Brenda Ortiz

Applied Mathematics graduate student Shayna Bennett will represent UC Merced at the University of California Grad Slam finals on May 7.

Graduate school is tough, but graduate students have a place to turn to for advocacy and support on campus.

Since it was established in 2005, UC Merced’s Graduate Student Association (GSA) has promoted graduate students’ rights and worked with the Graduate Division and other campus leadership to ensure that students’ best interests are met.

Two UC Merced Ph.D. students, a recent undergraduate and an alumna have each been awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship (GRFP).

The fellowship provides multiyear support to predoctoral students in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The fellowship is highly competitive, with annual acceptance rates of about 14 percent from among more than 12,000 applicants.

UC Merced’s Graduate Division wrapped up its annual Grad Slam competition this week, announcing Physics doctoral candidate Boe Mendewala as its campus champion.

The judges awarded two runners-up, Shayna Bennett, a third-year Ph.D. student in Applied Mathematics, and Melinda Gonzales, a first-year Ph.D. student in Environmental Systems.

Although COVID-19 has changed everyone’s plans this spring, Graduate Division staff members rallied to make sure the campus’s annual Grad Slam competition — showcasing graduate student research — continued as planned.

When you add UC Merced students majoring in math and science with a mentor teacher it equals real-life experience teaching in local schools.

That’s one of the many goals of UC Merced’s CalTeach program, which aims to address the shortage of math and science teachers throughout the Central Valley and beyond. This innovative program provides undergraduate students with specific coursework and field experiences in K-12 schools along with the option to earn their teaching credential.

U.S. News & World Report has ranked six of UC Merced’s engineering graduate programs in its 2021 Best Graduate Schools rankings released today, a sign that the university’s reputation is continuing to build.

UC Merced doctoral student Melissa Spence and incoming graduate students Caleb Larnerd and Cristian Sarabia were awarded Graduate Research fellowships (GRFP) from the National Science Foundation.

The fellowship provides multiyear support to predoctoral students in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

2019 Grad Slam semi-finalists

UC Merced is partnering with UC Santa Barbara and two California State University campuses — Fresno and Channel Islands — on a project to create a more diverse STEM faculty at colleges and universities nationwide.

The quartet has been awarded a total of $2 million from the National Science Foundation’s Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) program for a joint research project intended to increase the number of underrepresented minority faculty members in STEM fields.

The goal is to develop a model that’s applicable — and replicable.