Highlander Farewells is a recurring feature spotlighting faculty and staff members who recently retired or are retiring soon. Learn more about the contributions of UCR colleagues with about 25 years or more of service in the short profiles that follow. Retirees with fewer years or who did not provide profile information are listed below. The list...

UC Riverside has begun construction of the SoCal OASIS Park™, a research and innovation hub near campus that represents a major step in promoting economic growth in Inland Southern California. Community and campus leaders celebrated the project at a groundbreaking ceremony Monday, June 23, at the 3.44-acre site on University Avenue near campus. The...

UC Riverside has been named one of the world’s top universities in the 2026 edition of the QS World University Rankings released June 19. The campus placed No. 66 in the United States in the 20th edition of the rankings, published by higher education analyst Quacquarelli Symonds and posted at TopUniversities.com. Among the nation’s public...

UC Riverside students seeking careers in law can now get expert guidance to prepare for their academic path to law school and beyond. A new campus program offers students information, advising, and support on topics such as planning for law school, what field of law they might want to pursue, and even if the legal profession is right for them. The...

Walking through rows of citrus groves on a sunny April morning, about a dozen UC Riverside Dining Services employees picked fruit off trees and loaded it in crates into the bed of a truck. A little more than a month later at the Scoops Ice Cream shop at the HUB, Brian Alcantara, retail restaurant manager for HUB operations, ladled ice cream freshly...

The UC Riverside Academic Senate honored seven faculty members for their research, teaching, and public service accomplishments in its annual awards with its top prize going to paleontologist Mary Droser. Droser, a distinguished professor of geology, is the recipient of the 2024-25 Faculty Research Lecturer Award, the highest honor bestowed to...

The final pieces of the old UC Riverside Extension building came down last week as construction crews completed its demolition. The 3.44-acre site will be developed into the SoCal OASIS™ Park, construction of which will start this summer. The park will serve as a hub for research and economic development with laboratories, startup space, and...

UC Riverside received a gold rating for its sustainability efforts from an organization that tracks the nation’s most sustainable colleges and universities. The campus earned the recognition May 15 from the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education’s Sustainability, Tracking, Assessment & Rating System, or AASHE STARS....

For UC Riverside students experiencing a mental health crisis, help now comes to them thanks to a new mobile crisis and intervention team on campus. The Student Well-being, Intervention and Follow-up Team, or SWIFT, made up of three behavioral and mental health professionals, is often the first to respond to calls where a student is in crisis. A...

UC Riverside has begun preparing a climate action plan that will put into place practices and policies towards University of California system-wide sustainability goals. The document, set to be completed by the end of the year, is the first of its kind under a new UC policy. UC updated its sustainability practices policy last year requiring each...

On a chilly Sunday morning, a group of UC Riverside Facilities Services employees gathered to watch a leaf blower fly over the campus. The leaf blower was attached to a large drone that took off from a nearby lawn and hovered over the Pierce Hall roof as part of a test in late April to see if the department can use drones to clean drains and...

UC Riverside will pay tribute to Chancellor Kim A. Wilcox and give the campus a chance to wish him well at a farewell celebration on May 8. Faculty and staff are invited to join the 3 p.m. send-off on the lawn outside Tomás Rivera Library, which will include music, food, and prizes. Wilcox announced in September that he will be retiring at the end...

Progress on UC Riverside’s new instructional building project reached a major milestone this month with the full frame now standing. The construction team poured the final concrete placement at the top of the four-story Undergraduate Teaching and Learning Facility on April 17, representing the completion of the first major phase of work. “All the...

At a time when many Americans may be overwhelmed by the constant deluge of news, broadcaster Ari Shapiro described how “radical empathy” can inspire people to remain engaged and hopeful. The host of NPR’s “All Things Considered,” Shapiro delivered the 56th Annual Hays Press-Enterprise Lecture to a full house at UC Riverside’s University Theatre on...

A chef with UC Riverside Dining Services won top honors in a cooking competition hosted by the National Association of College & University Food Services. David Murillo, a culinary manager at Lothian Residential Restaurant, won the silver medal at the association’s Culinary Challenge at its regional conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on March...

Muralist Juan Navarro has spent his career taking inspiration from the many facets of Riverside’s community. His latest work adds UC Riverside to that list, showcasing iconic images of the campus. Navarro created the mural in January for the Altura Credit Union branch on University Avenue, on a wall next to the teller windows. The bank, which has...

Sang-Hee Lee, a UC Riverside professor of anthropology, has been honored by the American Association of Biological Anthropologists, or AABA, for outstanding public engagement in the field. Lee is the recipient of the 2025 AABA and Leakey Foundation Communication & Outreach Award in Honor of Camilla Smith. Noting the importance of promoting...

Riverside Transit Agency, or RTA, is detouring buses that serve UC Riverside due to roadwork that is expected to last for a few weeks. Bus stops on Canyon Crest and Campus drives will not be served during the detour. Those include routes that stop at Bannockburn Village and the campus entrance at University Avenue, and loop around with stops at the...

A new exhibit featuring fossils from hundreds of millions of years ago brings the work of UC Riverside researchers in the Australian Outback to the Inland Empire for the first time. “From California to Down Under: Fossils of the Ediacaran” opened March 15 at the Western Science Center in Hemet and will run until fall 2025. It features specimens and...

Almost 150 years of Inland Empire history is now available to the UC Riverside campus community through the UCR Library. Last month, the library acquired access to the entire historical contents of the Press-Enterprise newspaper going back to its 1878 start as a weekly publication, known then as the Riverside Press. The newspaper archives were...