
Alumni Stephanie Dietz
Stephanie Dietz wasn’t handed the Merced City Manager reins. No, they were suddenly
flung back, and she hustled to snatch them out of mid-air.
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Alumni Joseph Trujillo
"The hardest part now [during my medical training] is exactly what they say, ‘The
more you know, the more you realize what you don’t know.’ . . . You have no choice
but to grow up and learn from it."
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Alumni Tim Slenders
The Chowchilla native, Merced College alumnus and new Mariposa County sheriff, was
minding his business with his peers at Fresno City College Police Office Standards
and Training (POST) graduation on July 15. Then someone started talking about a special
graduate, the Top Cadet of the graduating class. And then he called Slenders’ name.
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Alumni Assemblymember Adam Gray
Adam Gray is a true son of Merced County, having graduated from Golden Valley High
School (1996) and earned his credits at Merced College before transferring to UC Santa
Barbara and graduating there in 2000. Now Gray is making his professional mark on
behalf of Merced County and much of Stanislaus County while serving in the State Assembly
since his election in 2012.
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Alumni Jill Cunningham
Jill Cunningham has taken on Merced College, not once, but twice so far in her lifetime.
Cunningham first came to the College after graduating from Le Grand High School “in
the 80s.” Here she earned 60 credits, and then transferred to American University
in Washington, D.C. Her second trip is ongoing. A longtime political operative in
our nation’s capital and the Bay Area, she returned in 2017 to serve as Associate
Vice President of External Relations and Executive Director of the Merced College
Foundation. For our alumni issue, Cunningham now ruminates on her experiences as a
Blue Devil—the one that was preordained, and the one that brought her home.
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Alumni Zachary McComb
Zachary McComb did not grow up liking school. Learning had always been a struggle.
After he graduated from Independent High School in 2008, he followed the crowd to
Merced College. A good experience there, plus help with his learning disability, eventually
gave him an AA in Human Sciences and an AS in Biological Sciences (2012). That led
him to UC Merced and a BS in Biological Sciences (2014). By then his educational sky
had cleared and McComb headed to Western University of Health Sciences to become a
dentist. By 2019, McComb had finished his Doctor of Dental Medicine degree. While
his career path looks like a straight line, it was more like a winding road. Here
McComb talks about how that circuitous route made him a confident student and eventually
a doctor.
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