Stories

In early 2016, Dr. Ruiz joined UC Davis as the inaugural Associate Director of both the newly created University Honors Program and a rapidly expanding First Year Seminars Program. Dr. Ruiz has been a tremendous partner in all aspects related to the long-term vision, daily operations, growth, and overall success of UHP and FYS.

The UC Davis Washington Program has long been a highly valued partner of the University Honors Program, serving as an option for our students to fulfill their Year 3 project requirement.

The University Honors Program is excited to be partnering with the Science, Humanities and Arts: Process and Engagement (SHAPE) program to offer a very special course in Fall 2020! The course is titled Transforming Exclusion to Expression: Gender and Race in Climate Science and is co-taught by Professors Margaret Kemp and Dawn Sumner.

The UHP Faculty Mentorship Award is awarded to a UC Davis faculty member for providing outstanding mentorship to a UHP student. An outstanding mentor is one who is accessible, impactful, and has played a significant role in at least one UHP student's undergraduate career.

The UHP Student Leadership Award identifies a graduating UHP student who is an emerging leader on campus or in the community. This student has demonstrated a commitment to all of the values of UHP including excellence, innovation, and personal growth, and are part of a new generation of leaders.

UHP student Naomi Murray has been awarded a Goldwater Scholarship, the nation’s premier undergraduate award in the natural sciences, mathematics and engineering.

Murray is majoring in Ecology, Evolution, and Biodiversity, and plans to earn a PhD in Ecology.  An active undergraduate researcher, she is already on the path to a career researching how trees affect community function and resilience, with the goal of minimizing the impacts of climate change.

By Eric Thai '20

The novel COVID-19 virus has disrupted the functioning of everyday operations worldwide. However, for higher education institutions like the University of California, Davis, the learning continues. While many professors face the challenge of rapidly learning new technologies to adapt to a remote learning experience, Dr. Cristina Moya, an Assistant Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology and a first-time UHP instructor for Human Evolutionary Biology course, was prepared.

By Danielle Baza '21

Up the stairs of the South Silo, tucked away in the Craft Center, lies the Textiles studio. A seemingly unusual spot for a class, the Craft Center is teeming with creativity and eccentric ideas and, as it turns out, is just the right spot for a course that thrives on unconventionalism: UC Davis’s Beta Lab.

March 17th, 2020

Dear UHP students,

March 17th -

Literary scholarship at the nexus of human rights and climate change has earned English major Jumana Esau ’20 a prestigious Gates Cambridge scholarship. The scholarship will fully fund Esau to earn her Master of Philosophy in Criticism and Culture at the University of Cambridge, where she plans to study climate fiction with the author Robert Macfarlane.