The 2025 UC Davis Medal will be awarded to Michael C. and Renée Z. Child. Mike Child is a member of the Chancellor’s Board of Advisors and emeritus member and former chair of the UC Davis Foundation Board. Renée Child has served on the College of Letters and Science Dean’s Advisory Council.
The University of California, Davis, ushered in a new era for the arts with the grand opening of the Maria Manetti Shrem Art District made possible by philanthropist Maria Manetti Shrem through her transformative gift of over $20 million, the largest gift ever to the College of Letters and Science and the largest to the arts at UC Davis.
When transfer students arrive at UC Davis, it has always taken months before they get their academic credits evaluated. Without evaluation, they don’t know what courses they will need to graduate on time. Academic advisor Colin Goulding recently led a cross-campus effort so new transfers could plan their classes before fall registration closed. For this work, UC Davis honored Goulding with this year’s Outstanding Campus Collaborator Academic Advising Award.
Temporary Building 9, or TB 9, a metal structure constructed from old military surplus materials, has been the main creative space at UC Davis since the 1960s. The building is where the first-generation art faculty at the university’s first art department created a place to work.
Celeste Turner Wright was the first chair of the Department of English and the first woman to serve on the UC Davis faculty. She was a prolific scholar and played a fundamental role in developing the humanities at UC Davis.
The year 1969 was the beginning of what would become African American and African, Asian American, Chicana/o and Native American studies programs. Since then, these programs have been a catalyst for social and political action on campus and beyond, and cultivated a lifelong commitment to making a difference.
The Maria Manetti Shrem Arts District will bear the international art patron’s name in recognition of her support of multiple disciplines and her vision to bolster collaboration among them with a holistic approach to the arts. The “Maria Manetti Shrem Arts Renaissance” will be created at the University of California, Davis, with a pledge of more than $20 million to further the art patron’s longstanding philanthropic partnership with the university.
The Accelerating Success by Providing Intensive Research Experience at UC Davis gets students into labs early vastly widening their vision of research through hands-on experience. Through ASPIRE, Valerie Klein has worked as a research assistant in the lab of Richard Huskey, an assistant professor of communication and cognitive science, since her second quarter at UC Davis.
UC Davis Chancellor Gary S. May presented the 2023 UC Davis Medal, the university’s highest honor, to international arts patron and philanthropist Maria Manetti Shrem at the afternoon commencement ceremony on June 18 at the Golden 1 Center in Sacramento. The award presentation was followed by a ceremonial tree planting on the UC Davis campus and a dinner at the UC Davis Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts.
