Fashion Show Will Highlight UC Merced’s Diversity, Assist Moms in Need

The American Women Making a Difference club will host its first Students vs. Faculty and Staff Fashion Show at 7 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 29 in the Lakireddy Auditorium on campus.

Dozens of models will show off more than 200 outfits on five stages, creating an epic fashion event. Even better, students will compete with faculty and staff models to determine who has the best fashion sense.

Tickets are $5 for any high school or college student, $10 for staff, faculty and community members. Proceeds will benefit single mothers in the community through the United Way.

UC Merced Professors Launch Campus’ First Journal of Literary and Cultural Criticism

Two UC Merced literature professors have launched the campus’ first online literary journal through University of California’s eScholarship.

Professors Ignacio López-Calvo and Cristián H. Ricci will publish next semester the first edition of “TRANSMODERNITY: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World,” a peer-reviewed and interdisciplinary journal of Luso-Hispanic and U.S. Latina/o literary and cultural studies

The editorial board includes professors from Harvard, Penn State, Purdue, Vanderbilt, Arizona State, University of Minnesota, Georgetown University, University of Liverpool, and several other scholars from the University of California’s sister campuses.

“We are also excited about the open-access policy of our journal,” López-Calvo said. “It will be free for everyone, including people in underdeveloped countries, where this cultural production is often produced, and whose universities don't have the funds to pay for expensive journals and books.”

UC Merced Alumnus Serves as Staffer in DC

Josh Franco (’07) is exactly where he planned to be. Every step leading to his current job as a senior legislative assistant for U.S. Congressman John Garamendi has been carefully taken by Franco with his gifts for connecting with others and for absorbing and sharing information in mind. And one of those steps included his choice of UC Merced for his undergraduate education.

Franco, who is from Bell Flower in Southern California, specifically wanted to get involved with establishing UC Merced’s student government, and that’s just what he did, serving as the first president of the Associated Students of UC Merced. He majored in social, behavioral and cognitive sciences with an emphasis in public policy.

“I wanted a multidisciplinary approach to better understand policy, politics, government and governance,” he explained.

UC Merced met his expectations. He said the campus and the local and regional community prepared him by challenging his assumptions about people, places and ideas, encouraging collaboration, cooperation and creativity, and fostering an insatiable appetite for information and knowledge.