UC Merced Graduate Ends Exciting Year with Professorship at Cal Poly

It is a serious understatement to say Carlos Diaz Alvarenga had a big year: He graduated from UC Merced, successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis and landed a position as an assistant professor at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo.

Oh, and he got married.

"Yeah, those are all big life events and I did them all in one year," Diaz Alvarenga said, laughing. "It's been super difficult, but it's been worth it."

Diaz Alvarenga, 29, came to UC Merced 10 years ago from San Jose, where he was born and raised. He completed both his undergraduate and graduate degrees at the university, which evolved as he did.

"I still remember when the Bellevue/Lake Road intersection was just a stop sign," he said. "People would park in the dirt lot across from the stop sign so they didn't have to pay for parking."

Diaz Alvarenga, whose parents are immigrants from El Salvador, is the first in his family to get an undergraduate degree, so earning a Ph.D. made his parents extraordinarily proud.

"Graduating was very special," he said. "It was as much their degree as it was mine."

Since then, the university has grown substantially, adding buildings such as the Pavilion, Sustainability Research and Engineering, Arts and Computational Sciences buildings and new dorms.

"It's definitely changed a lot for the better as it's growing and trying to accommodate more students," Diaz Alvarenga said.

But it's still a small, close-knit community and that - along with a strong financial aid package - is what drew him to the university.

"It grew on me a lot," he said. "The city itself tries to be close-knit. There is a sense of pride from being from Merced."

UC Merced also offered broad access to professors.

"I think I wouldn't have done the Ph.D. program if it wasn't for my professors," Diaz Alvarenga said. "They were super helpful and provided a lot of guidance."

They also provided role models. Initially, Diaz Alvarenga wasn't looking to go into education. He entered UC Merced waffling between majoring in philosophy and math before ultimately landing on applied mathematics with a focus on computer science. He was eyeing a lucrative career in industry.

"I think even if you asked me in my first year as a Ph.D. student, I wasn't sure," he said. "You could land that one big gig at Meta or Google."

But as he earned his doctorate in electrical engineering and computer science, he started to take on more teaching assistant positions and found his passion interacting with students in the classroom.

"I sort of felt like that was more of a unique connection and a more fulfilling career choice than just going into private industry," he said. "Part of it is the passion I have for teaching - that higher goal it fulfills in a society. I'm proud to say I'm part of an institution that mentors to young people to figure out how they're going to contribute to society or their own passions."

He also conducted research in the robotics lab, said Professor Stefano Carpin, Diaz Alvarenga's Ph.D. advisor. And he found more than academic success in Merced - he met his now-wife, Rocio Medrano Calderon, when both were undergraduate students. She is now a nurse.

Diaz Alvarenga said he applied to teaching positions at some California State University campuses and Cal Poly stood out.

"They have a strong focus on diversity, equity and inclusion and on re-thinking computer science education," he said. "I think that's super important. Teaching can get a little bit stagnant."

He will start this fall as an assistant professor in the computer engineering department - a very competitive field, Carpin said.

As for advice he will give his students, Diaz Alvarenga said it's most important that they be curious and adaptable.

"I get asked a lot by students, 'How did you know what you wanted to do?'" he said. "I didn't have a trajectory carved out. I'm learning as I go."