Uc Merced

Nearly 1,000 students have sent in deposits to attend the new University of California campus near Merced this fall, to the quiet relief of school officials who had worried that too few students might enroll at the campus in its first year. UC Merced officials said the figure surpasses the target for freshmen, with 867 who have now submitted statements of their intent to enroll in the fall, along with deposits of $100 each to hold a place.

Renata Santillan looked out across a broad expanse of pasture, dotted with flowering mustard and more than a dozen cows, toward the construction site several hundred yards away. "Is it going to be ready in time?" Santillan, a 17-year-old high school senior from San Bruno, asked, sounding doubtful. "It's kind of cool, but what would it really be like to go here?"

More than 9,000 students have applied for admission to the first undergraduate and graduate programs at UC Merced, which is scheduled to open in the fall. About 8,000 of those are applying for the freshman class, UC officials said Wednesday. UC Merced Chancellor Carol Tomlinson-Keasey and other UC officials said they were pleased at student response to the new campus, which is expected to enroll about 1,000 students in its first year.

On a former golf course in this farming town between San Francisco and Yosemite National Park, construction crews are busily laying foundations and raising walls for a library, dormitories and classrooms that will form the next campus in the University of California system. Meanwhile, 27 professors are already at work planning the curriculum and recruiting more faculty for the day the first classes begin next year.

The opening of the University of California's campus in the Central Valley will be delayed one year because of the state budget crisis, officials said Wednesday. UC Merced, the system's 10th campus, had been scheduled to open to undergraduates in fall 2004. But under the compromise budget reached this week, the opening will be delayed to 2005. Legislators, who called for the delay, also cut $4 million in project funding but allocated $17.3 million in operational and start-up funds.

Robert C. Dynes becomes president-designate of the University of California at a critical time, when, as he puts it, the 10-campus system faces a "confluence of pressures" -- unprecedented growth in student enrollment and a state budget crisis. How to maintain students' access to the UC system and the quality of its education? This will be a huge challenge for Dynes, whose system must take in the top 12.5% of the state's high school graduates who apply.

MERCED, Calif. -- She went out for a walk on a spring morning a year ago and, when she returned, everything about her life had been changed. Just beyond the front door in a well-to-do neighborhood here, Christine McFadden found the bodies of her four children, all shot by her former husband. After killing the teenagers, ages 17, 15 and 14, he killed the youngest, 5-year-old Michelle, and then himself.

An appellate court here has denied a request by environmental groups to block construction of the new UC Merced campus. The 5th District Court of Appeal on Wednesday denied a request for a stay from the San Joaquin Raptor Rescue Center, Protect Our Water and the Central Valley Safe Environment Network. The groups hoped the court would temporarily halt construction after a Merced County Superior Court judge said last month that plans for the campus met state environmental requirements.

On a remote foothill site, Gov. Gray Davis inaugurated a 10th University of California campus Friday. The UC Merced campus is the state's first since UC Santa Cruz opened in 1967, and will serve the San Joaquin Valley. "You had a dream ...