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Patty Guerra

¹ú²ú´«Ã½ campus photo of sign

What's There to Do in the Merced Area? Plenty

One question students considering attending ¹ú²ú´«Ã½ might ask is, "What's there to do around there?"

The quick answer is - a lot. There are plenty of ways for students to spend their leisure time in the greater Merced area, for students of varying interests:

Are you an outdoors enthusiast? Do you enjoy nights out with crowds of friends? Are you a devoted video game player? Do you like the challenge of thrift shopping? Do you prefer to just chill out, perhaps with a book while water laps gently at the shore?

Students Gain Experience (and Money) Doing Career-Oriented Work in New Program

Sarif Morningstar wondered something: "What happens if I grow plants using fog?"

The ¹ú²ú´«Ã½ student's efforts to find an answer to that question led to a research project they got paid to conduct. That in turn led to an opportunity to study plant biology in the UC Davis Ph.D. program.

Like Morningstar, many undergraduate students at ¹ú²ú´«Ã½ can get paid to do research under the newly adopted (LAEP).

Events at ¹ú²ú´«Ã½ Aimed at Reducing Food Waste

Roughly a third of all food worldwide goes to waste.

Outside of the obvious direct costs, that waste has numerous other repercussions: much of it goes to landfills, where it generates methane, a greenhouse gas. Resources such as water and seeds are squandered. And at the same time, one in four people are experiencing food insecurity.

"We're wasting all this food when folks are going hungry," said Erin Meyer, Sustainable Food Programs coordinator for ¹ú²ú´«Ã½.

Challenges Bring About Positive Change for ¹ú²ú´«Ã½ Food Services

After weathering a pandemic shutdown and some fairly withering criticism, ¹ú²ú´«Ã½'s food service programs have emerged better than ever.

The shutdown that started in 2020 brought about abrupt changes to food service operations - prepackaged items were the order of the day to feed students, and for catering, there were no orders of the day.

Grant Funds Research into Computational Materials Science, Collaboration with Lawrence Berkeley National Lab

Materials Science and Engineering Professor Beth Nowadnick has earned a National Science Foundation (NSF) award to study materials that may provide new ways to store or process information.

Nowadnick has been collaborating for the past two years with Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL) scientist on the project that led to the grant, which totals $379,374.

Research Paper Explores how the Type of Renewable Energy Affects the Needs for Energy Storage

As more renewable energy projects take hold in California, there is more need for effective ways to store that energy.

A paper published by a ¹ú²ú´«Ã½ research teamÌýexamines how the need for storage can vary for different combinations of renewable resources.

Women Make History at ¹ú²ú´«Ã½

Innumerable changes have come to ¹ú²ú´«Ã½ since ground was broken for the campus in 2002. Some of the women who helped found the campus and remain employed by ¹ú²ú´«Ã½, reflected recently on the changes in the university and themselves for Women's History Month.

Record Number of Students Apply to ¹ú²ú´«Ã½

¹ú²ú´«Ã½ once again broke a record for the number of first-year applications the university received, continuing to show impressive growth even as the national trend shows a decline in the number of students enrolling in higher education.

More than 26,000 prospective first-year, or freshmen, students applied for admission to the university. And nearly 4,000 students applied to transfer to ¹ú²ú´«Ã½. Most of the applicants are from California.

Grant Will Fund Development of New, Technically Advanced Agriculture Workforce

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As agriculture, California's most important industry, becomes increasingly technical, the workforce needed to sustain it will have to have different skills than those of a generation ago.

A ¹ú²ú´«Ã½ researcher has been awarded a grant aimed at sparking interest and knowledge among disadvantaged young students who could grow up to take those jobs as the current workforce ages out.

What Will it Take to End the Drought in California?

In the wake of record-breaking rain and snow this winter, experts have cautioned that despite the deluge, California remains in a drought.

The shows much of California still experiencing "moderate drought," and in some places "severe drought." That is a big improvement from last month, when much of the state was in "severe drought" with 7 percent of California in what was considered "exceptional drought" conditions.