UC Merced Recognized for Sustainability Efforts

University of California, Merced, earned a silver rating under the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment and Rating System (STARS) initiative of the Association for the Advancement for Sustainability in Higher Education, a program that tracks the sustainability efforts of campuses across North America.

The STARS self-assessment program is the result of an effort to develop a standardized instrument to measure progress toward sustainability goals.

Campus staff, faculty and students have instituted many programs and practices, from small steps like the water station where people can refill bottles instead of buying more plastic containers, to the campus’s Triple Zero pledge to consume zero net energy, produce zero landfill waste and produce zero net greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.

Some of the campus’s efforts include:

• UC Merced Water Battle, an annual residence-hall competition organized by students to increase awareness about water conservation, which earned a Brower Youth Award from the Earth Island Institute;
• annual recycle and reuse program upon move-out, in which all the items left over in the residence halls — from clothing and nonperishable food to plastic, glass and aluminum refuse — are culled for reuse or recycling;
•  the campus’s composting program, turning food waste into usable soil amendment;
•  the campus’s “green power partnership” with the Environmental Protection Agency;
• OZZI recyclable food container program, recently honored for its ability to reduce food-packaging waste;
• senior engineering capstone projects in which students design real-world engineering solutions for the sustainability needs of businesses, government agencies and nonprofits;
• and LEED platinum certification for Dining Commons Expansion project, as well as LEED certification on all campus buildings.

The campus is a model of leadership in sustainability, from its design and construction, to its research in solar energy, as well as climate, soil and water concerns.

The campus’s efforts have earned it many awards and accolades, including the American Institute of Architects’ COTE Top 10 Award; being named as one of the Sierra Club’s Cool Schools; a place in the Alliance to Save Energy’s Campus Conservation Nationals; being named the UC Sustainability Champion winner; and winning the Governor’s Environmental and Economic Leadership Award.

Earning an AASHE STARS rating reflects a campus wide commitment to gathering data throughout the year from all campus departments, and a lot of work by the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Sustainability.

“Achieving a STARS rating was one of the committee's goals this year.  It was a lot of work, but worth it,” said Special Assistant to the Vice Chancellor for Administration Jim Genes. “The STARS rating is a good tool for communicating the campus's sustainability accomplishments and creating an incentive for continued improvement.”

The silver rating is good for three years, and puts UC Merced in the company of 124 other institutions that earned the same rating, out of 400 registered participants in the U.S. and Canada. 

5 UC Merced Students Head to Harvard for Leadership Program

Fidel Cervantes

Five UC Merced undergraduate students have been selected to attend this summer’s Latino Leadership Initiative (LLI) Program at Harvard University Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership, now in its fourth year.

Seventeen UC Merced students have participated in the program since its inception in 2010.


Students representing UC Merced this year include:

• Fidel Cervantes, a political science major from Delhi;
• Gustavo Flores, a political science major from Los Angeles; 
• Guadalupe Hernandez, a psychology major from Sylmar; 
• Maria Mora, a sociology major from Greenfield; and
• Alejandro Sanchez, a mechanical engineering major from Merced.

The program, which was developed to build the next generation of Latino leaders, starts June 9 in Cambridge, Mass., and lasts one week.

The program’s curriculum will focus on public narrative, community organizing, negotiation, moral leadership, innovation, arts and activism, and public speaking. Participants will also have opportunities to build relationships with Latino leaders from the government, nonprofit and business sectors.

This year’s faculty includes Andy Zelleke of Harvard Business School; Marshall Ganz of Harvard Kennedy School; Harvard Divinity School professor Davíd Carrasco; and Georgetown University professor Robert Bies. Among the guest speakers will be Dr. Robert Sackstein, a Harvard Medical School professor who specializes in bone marrow transplants and stem cell research; Efrain Garza Fuentes, director of multicultural programs at the Walt Disney Company; and Johnny Marines, manager of the Romeo Santos/Aventura music group. Award-winning journalist and NPR host Maria Hinojosa will be the mistress of ceremonies at the closing dinner.

LLI has teamed up with eight universities including UC Merced, Loyola Marymount University (Los Angeles), Texas A&M International University, the University of Houston, the University of Massachusetts-Boston, the University of Texas-Pan American, Miami Dade College and the City University of New York’s Macaulay Honors College.

Read more about the initiative.

Innovate to Grow Brings Student Inventions to the Forefront

Four of 27 student teams were named this year’s winners of UC Merced’s Innovate to Grow competition Friday after a daylong series of presentations and exhibits.

