This is part of a series of profiles of new UC Merced Bobcats enrolled for the fall 2026 semester.
Tayven Tipler won’t travel far from his hometown when he starts at UC Merced and he is already well along on his higher education journey. Tipler completed several courses at Merced College as a high school student.
Where I come from: I live in Atwater, where I was born and raised. I graduated this spring from Buhach Colony High School.
UC Merced has established its identity as a world-class research university that welcomes learners who historically have been left out of higher education. Nearly three-quarters of its undergraduates are first-generation college students.
This distinction put the university in welcome company when it co-hosted one of a handful of institutes held nationwide that trained instructors on how to teach reading and writing effectively at access-oriented institutions: community colleges and open-enrollment universities that educate underserved students.
Key points:
Researchers successfully tested a technique that uses human sewage to measure the use of nicotine products such as cigarettes and vaping pens in a selected community.
The project, led by scientists at UC Merced, can strengthen public health efforts by supplementing surveys about nicotine use with scientific data.
The research targeted a handful of Central Valley communities. Scientists hope to expand it to other California locations.
Editor's note: This story is republished from the Spring/Summer 2026 issue of UC Merced Magazine.
Temnee Wright, ’08 has realized a successful career as legal counsel at several Silicon Valley companies. Her interest in law was forged at UC Merced, where she made the most out of being a student in the university’s first undergraduate class.
A new UC Merced major arrived just in time for Tyrese Francis.
When the student starts his third year at the university this fall, he will dive into coursework for a degree in business administration, one of two degrees debuting in the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts.
“I’ve always wanted to be a leader,” said Francis, who hails from the South Bay region of Los Angeles County. “I feel this major will give me the skills I could apply to a leadership role.”
Students in a UC Merced course stepped off campus and into the real world, developing flyers, website pages and even a TikTok account for a downtown arts center.
Staff at the center became clients and the students contractors in a spring semester project that produced marketing materials, forged relationships with the community and gave students an experience that in-class exercises can’t provide.
A throng of people came to UC Merced on a crisp, blue-sky Saturday for Bobcat Day. More than 7,000 were registered to attend the April 18 event for admitted and prospective first-year and transfer students, along with their families.
A highly customizable degree that rewards curiosity, reaches out to a diverse set of learners and prepares scholars for people-centered careers has arrived at UC Merced.
Liberal studies, a bachelor’s program that taps into disciplines in the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts, debuts in the fall 2026 semester. Students can parlay the degree’s flexibility with core UC Merced attributes such as undergraduate research and easy access to professors and advisers.
Taliyah Miller would be the first to tell you she arrived at UC Merced with an unwavering, long-range goal: become an anesthesiologist. What she could not have predicted was that a difficult roommate, a therapist’s question and a job she forgot she applied for would upend that goal and leave her better for it.
Miller was raised in Stockton, the third-largest city in the San Joaquin Valley. As the youngest of three with siblings several years older, it was like being an only child. She developed an independent personality early on.
As a child of the Central Valley and a member of a Native tribe, Grace Grinder developed an early awareness of health care disparities affecting rural regions and underserved communities.
While in third grade, Grinder lost her grandmother to what she described as too few physicians nearby to provide timely, quality care. That loss planted a seed.
