Research Week Poster Contest Winners Announced

Research Week, UC Merced’s annual celebration of faculty and student research, took place last month and was highlighted by a student research poster competition and a number of lectures and symposia. Winners have been announced in the undergraduate and graduate Student Research Poster Competitions.

In the undergraduate division, sponsored by the Associated Students of UC Merced, Desiree Sigala placed first. Ruth Adams was second and Catherine Le third. Each received a $50 gift certificate to the College Store and a certificate of achievement from the Office of Research, and each will have her name engraved on the Research Poster Winners Hall of Fame plaque.

The graduate division, sponsored by the Office of Research, was divided by school. Heather Orrell won for the School of Engineering; Ronald Pandolfi won for Natural Sciences; and Justin Hicks won for Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts. Each will receive a monetary award of $75 and a certificate of achievement from the Office of Research.

UC Merced Seminar Helps Park Leaders Plan for Future

Park leaders are faced with issues like climate change, habitat loss, encroachment into parks and protected lands, budget constraints and rapid changes in leadership — all of which make management a challenge.

UC Merced partnered with the National Park Service, the Great Valley Center, the National Parks Conservation Association and the Stanford Graduate School of Business to present the intensive 12-day leadership program.

Pulitzer Prize-winning ecologist and author E.O. Wilson, whose lecture was considered a seminar highlight by participants, commented on the value of having Yosemite almost in UC Merced’s backyard.

“The opportunity for partnership between the two — and in the greater scale between an institution of the high quality and probity of the National Park system and the University of California system — is quite extraordinary for the advancement of both research and teaching,” Wilson said.

The institute provided park leaders from the United States and 9 other countries the opportunity to learn from one another and from world-renowned experts on topics like fire policy, ecosystem management, water resources and air quality that affect the future of natural lands.

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SoCal Edison Gift Funds Energy, Water Research

Dozens of UC Merced students will be able to research new ways of increasing energy efficiency and protecting our environmental resources thanks to a $250,000 gift to the campus from Southern California Edison (SCE).

Between two installments of $125,000, one in 2010 and one in 2011, the gift will benefit a total of 46 undergraduate and four graduate students in UC Merced’s Sierra Nevada Research Institute (SNRI) and Solar Power Forecasting Initiative. In addition, two UC Merced students will receive internships with SCE.

Les Starck, SCE’s vice president of local public affairs, said the gift is an investment in future technologies that will ultimately improve energy efficiency and water resource management on a global scale.

“UC Merced is already making great strides in areas of study that are critical to our future as an energy provider and our ability as a society to deal with the extreme challenges we face,” Starck said. “The work being conducted by these future engineers and scientists means so much to Californians and to the world of energy and water.”

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UC Merced Annual Donors Help Shape the Future

A group of university supporters from various professions and backgrounds have something in common — they’ve joined UC Merced’s Chancellor’s Associates and found a way to connect with the campus and stand behind its mission of education, research and public service.

Don and Nancy Bergman are committed to the importance the University of California, Merced, plays in the successful future of the Merced community. They enthusiastically support the value of education and believe that everyone has a responsibility to improve the lives of children and youth by serving as strong, positive and ethical leaders and role models.

"Serving as a Chancellor's Associate provides an important opportunity for us to remain actively involved in the University community,” the couple explained. “We particularly enjoy meeting new friends and connecting with other
community members who have similar interests in contributing to Merced County."

Campus Plan Wins National Award

The Society for College and University Planning (SCUP) has announced that UC Merced’s 2009 Long-Range Development Plan (LRDP) was named a winner of the nation’s leading award for campus planning and urban design.

UC Merced earned an honor award in the category of Excellence in Planning for an Established Campus. It’s the first national award and fourth overall for the 136-page document, which guides the campus’ physical growth, development and land-use priorities.

Campus planners use the LRDP when deciding the locations of future buildings, structures, plazas, parks, roads, infrastructure and natural undeveloped areas. The document also addresses how students, faculty, staff, visitors and vehicles will navigate the campus as it grows to accommodate about 25,000 students in the next 30 years.

UC Merced’s LRDP, adopted in March 2009, sets industry-leading policies, including a “Triple Zero Commitment” to produce as much energy from renewable sources as is used, eliminate landfill waste and produce zero net greenhouse gas emissions, all by 2020.

The LRDP will be featured in the October issue of Planning for Higher Education and will be the focus of a session during the SCUP’s annual convention in Baltimore in July.

UC Merced Sports Step Up to NAIA

UC Merced has been approved for membership in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA). With the approval, the Golden Bobcats will begin play in the California Pacific Conference in Fall 2011 in four sports: men’s basketball, women’s volleyball and men’s and women’s cross country.

“We couldn’t be more pleased that the NAIA has accepted UC Merced as a member,” said David Dunham, the campus’ director of recreation and athletics. “We feel our teams are more than ready to compete at this level and continue building a foundation for the future of Golden Bobcat athletics.”

Dunham said with the campus projected to eventually grow to a student enrollment of 25,000, UC Merced’s goal remains to compete at the NCAA Division II level. For now, the Golden Bobcats will compete against Bethany University, California Maritime Academy, Holy Names University, Menlo College, Mills College, Pacific Union College, Simpson University and William Jessup University in the Cal Pac Conference.

The NAIA includes nearly 300 colleges and universities throughout the United States and Canada. It holds national championships in 23 sports, and its stated mission is to promote the education and development of well-rounded students and productive citizens through intercollegiate athletics.

