Only 10 years after it began, the Ph.D. program in UC Merced’s Department of Sociology made an impressive debut in U.S. News & World Report’s latest rankings of graduate-level offerings.
The Sociology graduate program tied for No. 64 nationally, sharing the position with UC Riverside, Temple University, the University of Florida and Washington State University.
UC Merced students are getting first-hand experience in providing mental health care to the most vulnerable and needful among us, thanks to a partnership between the university and Merced County.
Undergraduate psychology majors are serving as interns at the county’s Department of Behavioral Health and Recovery Services, which works with other agencies to offer a system of care for people living with mental illness or substance abuse disorders.
UC Merced’s School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts made a splash in the latest rankings of university graduate programs compiled by U.S. News and World Report.
The university’s Political Science program ranked 52nd in the nation, tied with UC Riverside, Purdue University-West Lafayette, the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and Arizona State University.
LGBTQ2S+ individuals use tobacco and nicotine products at significantly higher rates than straight and cisgender people, research shows. Reasons can include stress and other health problems brought on by systemic and social prejudice, along with barriers to support for breaking the habit.
UC Merced and CalPride Valle Central have partnered with the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences and advocates from across the nation to develop a program to support efforts by LGBTQ2S+ people to quit smoking.
UC Merced's Nicotine and Cannabis Policy Center has embarked on an innovative partnership with university researchers who can track an entire community’s health and habits with samples of human sewage.
The project aims to determine trends and levels of nicotine use in San Joaquin Valley communities through chemicals in wastewater. Collecting hard data on smoking and vaping can aid NCPC’s mission to help local public health agencies, community organizations and tobacco-control researchers give informed responses to the problem.
Lockdowns. Social distancing. Shuttered schools and businesses. The COVID-19 pandemic and its sweeping disruptions set off a stampede of “what it’s doing to us” research, focused largely on schoolchildren. How were students’ academics affected? Their mental health? Their social development?
Left unexamined was whether the pandemic impacted the social cognition of preschool children — kids younger than 6 — whose social norms were upended by day care closures and families sheltered at home.
Cancer is vicious. In 2025, it is expected to cause more than 618,000 U.S. deaths — nearly twice the combined populations of Merced and Modesto. Each year, almost half of this nation, young and old, is touched by the disease through personal diagnosis or an afflicted loved one.
Jeff Yoshimi joined the 50% when his wife, Sandy, learned she had breast cancer. The blighted cells had spread to some lymph nodes.
Young people whose parents or caregivers aren’t acclimated to their community’s dominant language and culture play a valuable role in bridging communication gaps, including unspoken misunderstandings triggered by a gesture or facial expression.
These interpreters, who range from pre-schoolers to young adults, can extract pride from the role, defining it as an important family duty or a way to pay back their elders for years of love and sacrifice. However, negative feelings such as resentment or embarrassment can seep into the process, increasing the risk of depressive symptoms.
Katherine Cai is on stage, reminiscing about high school.
“My dad tried to teach me geometry. You know how that goes. The questions get more and more difficult and Dad gets more and more frustrated, which leads to both of us having a crisis.”
“We’re all just victims of word problems.”
Laughs ripple through the 100 or so students, faculty and friends in the audience. They can relate.
Cai, a UC Merced psychology major, is halfway through her standup comedy routine, a final performance for Writing 122. And she’s crushing it.
Tsitsi Dangarembga spread the spirit of ubuntu over UC Merced on Wednesday night, imparting its message of “how we can be good people who live well together.”
