Team Dahle joined a signing and celebration event yesterday with representatives from @ucMerced and the Shasta Union High School District, who sealed an agreement to expand the university’s Merced Automatic Admission Program to students from the Redding-based district. Shasta Union joins Fall River Joint Unified School District, in eastern Shasta County, as North State participants in the program. The MAAP provides a streamlined application for students who meet the baseline qualifications for the University of California – plus scholarships to lower the cost of tuition. Merced is the newest campus in the UC system, opening in 2005, and still building and growing, with a particular focus on engineering and sciences and a goal of expanding access to higher education to new regions of the state. I appreciate the university’s outreach to the North State’s rural schools to encourage students to pursue their dreams of higher education. And I encourage other school districts to explore joining this partnership. The deadline for students to apply for MAAP is the end of September. More information and the application itself are here: admissions.ucmerced.edu/MAAP.