When UC Merced began transitioning to emergency remote instruction in late March, hoping to lessen the spread of COVID-19, Jackie Shay didn’t waste any time jumping in to help her fellow teaching assistants (TA) make the shift.

Teaching remotely isn’t new for Shay, a Quantitative and Systems Biology Ph.D. candidate who was part of UC Merced’s inaugural graduating class in 2009. Shay connected with the campus’s Center for Engaged Teaching and Learning (CETL) two years ago while searching for digital tools and resources to assist Professor Marcos Garcia-Ojeda transition his General Microbiology (BIO 120) course to a hybrid online learning environment.

Beginning in Fall 2019, students in the class have participated partially online and partially in person — they watch recorded class lectures online, while Shay leads online discussions and Garcia-Ojeda leads in-person class activities.

“It’s given me a lot of experience as far as what works and what doesn't work, and how to use our resources to maximize engagement,” Shay said. “The online teaching experience is a very different experience than in the classroom.”

Kathryn “Katie” Daniels was a teen when she attended the celebration of the opening of UC Merced. As a child growing up in Merced, Daniels had heard her parents stress the importance of education.

“My mom always talked about the University of California coming to Merced and how that was going to help us,” she said.

Daniels is the first member of her family to have earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Soon, she’ll add her doctorate in Sociology.

This first-generation college student will graduate in May with her Ph.D. from UC Merced. In the fall, she’ll take a faculty position in the sociology department at California Polytechnic State University, Pomona.

“Songs that Never End,” Professor Yehuda Sharim’s intimate film about a family transitioning from Iran to life in Texas, is a finalist contender in the International Documentary Film Festival Vienna and will stream on the festival’s site for one week starting Thursday.

The feature-length documentary follows the Dayan family who, having fled danger in their homeland, face a wave of challenges as they struggle to adjust to life amid the sprawl of Houston. Sharim’s camera tells their story through the eyes of 9-year-old Hannah, whose spirit is shaped by the weight of life as a refugee.

“How does she see the world, the U.S.? What does she think about human beings? How does she make sense of the inequality that impacts her parents in a very direct way?” Sharim asked. “This piece is about her. Where does she find beauty and love amidst all of this chaos?”

In a scene shared in the film’s trailer, Hannah and her older brother, Ali, discuss their visions for the future.

“I wish all humans on Earth happiness and loveness,” Ali says.

“Me, too. I wish that,” Hannah agrees, before adding, “but this is never gonna happen.”

While the COVID-19 pandemic has altered many things this spring on the UC Merced campus — from classes and research to events — UC Merced is making sure the Class of 2020 has a forum to commemorate students’ achievements and successes.

UC Merced will host the University of California’s first-ever virtual commencement ceremony Saturday, May 16, to recognize the more than 1,500 candidates who have registered to participate.

Graduates will have to wait to experience the traditional celebration of crossing the stage, but all will be welcome at the rescheduled ceremonies. More information will be widely shared when it becomes available.

“We are proud of our graduates and especially proud of their resilience in these challenging times,” said interim Chancellor Nathan Brostrom. “Many of our graduates will be the first in their families to earn college degrees, and while we look forward to getting together in person to celebrate again when it is safe to gather, our graduates and their families deserve public recognition of their accomplishments now.”

The Class of 2020 has officially graduated and while students didn’t cross the stage in typical commencement fashion, the celebration was memorable.

In the first virtual commencement for a University of California campus, UC Merced honored its more than 1,500 bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral graduates with traditional commencement festivities.

An ensemble of students sang the national anthem and undergraduate student Christopher Ingle delivered the student speech. Ingle is a Merced County native who, despite the challenge of autism, graduated with a double major in English and global arts studies at the age of 36.

“In total, it has been 17 years since I began my quest for educational enlightenment,” said Ingle, who is married with two children. “Today, I stand on top of my unconquerable mountain and it feels amazing.”

Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Gregg Camfield said Ingle’s resilience is a hallmark of UC Merced students.

“I have always admired the resilience and determination of UC Merced students and never has that resilience been more manifest than this year when our normal operations have been upended,” Camfield said. “Frankly, your resilience is a role model for all of us.”

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra also delivered a recorded surprise address to the graduates. Becerra, a first-generation college graduate like many students at UC Merced, encouraged students to have “ganas,” or to fall forward into the future with grit and determination.

As the graduates prepare to venture onward, interim Chancellor Nathan Brostrom encouraged them to take with them the spirit of life-long learning that is embedded in the fabric of UC Merced.

Read more about this year’s graduates and watch the full ceremony in the Commencement Chronicle publication.

Professor Matthew Zawadzki is with the Department of Psychological Sciences in the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts. His research examines social psychological processes as applied to health. This is the first of a two-part discussion.

These are unusual times. In the midst of a pandemic that has killed more than 100,000 Americans, cities across the country are gripped by protests that have been hijacked by rioters and looters, becoming violent in some cases. Many people are still working remotely or unable to work; campuses are closed and students of all ages are taking part in online or home schooling; people are separated from friends and other family; and people are unable to do many of their usual activities. Let’s talk about the stress of the current situation.

1. What are some of the consequences of stress and warnings that people should pay attention to?

When we think about stress, we should remember it is a dynamic process that unfolds over time. Some consequences are quick and others take longer to develop. Even if we think we are handling something in a moment, the stress we are experiencing can accumulate over time and suddenly affect us all at once. In terms of specific consequences, in the short-term, we feel more negative and anxious, and we become prone to more negative thinking such as worrying about the future and being less optimistic. For most of us, our behaviors become just a little unhealthier: We watch that extra episode on Netflix, eat that extra cookie, have that extra glass of wine or skip that workout we planned to do. As this stress persists for a longer period, we may start to feel more rundown as our body gets exhausted with trying to cope with stress and we may experience more sleep disturbances and symptoms of depression.

