For Socorra Camposanto, her proudest accomplishment since graduating from UC Merced in 2009 has been serving in the Peace Corps as a youth environmental educator and musician for the past two years.
“I have had the opportunity to share what I have learned both in and out of the classroom at Merced, and share it with the youth in my community,” said Camposanto, who just returned to San Jose.
While abroad in Morocco, she said her favorite part was meeting new people and learning about the traditions and customs there.
“I’ve been fortunate enough to meet tourists in Morocco and to give them a different insight into the country,” Camposanto said. “Just traveling around Morocco, you get to see so many different landscapes and meet different people and individual cultures that make up Morocco.”
With the help of the American Language Center in the city of Fes, she recorded an album of her original songs. It is expected to be released later this summer, and a percentage of the sales will be donated to a shelter for abandoned and abused girls in Fes.
Camposanto recently helped create and host the 2012 Science Fair Competition — the first event of its kind for many students in the Oriental region of Morocco.
Under the theme “Environmental Problems in Morocco and Ways to Combat Them,” students explored the scientific method and worked to solve real world problems through hands-on experience and reading, math and science skills. Along with Peace Corps volunteers, local associations, clubs and ministries pitched in to organize and implement the project.
Camposanto plans to seek an AmeriCorps position in the Bay Area while applying to music therapy schools and pursuing her dreams of a music career.
She said her UC Merced education continues to help her think outside of the box. “I have always said that UC Merced is a very unique way to experience college. It’s unconventional and relies on students with determination and a grass-roots mentality to succeed.
“I see many parallels between my time at Merced and my time as a Peace Corps volunteer,” she said. “Self-reliance, problem- solving, using your imagination and the ability to adapt have all been skills that I use daily.”
Researchers aim
to understand behavior
The second episode of “Our Digital Life” is now available on UCTV Prime, a YouTube original channel.
The three-part series reveals how UC Merced researchers are using cutting-edge digital tools to help us visualize, research and learn about things we could previously only imagine.
The second episode explores an interdisciplinary collaboration between cognitive science professor Teenie Matlock and computer science professor Marcelo Kallmann.
The research team is using real time, 3-D motion capture technology to understand our complex behavior and how we use it to record and analyze the way we live. The researchers want to build a digital library of human motion that will help construct lifelike human avatars for use in telemedicine, education and applications we’ve yet to imagine.
The first episode explored how “cyber- archeologists” and historians at UC Merced are using cutting-edge digital tools to bring the past back to life in vivid, 3-D detail.
The series can be seen at uctv.tv/digital-life.
UC Merced Connect is a collection of news items written by the University Communications staff. To contact them, emailcommunications@ucmerced.edu.
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