2025 Merritt Writing Fellowship Prize Winner
The Merritt Writing Fellowship Selection Committee is pleased to recognize Peter Nguyen as the winner of the 2025 Merritt Writing Fellowship. This annual award honors an undergraduate who has demonstrated analytical skills, creativity, and research promise in first-year writing.
Peter’s submitted essay, “The Impact of Growing Up and Living in the San Joaquin Valley on Asthma and Respiratory Illnesses,” was exemplary for its deft rendering of key insights from scholarly sources into smooth prose written to inform non-specialist readers about a serious public health issue affecting local communities.
Bay VanWagenen, Peter’s instructor in Writing 10 for Pre-Health, rightly noted the judicious and thoughtful way in which this scholar-in-training approached his work, mentioning outstanding features of Peter’s essay that also stood out to the selection committee. While following academic scholarly conventions—“articulating a research need, synthesizing multiple scholarly sources to build and argument, and organizing evidence and subtopics in a logical and readable structure”—Peter writes in an accessible prose style that “demonstrates creativity and rhetorical awareness.” Notably, in tackling a public health issue of particular interest to San Joaquin Valley residents, Peter made every effort to draw from the research findings of local and regional scientists; he even incorporated insights from the doctoral dissertation of a UC Merced graduate.
Peter is a first-year student majoring in Biological Sciences with an emphasis in Human Biology; he maintains a 4.0 grade point average. Reflecting on his approach to writing, Peter remarks, “My philosophy as a writer is rooted in the desire to make sure that every piece of writing I create reflects the best of my abilities.” Peter owes this approach to writing to advice he received from his mother when he complained about the seeming impossibility of writing an essay; she urged him to try and keep trying his best. “Now, at UC Merced, I continue to embrace this thinking, always eager to face challenges that build my confidence in expressing new and complex ideas.”
The Merritt Writing Fellowship Selection Committee commends Peter for his excellent work and his admirable work ethic. We look forward to hearing of his future accomplishments as a writer and scholar.
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The Merritt Writing Fellowship honors an undergraduate who has demonstrated analytical skills, creativity, and research promise in first-year writing. This fellowship recognizes that first-year writers are early scholars -- as analytical thinkers and creative communicators who write to meaningfully connect with readers, bring visibility to important topics, and inspire positive change.
Qualified students will have completed WRI 1 by the end of their first year at UC Merced, with WRI 10 completion as a preferred but not required expectation. First and second year UCM students, with a minimum GPA of 2.8, are all eligible to apply. The application includes an endorsement from a WRI instructor (no more than 250 words), along with a final draft of a major research-based writing project completed at UC Merced that demonstrates a blend of analytical and creative writing approaches.
The award amount for this fellowship is $1000.
Students who wish to be considered for this award must fill out a self-nomination application. As part of the self-nomination process, students will need to secure the endorsement of one of their current or past UCM writing instructors.
Applications for the 2025 Merritt Writing Fellowship are now closed. Information about the 2026 MWF application process will be posted on this website at a later date.