2. What are some of the best ways people can avoid or reduce those effects?

Stress is an ongoing process. It is important not to think there is one big action we can do that will take care of it for the long term. Instead, just as with our relationships with others, our relationship with stress needs constant maintenance. This is good and bad news. The good news is that a lot of times small steps are all that is needed to help: Take pauses in your day to do a hobby or other pleasurable leisure activity you enjoy, walk around to get some exercise and clear your head, connect with others in a positive way even for a few minutes. The bad news is that if we do not take care of small, daily stress, it builds. And it builds in our minds the most, letting us carry that stress from work to home and from one part of life to another.

3. How can people support friends and family without burning themselves out?

One of the big things is to try to treat this as a new normal. In times of crisis, we are willing to go all out and make large sacrifices knowing that the crisis will pass and we can recharge and reset however it makes sense. COVID-19 feels like this kind of crisis. But this way of coping only works if we know when that ending point might be, or if we know that we will have extra friends we can lean on or resources we can use in the long term. With COVID-19, we are facing chronic stress with the potential to last weeks and months. Even more, some people are clearly in situations where the impacts of COVID-19 are harder — for example those who’ve already lost a job or can’t pay for typical expenses. So, while the current events are exceptional, we have to think about them as a new standard of living until we can phase out of sheltering in place, and phase into the economy opening.

This is all a long preamble to say that it could be very easy to burn ourselves out, in which case, we are not able to help anyone. We need to balance between providing help and support for others while also taking care of ourselves. This is going to be hard because many of us want to do everything we can to help the people we love who are struggling. As with managing our personal stress, small consistent steps to support others will help them maintain their own sense of health and well-being. So long as these small steps are within reason, we are likely to be able to continue to support others for the long-term, too. Some examples:

• Be realistic about what you can do; set up consistent calls with people who you know might be isolated.
• Reach out to small businesses and those who are self-employed and see if you can buy a gift card for their services in the future. If you can afford it, reach out next month, too.
• Donate to a local food bank if you have the resources or help someone in need find information on how to access those services.

Overall, we can help our friends, family and greater social circles make their lives more positive and predictable with these small steps.

4. How about college students? Some are home with their families, some are not. Which group is likely to be more stressed and why?

As with most of these issues, it depends. For some families, this is a chance to connect when it might not have been possible otherwise if the student was away from home. For other families, it may be too much connection and lead to fighting. Some students are going home to small houses and apartments that are filled with brothers and sisters of all ages, parents, grandparents and other extended family. Even if we love every one of those family members, the inability to get breaks from family and continue to study and take classes in that situation can create strain. Other students are in situations where they cannot go home and may feel isolated from their support networks.

5. What would you recommend for them?

The first step should be trying to understand what is working and not working for the situation you are in. When something is working, do not take it for granted. Instead, work to maintain that already positive aspect. For example, maybe family mealtimes make you feel connected: How can you help with these meals to keep them going and limit the burden on any one person? Even if you cannot cook, you can help shop, set the table or just provide company when someone is cooking.

When something is not working, try to understand where the stumbling blocks are and what it is about these situations you can change. Maybe your family is sharing a computer or television and you are not able to get your work done or relax with your favorite show because someone is always using the device — try making a schedule for who gets screen time so everyone gets a fair share. Maybe your house feels crowded and you feel distracted and are having trouble studying — try talking with your family to schedule some dedicated alone time when you can study. Or consider talking to your professor about your challenges with studying at home so they can help you think about some strategies or give you more time to finish your work. Central to all of this is being honest with our needs and respecting other people’s needs as well. Communication is key.

Professor Matthew Zawadzki is with the Department of Psychological Sciences in the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts. His research examines social psychological processes as applied to health. This is the second of two parts.

These are unusual times. In the midst of a pandemic that has killed more than 110,000 Americans, cities across the country are gripped by nightly protests.  People are still working remotely or unable to work although states are beginning to "reopen;" campuses are closed and students of all ages are taking part in online or home schooling; people are separated from friends and other family; and people are unable to do many of their usual activities. Let’s talk about the stress of the current situation.

1. Many people used their commute time to and from work to gear up for the day and wind down from work — is there something people can do to replace that time?

We often just think of our commutes as a hassle, but it also had these hidden benefits — our commutes became more than just getting from home to work and back. For many that was personal time, whether to listen to music or a podcast, make a phone call with a friend or family member, or just a few moments where you did not have to be “on” besides the normal energy needed for the commute. For those of us now without a daily commute, it could be tempting to just assume that no commute leaves more time in the day for work or for household chores. This way of thinking ignores the self-care we did in these moments, and now allows stress to remain and build up over time. Protect this time and continue the activities that made the commute bearable, even if you are doing them at home.

2. Many people are home with family members all day and all night — something none of them are used to, as school and work usually limit that togetherness. Is that stressful?

It can be. It’s interesting how a lot of research points to social connections as a critical buffer to stress and for maintaining and promoting a healthy life. But this research usually examines situations in which we do not have enough social support and looks at what happens when we get more support in those moments. Right now, in contrast, we might have a surplus of social connections — there are lots of people around us in the home, and our physically disconnected friends and families are trying to connect more than ever. This amount of social connection might be beyond what we need in a particular moment. Rather than being a resource, it could actually create stress. Coping with stress by going for a 30-minute bike ride may be perfect but going for a 30-mile trip when we are not prepared for it will cause all kinds of problems. Over-exercising our social muscles can have negative consequences too.

