Complex societies produce people with more varied personalities.
That’s the surprising finding of a cognitive science study that attempts to understand how people develop into who they are: social and ecological environments in which we develop have a lot to do with it.
California’s drought was hard not to notice — the dry lawns, fallowed fields and hot temperatures were evident across the state. To better understand how the drought affected the natural ecosystem in which we live, biology Professor Jason Sexton and his graduate students conducted a study on a California plant known only from the Sierra Nevada — the cut-leaf monkey flower.
Harrison Duran has always wanted to discover ‘the land before time,’ and his desire to dig up dinosaur bones led him to the Badlands of North Dakota, where Alice the Triceratops was waiting for him.
What is art’s place in turbulent times? How does an immigrant live and thrive in a host country with laws that render one’s existence alien? And how does one continue to see beauty even in the face of grave injustice?
A social movement’s cause can be as diverse as the people who spur it in the first place —examples abound, from community organizations initiating struggles for neighborhood sidewalks and clean water to national level mobilizations led by labor unions and their allies against the privatization of education and healthcare.
But how do social movements get started? And why do some last while others wither? Ask Professor and Department of Sociology Chair Paul Almeida.
The rate of smoking in the San Joaquin Valley is the highest in California — on par with tobacco-producing regions in Georgia and South Carolina — and UC Merced’s Nicotine and Cannabis Policy Center (NCPC) is determined to change that.
A decade has passed since Sam Fong (’09) crossed the stage to get his diploma and walked through Beginnings for the first time as part of UC Merced’s inaugural graduating class, and a lot has changed.
For one, the student population has quadrupled to nearly 8,000. The campus is in the midst of a massive expansion. But the 2019 commencement ceremonies provided a pause and a perfect opportunity for Fong and other first graduates to reflect on the university’s early days.
When Anna Ocegueda walks across the stage at UC Merced’s 2019 commencement, it will be not only a powerful moment for her, but for her family, too — and for the thousands of people who identify with her story.
Ocegueda is the daughter of migrant farm workers from Mexico and as one of five children, is the first in her family to graduate from a four-year university. This weekend, she receives her bachelor’s degree in psychology and a minor in Spanish.
Finals are a busy time for students, but that didn’t stop UC Merced’s sociology undergraduates from kicking off their first annual Alpha Kappa Delta Research Symposium on April 19.
Alpha Kappa Delta is a nearly 100-year-old honor society for students with a focus in sociology.
A handful of UC faculty received the 2019-2020 University of California President’s Faculty Research Fellowship. Among them is Aditi Chandra, an assistant professor of global arts, media and writing studies at UC Merced.
