harshly than that of their peers, according to a groundbreaking initiative co-led by UC Merced that aims to uncover the roots of these biases and develop strategies for change.

A groundbreaking database that tracks 13 decades of annual changes in U.S. home sales and rental prices provides a clearer picture of economic shifts through the 20th century and will be a valuable resource for homebuyers, housing policymakers and the real estate industry, a UC Merced researcher said.