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Foster Poultry Farms Donates $1 Million for UC Merced Student Scholarships

For many high school students, going to a university often comes with financial challenges. The Foster Poultry Farms Scholarship Fund — a $1 million scholarship fund that will be given over the next 10 years — has been established to help eligible UC Merced students receive the financial support needed to further their education.

“Our initial gift has already made a remarkable impact in the lives of UC Merced students and the community,” said Sue Foster, the company’s director of corporate giving. “We are delighted to further support the university and its important mission by providing student scholarships.”

To date, Foster Poultry Farms has supported the university with donations totaling nearly $2.3 million.

“The Foster family has been truly visionary, supporting the 10th UC campus before it was even built,” Chancellor Steve Kang said. “Generations of students will benefit from their generosity.”

Sustainability Research Opportunities Abound for 2010 UC Merced Grad

As an undergrad, applied mathematics major Andrea Mercado, '10, worked as an intern with UC Merced Facilities, implementing improvements on the Central Plant and developing the Energy Performance Platform (EPP). During her internship, she worked on mapping the specifications of the EPP and developing metrics to monitor energy efficiency in UC Merced’s buildings. The work was subsidized by a grant from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL).

After her graduation from UC Merced, Mercado began working at LBNL as a research associate in the Environmental Energy Technologies Division.

“My internship with (UC Merced Director of Energy and Sustainability) John Elliott was what landed me the job here at LBNL and prepared me for the tasks ahead,” Mercado said. “Now I’m testing the EPP for accuracy so it can be deployed to the UC Merced campus as a reliable means of monitoring the sustainability of our buildings.”

In her job, Mercado researches energy sustainability methods in buildings, including developing metrics, modeling and classifying and interpreting building data. In addition to working on the EPP, she is organizing a large database that will store data from buildings nationwide.

Research Week Returns April 18-22

Research Week, the annual celebration of faculty and student research at the University of California, Merced, returns this month with a student research poster competition and a number of lectures and symposia.

Research Week’s traditional mainstay events — the Student Research Poster Competition and the Vital and Alice Pellissier Distinguished Speaker Series — will be joined by a new event, the Sierra Nevada Research Institute (SNRI) Research Symposium. All three events are open to the public.

“UC Merced students and faculty are routinely undertaking groundbreaking research, and Research Week is our chance to celebrate that and invite the general public to learn more about the important work being done here,” said Sam Traina, vice chancellor for research.

A complete schedule of events, including dates, times and locations, can be found here.

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Earth Week Celebration Returns

Now in its second year, UC Merced’s student-run Earth Week celebration is growing and evolving.

Organized by junior Diana Franklin — the Associated Students of UC Merced’s Commissioner of Sustainability — the five-day fete will begin with a kickoff event on April 18 and culminate on Earth Day, April 22.

The kickoff event, scheduled for 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. April 18, will be something of a sustainability street fair, with various attractions, information and food. Campus clubs devoted to environmental awareness and energy efficiency will have tables along Scholars Lane. And the campus’ student chapter of Engineers for a Sustainable World are organizing a green business fair, which will feature local businesses committed to sustainability — like J&R Tacos of Merced, which will be giving away free organically-grown corn.

“Earth Week is a perfect time for us to raise awareness about reducing energy use and protecting our environment,” said Franklin, who’s also the team manager of the Alliance to Save Energy’s Green Campus Program at UC Merced. “Sustainability is what this campus was built on, and our students, staff and faculty all have to do their part if we’re going to make a real difference.”

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Medina Awarded Guggenheim Fellowship

Mónica Medina, a biology professor in the School of Natural Sciences at the University of California, Merced, has been awarded the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation announced today.

Medina is among a diverse group of 180 scholars, artists and scientists to receive the fellowship this year, the 87th year of the competition for the United States and Canada — and one of just three in the field of organismic biology and ecology. The fellows were chosen from a group of nearly 3,000 applicants, based on prior achievement and exceptional promise.

The fellowship will allow Medina to apply systems biology theory — which she studies, using the relationship between coral and algae as a model — to symbiosis in general. She will collaborate on the project with two internationally prominent scientists: Roberto Iglesias-Prieto, a coral reef ecophysiologist from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and Hiroaki Kitano, a systems biologist from the Systems Biology Institute in Tokyo.

Medina has fast become one of UC Merced’s most decorated researchers. In 2007, she won the National Science Foundation’s Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award. And in 2008, she won the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on scientists and engineers beginning their independent careers. She recently published a study that showed coral genomes differ depending on their geographic location and that they may be adaptive enough to cope with changing environmental conditions.

Volleyball Team Proves it’s Ready for NAIA

If there was any question whether UC Merced was ready to take its sports teams to a higher competitive level, the women’s volleyball club team has proved it this year.

When senior Kayla Taylor first joined the team as a freshman, in the club’s second year, the Bobcats struggled to win even a single game of any of their matches. In this season’s opening game, though, UC Merced beat UC Davis’ club team in convincing fashion.

“From then on, we realized what a serious team we’d turned out to be,” said Taylor, now the club’s president. “It was a little shocking to us. It used to be a struggle to win any games, and now we’re taking some matches easily.”

It was an encouraging sign of things to come. Women’s volleyball is one of four sports scheduled to begin play in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics in 2011-12, along with men’s basketball and men’s and women’s cross country.

UC Merced’s acceptance into the NAIA is expected to be approved during the NAIA national convention in mid-April.

“We are all very excited to join the NAIA and be a part of a competitive league,” said junior Brigitte Mayes, a political science major. “It is a big step for the women’s volleyball program, and we’re ready for the challenge.”