3. If so, how can people counteract that?

As mentioned above, a first step is really understanding our needs and sharing them with the people we are spending our days with. We are so often in a mode where we compare ourselves to others or imagine how we should act. But there is no one way to act that will make everyone happy. In fact, what works for you today may not even be what works for you tomorrow. We need to be kind to ourselves and recognize that we sometimes need alone time rather than more time with our spouse or romantic partner, or that we sometimes need a break from our kids and family. Allowing ourselves the freedom to take these breaks when they are needed, and letting other people take them as well, lets us all clear our heads and reset our moods. When we do this, we come back to the table ready to be supportive and engaged.

4. When someone is home alone, with no family or friends, is there a different kind of stress?

This is a hard question. We might immediately assume that but we can feel lonely in all kinds of situations — loneliness is driven more by our perceptions of what we need from others socially compared with what kinds of support we are actually getting. If I am around my family and friends all the time but not making in-depth connections, I might feel like I do not have a person in the world I can turn to. With that said, many of us who are home alone now are not there by choice. This situation is a prime driver of loneliness that can have unique and powerful consequences. Some of them involve creating and recreating stress in our minds, such as ruminating about a past argument with a friend or worrying about something in the future. Engaging in a lot of these mental stressors can lead to depressive symptoms and disrupted sleep, among other negative health outcomes. Unfortunately, loneliness, rumination, depression and poor sleep all work together to create a vicious cycle. When I sleep poorly or am in a negative mood, it’s harder to connect with others and increases feelings of loneliness. That loneliness puts negative thoughts in my mind that make it harder to sleep, and the cycle continues.

5. Do children also feel the stress of the current situation?

Children often have much less control over their daily lives than most adults, especially when they are younger, and so they look for routine. With school being canceled or limited due to COVID-19, daily routines are disrupted. The canceled classes mean less engagement with friends and extracurricular activities, no homework and other tasks to do after school, less access to trusted teachers and staff, and maybe even less consistent access to meals throughout the day. Things look different, and this change — without an understanding of when it will end and why it is happening – can be very stressful to children (to all of us really). We also have to remember that children are incredibly perceptive. The stress and anxiety we may be carrying around with us is not necessarily hidden to children as much as we might hope it is, and thus affects them.

6. How can parents know if their children are stressed?

It can be hard to see this stress sometimes. Kids can hide telltale behaviors quite well for all sorts of reasons. The main thing to look out for is whether there are changes in behaviors and/or personality. Is my child acting out or having strong mood swings more than usual? Are they being set off by even minor things? Sometimes younger children might regress in their developmental milestones and begin sucking their thumbs or wetting their beds for the first time in years. Stressed children may also report physical ailments such as a stomachache, or they can have trouble sleeping due to nightmares.

7. What can people do for or with their children to help relieve everyone’s stress?

Getting that routine back for children is an important first step. That routine begins with basic needs around eating and sleeping. Establishing a regular bedtime each night and making sure your child gets up around the same time each morning will help ensure they are getting enough sleep (or for you to detect faster when their sleep is being disrupted by nightmares or other problems). Similarly having set mealtimes each day will help create order to the day. Beyond that, talking with children about what is going on — in developmentally appropriate ways — lets your child know they can share their problems and that you are around to support them. This kind of guide might be helpful .

Esteemed archaeologist and anthropologist Mark Aldenderfer, the new Edward A. Dickson Emeriti Professorship endowed chair, brings his distinguished time on campus to a close this month, as he steps away from daily life of the university.

Aldenderfer joined the UC Merced campus in 2010, becoming dean of the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts. He is best known for his comparative interdisciplinary studies of high-elevation adaptation from an archaeological perspective.

His many achievements also include recent archaeological research in Tibet and Nepal and serving as editor of Current Anthropology, one of the field’s most prestigious academic journals. A native of Ohio, Aldenderfer was a faculty member at the University of Arizona and UC Santa Barbara before UC Merced.

Aldenderfer was one of UC Merced’s first two professors to be named a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur chair.

Aldenderfer, who officially departed UC Merced on July 1, is transitioning his life and work to Santa Fe, N.M., where he will continue his lifelong exploration of how the ancient past continues to shape the world’s future.

Below, Aldenderfer shares thoughts on his career and his plans going forward.

Q: What have been the highlights of your time at UC Merced?

A: There have been many. I am proud to have been the dean of SSHA during a crucial growth phase. Over the 5½ years of my tenure as dean, I was able to bring to campus dozens and dozens of new faculty, many of whom have gone on to impressive careers — I think about 60 or 70 faculty came in under my tenure. In fact, the new dean of SSHA, Jeff Gilger, was one of my hires. He'll be a fine dean.

I also was able to grow the staff to a reasonable size. And many of my hires are still working and thriving in the school. I was pleased to serve on the chancellor's cabinet as a member of senior leadership as Dorothy Leland developed her plans for the remarkable expansion of the campus. As a scholar, two things stand out: my appointment as a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation endowed chair and my achievement of the rank of distinguished professor. The MacArthur allowed me to expand my research, and my appointment as distinguished professor — the highest rank a professor can obtain in the UC system — was a great honor that helped to cap my career as a scholar.

California counties with high numbers of low-wage workers are seeing higher incidence of COVID-19, suggesting a link between so-called “worker distress” and spread of the virus, according to a new study by UC Merced’s Community and Labor Center.

While efforts to contain COVID-19 have centered on regulating large gatherings and closing certain businesses, the findings suggest authorities must also track transmissions within low-wage industries and create a greater safety net for workers in essential jobs.

“COVID-19 may travel through tightly congested work environments or overcrowded housing,” said the study’s authors, sociology Professor Edward Orozco Flores and Community and Labor Center Executive Director Ana Padilla.

“In turn, the lack of options available to low-wage, essential workers to cope with the pandemic — as many lack access to unemployment benefits, emergency paid sick or family leave or health insurance — places low-wage workers and their communities at higher risk of COVID-19 infection and transmission.”

