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.
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 communities through chemicals in wastewater. Collecting hard data on smoking and vaping can aid NCPC’s mission to help local public health agencies, community organizations and tobacco-control researchers give informed responses to the problem.
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.
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.
