UC Merced - University of California, Merced - UCM

The University of California, Merced, commonly referred to as UC Merced or UCM, is the tenth and newest of the University of California campuses. Located in the San Joaquin Valley in unincorporated Merced County, California, near Merced, UC Merced was the first American research university to be built in the 21st century.

UC Merced claims to be the only institution in the United States to have all of its buildings on campus to be LEED certified.

As the San Joaquin Valley was the state's largest and most populous region without a UC campus, on May 19, 1988 the Regents of the University of California voted to begin planning for a campus in the region, in response to increasing enrollment and growth constraints at existing UC campuses. On May 19, 1995, the Regents selected the Merced site, mid-way between the city of Fresno and Modesto, as the location for the University of California's tenth campus.

The campus groundbreaking ceremony was held October 25, 2002, and the first day of class was September 6, 2005.

The campus is bounded by Lake Yosemite on one side, and two irrigation canals run through the campus. The campus master plan was developed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, its initial infrastructure by Arup, and its first buildings were designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Thomas Hacker and Associates, and EHDD Architecture. The library and central power plant have been classified as Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Gold structures in terms of their high energy efficiency and low environmental impact. The campus is located about seven miles (11 km) north of downtown Merced in the middle of a cattle ranch.

Rather than build on 40 acres (16 ha) of protected land east of Lake Yosemite, where endangered fairy shrimp hatch in vernal pools, the school has built on a 230-acre (93 ha) parcel of grazing land south of campus, under a revised layout. The revised plan covers a total of 810 acres (330 ha) rather than the original 910 acres (370 ha) proposed in 2000. The new design was expected to impact a total of 81 acres (33 ha) of native wetlands in the region compared to the 121 acres (49 ha) forecast in the 2000 footprint.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the University is a census-designated place (CDP) that was uninhabited at the 2010 census and covers an area of 1.126 square miles (2.916 km²), all of it land.

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