The winning teams, named for their projects and made up of students with the School of Engineering and the Ernest & Julio Gallo Management Program, presented the following real-life innovations:

• First place in the elevator-pitch competition, the Water Conservation and Reuse Team, working with community partner the Ernest & Julio Gallo Wineries;
• Second place in the elevator-pitch competition, the Temperature and Fluid Management for Neonatal Patients Team, working with community partner Children's Hospital of Central California;
• First place in the presentation competition, the Strawberry Calyx Removal Automation Team, working with community partner Sunrise Growers;
• Second place in the presentation competition, the Humidification of Ventilator Gasses Team, working with community partner Children's Hospital of Central California

Other finalists included the following teams:

• The Distance Sensing for Endo/Enteroscopy Team, working with UCSF-Fresno Medical Education Program;
• The Heat Rejection Using UC Merced Irrigation Canals Team, working with UC Merced Facilities Management;
• The San Joaquin Valley Soil Salinity Mapping Using UAVs Team, working with the California Department of Water Resources;
• The UAV Swarms for Gas Pipeline Surveillance Team, working with PG&E;
• The Electrospinning for Stem Cell Scaffolds Team, working with UC Merced Bioengineering;
• The Automated Microgrid Demand Response Team, working with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory;
• The Ground Water Monitoring Equipment Team, working with the California Department of Water Resources

This second annual Innovate to Grow competition features revolutionary solutions the students devised for their clients/mentors – businesses, nonprofits and government agencies throughout the San Joaquin Valley.

Several of the students had also filed provisional patent applications by the day of the event.

Innovate to Grow competition is the culmination of the Innovation and Design Clinic activities of the spring semester. The student teams meet with their client-mentors to learn what challenges each client faces. Some, like Children’s Hospital, need things that will make infant patients’ lives easier or more viable. Others, like the California Department of Water Resources, are looking for groundwater-monitoring equipment.

Other innovations this year included a Braille e-book reader for the Center for Vision Enhancement; X-ray shielding for a CT scan system; a biogas purification system for Hilmar Cheese; new transparent conductors for solar cells and much, much more.

The students worked on products and services all semester in the categories of bioengineering and biomaterials, energy sustainability, environmental sustainability, food and agriculture, healthcare engineering and remote sensing. They designed and tested their inventions, and during the competition, presented their work to a prestigious panel of judges, including Gary Kremen, founder and CEO of Clean Power Finance and the founder and previous CEO of Match.com; Greg Millar, chief technology officer and senior vice president at Schneider Electric; Margo Souza, former president and CEO of Circle H Dairy Ranch Inc.; Rani Yadav-Ranjan, founder and CEO of Gray Cloud Technology; Jack Zakarian, global manager of Driveline Technology for Chevron research and development; Mark Johnson, vice president of Transmission Planning and Engineering for PG&E; and many others.

In addition to presenting their work, the students also had to face probing questions by their peers and the judges at the end of each presentation in the morning and afternoon. At midday, the teams showed off their prototypes and research posters at an exhibit in the dining commons, which the judges also visited.

Many of the judges expressed admiration for the work the students completed, saying they were impressed with all of the students’ accomplishments.

UC Merced Sends Off Class of 2013 with Twin Ceremonies

This year isn't the first time Maxine Umeh-Garcia has walked across the commencement stage at the University of California, Merced. She was part of the campus's graduating class in 2010.

But this time will be markedly different. Umeh-Garcia is receiving a master’s degree in quantitative and systems biology, and she will represent the Class of 2013 at one of two commencement ceremonies scheduled for May 18 and 19.

This year’s conferral of degrees marks a significant increase for the university as 1,008 graduates are expected to participate in the campus’s eighth commencement exercises — the most degrees awarded in its history and 48 percent more than last year.

This year, UC Merced is expected to bestow 957 bachelor’s degrees, 10 master’s degrees and 41 doctorate degrees compared to 641 bachelor’s degrees, 23 master’s degrees and 19 doctorate degrees in 2012. Read more.

UC Merced Computer Major Looks Forward to Job at Microsoft

On his first tour of UC Merced almost five years ago, Andy Luhrs decided the campus was the right place for him.

“The tour guide made an impression,” said Luhrs, who is from Danville. “Everyone I met had a good vibe — open and passionate about the school.”

As he heads towards graduation on May 18, Luhrs still knows where he’s headed. In July, he reports to Microsoft in Redmond, Wash. as a program manager. He will be working for the Windows division, but he isn’t exactly sure what his responsibilities will entail yet.

Luhrsʼ path changed after he started as a freshman back in 2009. He paused to reconsider majoring in mechanical engineering as the coursework bumped into increasingly dense math.

“I started to dread doing the math-based theoretical engineering stuff,” Luhrs said. “I found that computer science is also math-based, but not in the same way. It’s more about solving real problems.”

Luhrs is excited to work at the computer software giant and he hopes to make a difference for computer users around the world. As a UC Merced graduate, he hopes to make interaction with computers a more fluid experience by building upon the many advances since Microsoft’s co-founder Bill Gates helped to pioneer the field in the 1970s. Read more.