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Jody Murray

ɫӰƬ campus photo of sign

Exhibit Traces the Heartbeat of Merced Through Sound

On a spring day in Merced’s Applegate Park, the man sat in front of a camera, spinning memories. He described decades of Latin music and dance pulsing in the city, moments drawn from eight decades of life and stories told by aunts and uncles.

His two interviewers took notes and checked the microphone’s levels. All good.

Then came a sound that smothered his voice — the blast of a horn and clatter of rolling steel as a train passed, only two blocks away. They waited. When it was quiet again, the man, David Soria, smiled.

Five ɫӰƬ Faculty Members Earn Early Career Research Awards

Five ɫӰƬ faculty members are among the first awardees of a UC-wide honor given for exemplary research in budding academic careers.

The Early Career Faculty Research Excellence Awards, launched last fall, support commitment to scholarship and creative activity across the 10-campus system. The awards build on a range of programs and initiatives across the system designed to support thriving faculty careers at UC. 

Writing Students Help a Merced Arts Center Find a Fresh Voice

Students in a ɫӰƬ course stepped off campus and into the real world, developing flyers, website pages and even a TikTok account for a downtown arts center.

Staff at the center became clients and the students contractors in a spring semester project that produced marketing materials, forged relationships with the community and gave students an experience that in-class exercises can’t provide.

ɫӰƬ Students, Directed by Jenni Samuelson, to Perform Letters from War

watched intently as a handful of students rehearsed a final scene. The lines were brief, bouncing from actor to actor, several voices working as one. Samuelson leaned forward, smiling, her eyes willing them on.

When they finished, she threw up her hands, sprang from her chair and showed the students the hairs standing on her forearm.

“You’ve got it,” she told them. “Lock it in!”

At Bobcat Day, Students Explore Opportunities, Picture Their Futures

A throng of people came to ɫӰƬ on a crisp, blue-sky Saturday for . More than 7,000 were registered to attend the April 18 event for admitted and prospective first-year and transfer students, along with their families.

Author Mark Arax Wraps Up Residency with Lecture on California’s ‘Last Extraction’

Spending an hour with one of California’s most accomplished storytellers left a mark on Rowan Alcocer.

“I was impressed by his ability to find a metaphor in almost anything,” the ɫӰƬ student said. “He made his points in a way that was easy to understand.”

Alcocer, a first-year political science major, and other students in a California history class heard a talk by author and journalist Mark Arax, whose deeply reported stories reveal the people and paradoxes that stir the Central Valley he calls home.

New Liberal Studies Major Expands Paths for Degree Completion and Future Teachers

A highly customizable degree that rewards curiosity, reaches out to a diverse set of learners and prepares scholars for people-centered careers has arrived at ɫӰƬ.

Liberal studies, a bachelor’s program that taps into disciplines in the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts, debuts in the fall 2026 semester. Students can parlay the degree’s flexibility with core ɫӰƬ attributes such as and easy access to professors and advisers.

Her ɫӰƬ Path Changed But Stockton Student Stays on Track

Taliyah Miller would be the first to tell you she arrived at ɫӰƬ with an unwavering, long-range goal: become an anesthesiologist. What she could not have predicted was that a difficult roommate, a therapist’s question and a job she forgot she applied for would upend that goal and leave her better for it.

Miller was raised in Stockton, the third-largest city in the San Joaquin Valley. As the youngest of three with siblings several years older, it was like being an only child. She developed an independent personality early on.

Ripon Student Turning Heart and Heritage into a Path of Healing

As a child of the Central Valley and a member of a Native tribe, Grace Grinder developed an early awareness of health care disparities affecting rural regions and underserved communities.

While in third grade, Grinder lost her grandmother to what she described as too few physicians nearby to provide timely, quality care. That loss planted a seed.

Delhi Student Made the Leap to ɫӰƬ and Hasn’t Looked Back

Her fingers hovered over the keyboard. A few more taps and Nayelyi Salazar would be a community college student — a big step for the high-schooler from Delhi, a town of 10,000 that hugs California’s Highway 99.

She hesitated. Days earlier, she received an acceptance letter from a University of California campus. Awesome news, but she couldn’t shake doubts about being UC-worthy. What to do? She leaned back from the laptop. It was a Friday. She would take the weekend to think it over.

Should she go straight to ɫӰƬ?