The study of data from California’s 58 counties and the U.S. Census Bureau found a strong relationship between low-wage work and COVID-19 positive test rates. It also identified industries with the greatest prevalence of low wages, such as agricultural work, food services, transportation and other essential roles.

Analysts examined worker distress by considering the percentage of households living below a living wage and the number of people in a household. Fifteen counties that surpassed state averages for both measures were deemed to be high in worker distress.

The counties include seven in the San Joaquin Valley: Tulare, Kern, Kings, Fresno, Madera, Merced and Stanislaus. Others were San Joaquin, Sutter and Yuba in Northern California; and Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Bernardino, Riverside and Imperial in Southern California.

Nearly all of the counties with high worker distress are on the state watchlist for those with COVID-19 positivity rates above 8 percent. In comparison, only two of the 37 counties with low worker distress were above that threshold.

The relationship between worker distress and COVID-19 positivity held constant across rural, suburban and urban regions, the study found.

Since 2011, the Hellman Fellows Fund has provided close to 60 UC Merced assistant professors with much-needed research support in the form of seed funding. The prestigious Hellman Fellowship has launched countless careers at UC Merced and across the UC system.

Now, thanks to a generous new $3.5 million gift from the Hellman family, UC Merced will permanently establish the UC Merced Society of Hellman Fellows starting in 2021. The endowment allows the program to continue in perpetuity, while affording the campus more flexibility in funding early-career research.

“The UC Merced Society of Hellman Fellows marks a new and powerful step in our long partnership with the Hellman Foundation, and will help us build the future of research at UC Merced — and indeed the future of higher education,” Chancellor Juan Sánchez Muñoz said.

With this gift and other similar gifts at all 10 campuses, the Hellman Family Foundation has committed a total of $125 million for outstanding early-career researchers across all fields, including social sciences, science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), humanities and the arts. At UC Merced, former fellows have gone on to receive significant grants, including from the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation; to become successful authors in such prestigious journals as Nature; to serve in notable leadership roles; and more.

Professors Jennifer Hahn-Holbrook, Daniel Beller, Ahmed Sabbir Arif and Xuecai Ge are this year’s recipients of the Hellman Fellowships, bringing the campus total to 57 recipients spanning all three schools.

The Hellman Fellows Fund was established by Chris and Warren Hellman in 1995 and has provided support to faculty on all 10 UC campuses.

“My parents, Warren and Chris Hellman, used to say that creating the Hellman Fellows Program was one of the best things our family ever did,” Hellman Fellows Fund President Frances Hellman said. “Having had the opportunity to support more than 1,900 faculty members over the years, I enthusiastically agree.

“Their discoveries, commitment to their work and their great potential continues to inspire us year after year,” she said. “We are thrilled to be carrying on our father’s legacy by ensuring that the Hellman Fellows Program can exist in perpetuity throughout the University of California system.”

UC Merced will raise matching gifts for three years to expand the Society of Hellman Fellows’ reach in supporting early career research. Vice Provost for the Faculty and McClatchy Chair in Communications Teenie Matlock will administer the program. Next year’s call for proposals will be sent out this fall.

“At the University of California, it is important to help early-career faculty achieve research excellence,” Matlock said. “At a young institution like UC Merced, where world-changing research is an integral part of our identity and we are still growing our faculty, support like the Hellman Fellowships is vital. We are grateful for this opportunity.”

This year’s recipients come from all three schools at UC Merced, with each working on innovative projects:

Health psychologist Jennifer Hahn-Holbrook, School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts, receives $48,500 to help answer whether breast milk helps babies tell time. “We know the nutritional, immunological and hormonal composition of human milk changes dramatically across the day,” Hahn-Holbrook said. “What we do not know is how this circadian variation impacts infant health and development. This project will investigate how daily changes in human milk affect infant sleep, behavior and growth.” Eighty-five percent of breastfed infants in the U.S. regularly drink pumped milk that is not necessarily circadian-matched — for example, they might drink morning-pumped breastmilk in the evening. Receiving scrambled circadian signals could hinder the emergence of healthy circadian rhythms in sleep, digestion and behavior. “If we do find that circadian variation helps babies regulate their circadian biology, there is a relatively simple fix,” Hahn-Holbrook said. “Mothers can label their milk with the time it was pumped and coordinate infant feedings to offer morning milk in the morning, afternoon milk in the afternoon and night milk at night.”

Developmental neurobiologist Xuecai Ge, with the School of Natural Sciences, receives $50,000 for a proteomic study of signaling proteins in primary cilium in the developing brain. “The embryonic brain constantly requires signaling cue molecules to instruct its proper formation,” Ge explained. “The primary cilium, known as the cell’s antenna, is a tiny cell surface organelle that senses the cue molecules and converts them into instructions for the cell to follow. Mutations that disturb the structure of the primary cilium are associated with a wild spectrum of human diseases named ciliopathy. Yet, so far we don't have a complete picture of what proteins are employed by the primary cilium to sense and convert the cue molecules.” Ge intends to fill that gap with state-of-the-art proteomic technology to reveal a complete catalog of proteins in the primary cilium in the developing mouse brain. The results will help understand cellular mechanisms that govern brain formation and decipher how disruption of cell signaling leads to developmental disorders with the aim of offering hope for therapeutic interventions.

While the COVID-19 pandemic has kept most students and faculty mentors off campus, UC Merced’s commitment to providing research experiences to undergraduate students has not wavered.

Over the past 14 years, the Summer Undergraduate Research Institute (SURI) has become an integral part of the research training for many students. Each summer, SURI scholars spend nine weeks performing academic research alongside faculty mentors in their disciplines.

Staff members in the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Center (UROC) rallied around the idea of transitioning the SURI programs to a remote format, to continue preparing scholars to succeed in graduate school and develop critical research skills.

