Student Impact

OIT works every day on projects designed to enable student learning and encourage student success. Our goal is to make a lasting positive impact on the overall student experience at UC Merced.

Commencement Support

UC Merced's Commencement ceremonies are the culmination and celebration of our students' achievements. They require months of planning and thousands of volunteer hours. Among those volunteers are a few crucial staff from OIT.


We talked to Shannon Rogina, the Assistant Director of Protocol and Special Events, about OIT's impact on these special events and the way that our growing campus has changed Commencement activities.

Doctoral Research Code Hack: From 60 Hours to 15 Minutes

Michelle Len, a Ph.D. candidate in Mechanical Engineering, uses supercomputers to run complex simulations. When each simulation was taking over 60 hours to complete, OIT's Research Facilitator Matthias Bussonnier stepped in to help.


After a few deep dives into Michelle’s work and the code she was using, Matthias was able to help her reduce the time it took to run the code from 60 hours to just 15 minutes—all without reducing the quality of her results. Matthias didn’t necessarily “fix” Michelle's code, but rather gave her the tools she could use to diagnose and fix any code—something that will serve her throughout her professional career.

General Education Program:
Launching ePortfolio

As part of the new General Education program that was instituted on campus in Fall 2018, Undergraduate Education worked with OIT to select and implement a new electronic portfolio solution. We talked to Alicia Kimble, the Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Education, and professor Valerie Leppert about their experiences with the implementation and the new tool.

University Extension: Forming Educational Partnerships That Last

Lynn Reimer and Kevin Reimer of University Extension talked with us about some particularly challenging classroom technology issues they experienced in Fall 2018. Since then, Academic and Emerging Technology staff have worked tirelessly in support of their student's success—and that partnership is spawning other collaborations.


"When you're launching a new program, the stakes are huge. We really have to do it right the first time, and we've really appreciated the efforts that Rachel and Jodon and Joan have put in to make these things happen for us."

Kevin Reimer
Instructor, University Extension

Up Next: OIT's 2018 Impact on UC Merced Faculty