Famous!

I teach a little class of 7-year-olds at church. There's one funny girl who, whenever she's called on, pops off with, "I'm famous!" Yep, it's cute.

Well, making people a little bit famous is actually my job. But there should be payoff beyond just the attention we are trying to get you. Publicizing what everyone is doing at REU and YLP is important for a lot of reasons.

- When today's high school students learn about your work (on Facebook or on this blog or on the UC Merced Web site) they gain a little more interest in UC Merced. Maintaining our enrollment growth is one of our most important goals at the university. More students allow us to create more majors and programs and hire more faculty, which in turn draws even more students. Publicity for your work is an important piece of building the UC Merced of the future.

- When UC Merced students or other university students learn about your work, they gain interest in the REU and YLP programs. As the programs draw more interest, they become stronger and stronger.

- When we can show these programs offering you great learning opportunities and wonderful experiences, we justify the funding we have been given for them, and we hope that will help us retain that funding for the future - maybe even gain more funding so that more students can participate.

- When members of the community see that you are working to make a difference in Yosemite to improve the public's experience and preserve resources for future generations, they see the good that UC Merced can do. This increases important support for the university - we hope members of the general public will be more likely to vote for representatives who strongly support higher education and even donate to UC Merced if they can.

Everybody has been really sporting (i.e. patient) about all the photography and interviews and everything so far. I know it takes up your valuable time, but I think we can make it worth your while.