“This accomplishment is a huge compliment to UROC, which moved its entire summer research experience online in a matter of weeks,” interim Vice Chancellor for Research and Economic Development Marjorie Zatz said. “It’s also a testament to how our faculty are continuing to find ways to engage our students in UC Merced’s research mission even during remote operations.”

“It took a lot of learning, but the coordinators have developed a good curriculum over the last few years,” UROC Director Jorge Arroyo said. “We implemented CatCourses two years ago and it has helped us structure and implement everything remotely this summer.”

Change is everywhere at UC Merced this year, from hiring a new chancellor to the completion of a major campus expansion. The Sierra Nevada Research Institute (SNRI), an early hallmark of research excellence at UC Merced, is also making a change: After a 13-year tenure, Faculty Director Professor Roger Bales has stepped down and Professor Tom Harmon is taking the reins.

Both Harmon and Bales are founding faculty members who joined UC Merced in 2003, just as the campus was being built. They both research a variety of topics related to hydrology, climate change and sustainability. Harmon has spent much of his time working in and around soils, groundwater wells and rivers, while Bales focuses on the Sierra Nevada headwaters, forest management and water resources.

Former Vice Chancellor for Research and Economic Development Sam Traina, founding director of SNRI, said Bales took what was UC Merced’s inaugural research center to the next level as the campus’s first organized research unit.

“The institute developed a national and international reputation for research excellence in upland hydrology, forest health, ecosystem science, resource management and other areas,” Traina wrote in a campus announcement.

SNRI built research infrastructure to help fulfill its mission of using the Sierra Nevada-Central Valley region as a natural laboratory for research. It also nurtured the campus’s engagement with the National Park System, established UC Merced’s participation in the UC Natural Reserve System and launched the Environmental Analytical Laboratory.

“SNRI helped us establish ourselves as a major research university,” Bales said. “It became what we were known for in the early years.”

Because of the research conducted through SNRI, much more is known about such concerns as tree mortality in mega-droughts, wildfire and aggressive fire-fuels treatment, and the vulnerability and resiliency of the Sierra Nevada’s headwaters as California’s water supply.

“Our research and the solutions we’ve offered are being used to ensure the ecological soundness of the Sierra Nevada forest,” he said.

SNRI has made important contributions to research, sustainability and natural resources management in California and beyond, and now Harmon is ready to lead the institute into its next chapter.

“Roger’s tenure has been nothing short of remarkable,” Harmon said. “I’m eager to maintain the momentum and help SNRI’s reach and impact grow in the region, the state and the world.”

The National Portrait Gallery commission was established in 1962 as an advisory board for the museum. Currently, 29 commissioners meet biannually to promote and strengthen the museum’s mission to collect portraits of people who have had significant impact on the history, development and culture of the people of the United States.

Wang’s research focuses on rediscovering and examining pre-WWII American art and visual culture produced by diasporic artists of Asian descent, and he brings to the commission a scholarly voice that calls attention to broader, more diverse representations of American history.

“Through ShiPu’s work, remarkable artists, who have remained previously under-represented, have been pushed into the spotlight,” said Jeff Gilger, dean of the School of Social, Sciences, Humanities and Arts. “UC Merced is very excited about his appointment as it shows the importance of ShiPu’s scholarship on a national level.”

Currently serving on the editorial board of one of the top journals in art history, Smithsonian American Art Museum's "American Art," Wang’s work has reintroduced previously overlooked artists to larger audiences. For instance, he curated an international traveling exhibition that culminated with a showing at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The exhibition, seen by more than 500,000 visitors, highlighted the work of artist Chiura Obata who was a UC Berkeley art professor for 32 years and was one of the most significant American artists of Japanese descent working on the West Coast in the last century.

Wang, who joined UC Merced in 2006 and is the Coats Endowed Chair in the Arts, has received critcal acclaim for his publications, such as his second book, “The Other American Moderns: Matsura, Ishigaki, Noda, Hayakawa” (Penn State University Press, 2017), which won the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum 2018 Book Prize.

“I am looking forward to contributing to a national institution that is striving to represent this country’s many voices and stories through portraiture,” Wang said.

On Sept. 15, Wang will give a virtual lecture that kicks off the National Portrait Gallery’s 2020 Edgar P. Richardson Lecture Series hosted by PORTAL, the Portrait Gallery's Scholarly Center. Free registration is available here.

National Portrait Gallery

The National Portrait Gallery narrates the multi-faceted and ever-changing story of America through the individuals who have shaped its culture. They strive to provide a visitor experience that goes beyond the frame and includes visual arts, performing arts, and new media. The Portrait Gallery presents poets and presidents, visionaries and villains, actors and activists whose lives form our national identity.

The National Portrait Gallery is part of the Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture at Eighth and F streets N.W., Washington, D.C.

It has been two years since UC Merced received the $280,000 Henry Luce Foundation grant, but its community engaged research endeavors are far from over.

This fall, UC Merced Interdisciplinary Humanities graduate students and faculty will have the benefit of two additional years of funding to find new opportunities to grow intersections of humanities research and community engagement in Merced.

Founded in 1936 by Henry R. Luce, who created Time magazine, the Luce Foundation is a nonprofit committed to transforming humanities doctoral education and to strengthening the ties between researchers and the public. It has supported hundreds of organizations with more than 5,800 grants worth more than $1 billion.

“The Luce Foundation has a history of supporting public knowledge and making scholarship accessible. It was really interesting that the foundation connected with Merced — a rural area in the West — and saw similar potential for community engaged work,” said Teaching ProfessorAnne Zanzucchi, co-principal investigator of the Luce project.

