UC Merced Magazine | Volume XIX, Issue VII

‘We’re Doing It Right’ e Journey from R2 to R1

By Jody Murray From his seat on the officiants’ stand, chemistry Professor Hrant Hratchian looked beyond the sea of blue mortarboards at UC Merced’s 2018 spring commencement to the towering yellow cranes looming behind the Carol Tomlinson-Keasey Quad. For Hratchian, it was an upli ing sight, a soaring reminder that a massive construction project to double the campus size was underway. “ ere were cranes everywhere,” Hratchian, now vice

provost and dean of graduate education, said of the mid-construction period. “You could feel this energy around campus like, ‘It’s really happening.’” The Merced 2020 Project, as it was known, was a significant milestone for a University of California campus placed purposefully in the San Joaquin Valley to serve an underserved region. Parallel to that mission was a determination to be a premier research institution that benefited communities and nations beyond.

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