UC Merced’s School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts made a splash in the latest rankings of university graduate programs compiled by U.S. News and World Report.
The university’s Political Science program ranked 52nd in the nation, tied with UC Riverside, Purdue University-West Lafayette, the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and Arizona State University.
Sometimes you meet a young person who makes such a powerful impression that you want to vault forward a few decades to see how much they lifted others and elevated our world.
Maddison Crump is one of those people. At age 21 she has logged over a dozen years of making a difference. A self-described “firecracker” as a child, she stood up to schoolyard bullies and peppered her teachers with questions. Her grades were good and her ability to listen to others was exceptional.
“I always had this sense of knowing when something was off with people,” she said.
Among the UC Merced students’ impressive creations in the dimly lighted room — dioramas, poems, photo collages, paintings in bold colors — Derek Miller’s creation attracted attention.
Because it gurgled.
It was a tall box open on one side. Balanced on top was a miniature footbridge made of red Popsicle sticks. Through the open side you could see clear beads dangling from the lid. At the bottom of the box, water trickled noisily into a tray glowing in sky-blue light.
Educators from across California will gather at UC Merced for an up-close look at a curriculum that teaches schoolchildren about Hmong Americans — their history in Southeast Asia, their cultural traditions, and their journeys to the United States to escape war and deadly oppression.
Todo Cambia, UC Merced’s annual Human Rights Film Festival, is about more than film this year.
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.
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 Valley and a university committed to environmental research are ideal for “Actions for the Earth: Art, Care & Ecology.”*
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 unexamined was whether the pandemic impacted the social cognition of preschool children — kids younger than 6 — whose social norms were upended by day care closures and families sheltered at home.
Cancer is vicious. In 2025, it is expected to cause more than 618,000 U.S. deaths — nearly twice the combined populations of Merced and Modesto. Each year, almost half of this nation, young and old, is touched by the disease through personal diagnosis or an afflicted loved one.
Jeff Yoshimi joined the 50% when his wife, Sandy, learned she had breast cancer. The blighted cells had spread to some lymph nodes.
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.