When asked about the new partnership in 2019, Henry Luce Foundation Vice President Sean Buffington told UC Merced“The character of the university; its relative smallness within the UC system; its location in a part of California that is not well-served by the UC system; its close connection to the city of Merced and community organizations — all of that creates a really interesting environment within which to pursue a project like this.”

In the past two years, fellows have each received $7,000 to further their research with local community partners and demonstrate how humanities research can influence local and national discourse on key issues. Working either in groups or alone, Interdisciplinary Humanities graduate students have conducted research from topics such as water governance and power in the San Joaquin Valley to mapping downtown Merced’s history through digitizing archives, creating oral histories and analyzing urban spaces. In the process the graduate students gain new skills that prepare them for academic and other career paths.

This year, the UC Merced team has renewed and expanded its relationship with the Luce Foundation with the goal of including even more collaboration between Interdisciplinary Humanities faculty and students. More events are on the agenda as well, a recent Sept. 11 symposium featured Imagining America’s Faculty Director Erica Kohl-Arenas and five of its PAGE (Publicly Active Graduate Education) fellows to link UC Merced to a national conversation.

Students and faculty worked with a record number of schoolchildren from Merced, the Bay Area and southern California all the way to Washington, D.C., enriching their learning and increasing their interest in science, technology, engineering and math.

About 1,550 K-12 students, teachers and community members enrolled in the 2020 Virtual Bobcat Summer STEM Academy and a series of other virtual sessions offered through the campus’s CalTeach program, as well as the CREST Center for Cellular and Biomolecular Machines (CCBM).

“It was a challenge to switch our usual summer K-12 outreach programs to a virtual format, but we adjusted and created a plan for these academies to be virtual and open to students, teachers and community members around California and in other states,” said CalTeach Special Programs Manager Hijab Chaudhry, who managed the program along with CalTeach Student Services Advisor Jessica Teran Salazar.

“We set out to create virtual trainings for our undergraduate students who were leading these courses, and we saw professional-development growth in our undergrads and the K-12 students throughout this seven-week academy,” Teran Salazar said.

The younger students surprised the undergraduates who led the courses.

“We had no idea what to expect, but they were very online-literate,” said Amelia Wood, who worked with third through fifth graders during the week-long Bobcats in Training courses, which are as much about educating future teachers as they are about learning opportunities for younger students. “We were giving them high school and college concepts, and they were grasping them.”

Fellow Bobcats in Training instructor Erika Salazar Vidana, who taught kindergarteners through second graders, said the children in her class were dedicated and engaged.

“I had a 4-year-old who did her homework before every class,” Vidana said.

The summer sessions gave work-at-home parents an educational way to keep their children busy for a couple of hours each day for at least a week at a time. The trained undergrads and graduate students led the sessions they had proposed, in such topics as “How Scientists Think and Speak,” “Plant Structures and Functions” and basic engineering concepts.

“I think there was a huge need. We responded to a call from parents for more summer-enrichment opportunities,” said Chelsea Arnold, director of UC Merced’s branch of CalTeach. “We had planned all these sessions to be in-person, but we had to pivot, and they ended up working really well.”

Apparently, the younger students agreed.

“It was a great class. My favorite part of the week were the hands-on activities about biodiversity,” said Cordelia Devrick, a middle-school student from Merced who enrolled in the “Back to the Future” workshop, led by graduate students from Professor Jessica Blois’ paleoecology lab.

That course was part of the “ Middle & High School Virtual Academy ” sessions that offered several interesting options to choose from, including a “CSI”-style course on forensics and investigative techniques; coding with NetLogo; virtual robotics; and shark evolution and adaptation.

Kimberly Gonzalez, who taught the “CSI” course in partnership with the UC Merced Police Department, said her middle-school-age students were also remarkably attentive and focused on learning.

“We broke into small groups, and I’d go from group to group, and they were discussing evidence and clues — right on task,” Gonzales said.

Faculty members and graduate students also offered webinars for anyone who wanted to learn more about a variety of STEM-related topics, such as bioarchaeology, wildfire science, safe lab management, how the brain perceives sound, sea star mortality and evolution, nanotechnology and the atomic force microscope, modeling biological systems, natural selection in humans and several others.

Just because summer is over doesn’t mean the learning opportunities end. The CCBM’s summer outreach programs , which were open to K-12 students, teachers and anyone else who wanted to sign up, featured sessions on physics, materials science, biology, computation, research ethics, preparing for college and careers and more. The center continues throughout the fall and spring with the Science for the Humanities series, with a variety of guest speakers from other prestigious universities.

“For the faculty who have outreach as part of their grants, there are a variety of opportunities to demonstrate that remote learning doesn’t have to be ‘sterile,’” Arnold said. “We can absolutely make these sessions exciting and engaging. This summer was such a success that even when we can bring in-person academies back to campus, we will continue to offer virtual academies as well.”

A new coalition of universities and community partners across the state — including UC Merced —aims to address the COVID-19 pandemic in communities that are disproportionally affected.

A $4.1 million grant from the National Institutes of Health’s Community Engagement Alliance Against COVID-19 Disparities has supported the formation of STOP COVID-19 CA (Share, Trust, Organize Partner, the COVID-19 California Alliance). The Alliance’s goals are to reduce disparities in understandings of COVID-19; increase participation of all Californians, including underrepresented populations, in prevention, vaccine and therapeutic trials; and improve uptake of approved vaccines.

Professor and Department of Public Health Chair Nancy Burke is the UC Merced site lead, and she is working with Claudia Corchado, program manager for Cultiva La Salud of Merced County, an organization dedicated to creating health equity in the San Joaquin Valley by fostering changes that support healthy eating and active living. Corchado has cultivated a network of about 200 women who serve the community, and they plan to work with others in the region to develop messaging to engage those most at risk in the San Joaquin Valley in COVID-19 prevention.

“We need to ensure that access to testing is equitable and that people can find and understand the information they need about COVID-19,” Burke said. “The messaging around vaccines, especially, is problematic. There’s a lot of misinformation, so once we do have a safe vaccine, we’re going to have to make sure misinformation does not prevent people from getting vaccinated. And that’s why we need to partner with organizations like Cultiva la Salud that have built trust over years of working in the community. For many people in our region it’s more about the messenger than the message.”

Though efforts have been made to expand outreach, testing and healthcare to Latinx, Indigenous and other underserved communities, one issue informational efforts like this face is trust.

Corchado said the Powerful Women’s group (Mujeres Poderosas) — women from around the county who have graduated from a yearlong civic-engagement training program — are vital to the project. They have already established themselves in their communities as trusted sources of information and as people who effect positive change.

“The work doesn’t happen overnight. Now, more than ever, there’s a fear of any government agency among Latinos,” Corchado said. “And there is a language barrier. We need to ensure people are getting the correct, consistent and safest messages in ways they can understand. Not everyone is literate in their own language, so we’re going to have to be creative in how we ensure the hardest to reach obtain the right information.”

The Powerful Women’s group meets every other week, and a nurse regularly provides them with updates on COVID-19. Ten of these Powerful Women will be hired for this one-year program to help get information to and gather information from people in Fresno, Merced and Stanislaus counties. They’ll reach out through their networks to learn where people get their information, what sources they trust, how much they understand about the virus and what concerns are most prevalent around vaccines.

“We’ll be holding focus groups and are forming an advisory board with the California Health Collaborative, Healthy House, Golden Valley Health Centers, local public health departments and others to see how we can best address challenges in testing and vaccine-hesitancy,” said Burke, a medical anthropologist who studies health disparities and health behaviors, among other topics. “We want to hear about people’s experiences with COVID and with testing and learn about their understanding of the disease and vaccine development.”

Other campus researchers will be involved in the effort, including Professor Irene Yen, a social epidemiologist whose work focuses on the social determinants of health, including the intersections of race/ethnicity and social class. Postdocs, graduate students and undergraduates will also help, and Burke said she expects other researchers will sign on once they hear more about the project.

“Some of the SJV PRIME students have expressed interest in working with us too,” she said.

Researchers at UCLA lead the effort that involves seven UC campuses, including five medical campuses, as well as four other academic institutions. They hope to capitalize on strong community-based partnerships to help address issues local to each area, but also learn how to apply these approaches to disadvantaged communities across the country.
 

The program is funded for one year at this point, so everything is on a fast track, Burke said.

“People will have to be flexible and adaptable to a rapidly changing environment, but it’s going to be exciting,” she said.

The coronavirus has impacted everyone in different ways and three public health professors are examining specifically how rural, Latinx communities in California have been affected in a new study funded by the University of California Office of the President.

California deemed agriculture an essential business amid the COVID-19 pandemic, meaning many farmworkers have worked during the harvest season under unusual and stressful conditions. These workers tend to be Latinx immigrants who lack certain workplace protections, further increasing their vulnerability.

“Latinx immigrant families in rural areas pay a triple toll during the pandemic: a higher risk of COVID-19 infection, severe financial insecurity due to out-of-pocket expenses on protective measures, and resulting food insecurity and mental health risks — all with very limited access to safety-net assistance,” principal investigator Professor Maria-Elena Young said. “California deems rural, Latinx immigrant labor essential; however, it does not provide the structural support or relief to preserve their health. Their capacity to provide essential labor does not preclude risk to COVID-19, financial distress or mental health impacts.”

Young collaborated with fellow public health professors Denise Payán and Sidra Goldman-Mellor on the brief.

Through in-depth, semi-structured interviews, the researchers spoke with immigrants in Merced, Tulare and Imperial counties about how the pandemic has shaped their financial circumstances, employment conditions, access to health care and other basic needs.

All interviews were conducted virtually in Spanish by Fabiola Perez-Lua, a Tulare County native and public health doctoral student, then transcribed for analysis. To identify individuals with whom they could speak, the researchers sought out community-based organizations working on a range of issues, from farmworker rights to immigrant legal protections.

The study finds that pre-existing socioeconomic vulnerabilities in rural, Latinx immigrant communities have been exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic as a direct result of workers continuing to provide essential goods and services while simultaneously attempting to adhere to public health safety guidelines.

Young said much of the research conducted so far on the impact of COVID-19 on Latinx or immigrants has focused primarily on urban communities or on Latinx immigrants’ COVID-19 knowledge, prevention behaviors and access to information. This overlooks the potential of broad economic, physical and mental health impacts they may be suffering.

“We hope that these findings will catalyze the expansion of workplace protections and economic relief for rural Latinx immigrants,” Young said. “Additionally, we plan to provide policy suggestions that will, if implemented, improve the health and wellbeing of rural Latinx immigrant families as the COVID19 pandemic continues.”

The research findings will be shared with immigrant-serving organizations in rural California in order to further inform their strategies during the ongoing pandemic.

UC Merced’s Graduate Division provides many programs throughout the year to ensure students succeed academically, including faculty and peer mentoring programs, free tutoring, and social and well-being activities to help foster a sense of belonging and community.

Given the unprecedented circumstance of remote instruction, coupled with the campus’s record-high graduate student enrollment this fall, Graduate Division staff have been innovative and creative in their approaches to deliver programming remotely while remaining responsive to students’ needs.

“The pandemic has been especially hard for graduate students and postdocs who may feel isolated and frustrated by the delay in their research and training, in addition to the struggles of working from home that many of us face,” interim Vice Provost and Graduate Dean Chris Kello said. “The whole campus has rallied to keep our research and educational mission going through COVID-19, and graduate students and postdocs have been integral to the cause, both in terms of receiving and providing support through the summer and into the fall.”

Two female faculty members of UC Merced’s School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts (SSHA) have been named the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation chairs, making four prestigious chairs in the campus’ 15-year history.

Professors Nancy Burke and Whitney Pirtle have been recognized as the two newest MacArthur Foundation chairs for their work in public health and sociology, respectively.

The MacArthur chair was established to support research, teaching and service in the areas of international justice and human rights. Traditionally, faculty members are nominated by their dean and undergo an interview process that culminates in the final approval of the awardees by the Committee on Academic Personnel. 

“This is a tremendous honor for Professor Pirtle and Professor Burke and a testament to the important work they do,” SSHA Dean Jeffrey Gilger said. “Our SSHA faculty’s research contributes to many important topics of our time, from racism to public health, both of which are of particular importance right now. It’s wonderful to see professors Burke and Pirtle being credited for their contributions.”

The MacArthur appointments are part of a UC systemwide initiative that has its roots in a 1982 endowment of $1.2 million from the MacArthur Foundation. Initially intended to fund a single position, the endowment eventually grew to more than $10 million, and the decision was made to create several five-year chair appointments throughout the UC system.

Burke, a medical anthropologist, is professor of public health and chair of the Public Health department. She is also an affiliated faculty member of the Department of Anthropology, History and Social Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. Her research is anchored by the idea that no one should suffer undue and untreated illness because they are poor or marginalized or subjected to institutionalized and persistent racism.

“Centering health as a human right means that all people should have access to the health services they need, in a language they can understand, in a place they can access and navigate,” Burke said. “I am grateful that UC Merced and the MacArthur Foundation have chosen to invest in research designed to highlight inequities and to create sustainable, community-based solutions.”

Burke’s public health research spans several areas including cancer disparities and structural vulnerability; health literacy in the United States; and cancer and chronic disease in the global context. Her work has been published in The American Journal of Bioethics, Journal of Health and Social Behaviors, Social Science and Medicine, Medical Anthropology Quarterly and many others.

She has been conducting research on aging in Cuba since 2009 and published “Health Travels: Cuban Health(care) on and off the island” (University of California Medical Humanities Press) in 2013. She has written several pieces documenting the Cuban response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including a chapter she co-edited in "Viral Loads: Anthropologies of Urgency in the Time of COVID-19," set to be published with the University College London press in 2021. She also currently serves as the campus lead for a new statewide initiative seeking to address COVID-19 in disproportionately affected communities.

Pirtle is a sociologist with interdisciplinary expertise in race and nation, racial identity constructions, racial/ethnic disparities in health and Black feminist sociology. She has affiliations with the Public Health and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies departments and directs the Sociology of Health and Equity Lab. The overarching question driving her research asks how racial categories are created, measured, imbued with meaning, and used as stratification mechanisms?

“I am honored and extremely grateful to be named as one of the MacArthur Chairs in International Justice and Human Rights. Receiving this honor is remarkable in many ways, given that I am the first Black faculty and first assistant professor at UC Merced to be named. To be honest, I danced in my office when I received the news,” Pirtle said. “I also want to acknowledge many in the university who have long supported me and my growth as a scholar. I am thankful to be a part of UC Merced. “

Pirtle’s work has been published in academic journals such as Ethnic & Racial Studies, Social Science & Medicine, and Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, as well as media websites such as The Atlantic, Huffington Post and Feminist Wire. She is currently completing a book manuscript that explores the formation and transformation of the “coloured” racial group in post-apartheid South Africa, supported by funding through a Ford Foundation post-doctoral award. She continues to produce research on racial disparities in COVID-19 and her co-edited volume “Black Feminist Sociology: Perspectives and Praxis”is forthcoming with Routledge Spring 2021. She recently won the 2020 A. Wade Smith Award for Teaching, Mentoring, and Service from the Association of Black Sociologists.

Professors Mark Aldenderfer and Arturo Arias were the first in the campus’s history to be awarded the prestigious chairs in 2015 and 2016, respectively.

Aldenderfer, who retired this year, is an anthropological archeologist recognized around the world for his comparative research on the cultural and biological adaptations that are necessary for humans to live permanently at high elevations. He also served as the dean of SSHA for more than five years.

Arias joined UC Merced in 2016 as part of the Department of Interdisciplinary Humanities, which includes anthropology, the arts, history, and language and literature. Arias has published a number of scholarly books on Latin American, Central American, U.S. Latino and indigenous literatures and cultures. This spring he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for his research on contemporary indigenous novels from Guatemala and Mexico.

About 70 percent of people with COVID-19 suddenly lose their sense of smell, although fewer of them seem to realize it, according to a new “living analysis” by a research team that includes a UC Merced graduate student.

Vicente Ramirez, a Ph.D. student in UC Merced’s Public Health program, and researchers at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia have uncovered patterns that could help future coronavirus researchers.

“This is important work because it has the potential to reveal the virus’s activity in the body, and because loss of smell potentially has major impacts on quality of life in survivors,” said Professor Stephen Wooding, Ramirez’s faculty advisor and an evolutionary geneticist and chemosensory scientist in the Department of Anthropology and Heritage Studies in the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts.

Ramirez had a summer research position at Monell last year, returned to continue his collaborations this year and got looped into the novel coronavirus work.

“The students were supposed to be doing wet-lab work,” Monell Associate Director Danielle Reed explained, “but that stopped because of COVID-19. I had been hearing all these strange reports about people losing their senses of smell and taste and at first, I was skeptical.”

People with colds and flus report losing their senses of smell and taste, too, but COVID-19 is not the cold or flu, and sufferers don’t usually have congested noses.

Once the researchers started gathering data, they realized something was particular about COVID-19.