MERCED - Michael Colvin has built his scientific career unraveling biological mysteries at their tiniest level, using computer models to predict which toxins will cause cancer and which drugs will treat it.

It's complex, challenging work that has kept Colvin, a computational biologist and chemist, ensconced in cutting-edge research at two of the nation's foremost laboratories since 1986.

After nearly 20 years studying molecules at Lawrence Livermore and Sandia national laboratories, however, the 43-year-old Colvin decided in September to move his research and his family to this San Joaquin Valley farm town to do work on a very different scale: He is part of an academic team forging the curriculum for the first new University of California campus in four decades.

Colvin is among 25 faculty members who are gambling careers at formidable institutions to establish UC's 10th campus outside Merced.

"This is a very big canvas," Colvin said. "The opportunity to build something that could last for all time was hard to resist."

Against huge political, legal and financial odds, the school finally is taking shape - both literally and figuratively - against a stunning Sierra Nevada backdrop that on a clear day includes the snowy peaks of Yosemite National Park.

Though the federal government has yet to give the final sign-off on environmental permits and funding issues remain, the walls of the library and two academic buildings are rising on the grassy plains northeast of Merced. City workers are digging trenches for the cables and pipes that will deliver electricity and water. Apartment-style residence halls for the first 600 students will be finished by year's end.

The state already has spent roughly $350 million on the campus. And if lawmakers agree to provide another $20 million in the upcoming state budget, UC officials promise the school will open next year and help relieve the enrollment crunch at UC's eight other undergraduate campuses.

It's been decades of roiling to get to this point. The idea of a new UC campus to serve the Central Valley first surfaced in the 1980s. In the years since, as supporters pushed to make it happen, there were squabbles over where to locate it, lawsuits over the vernal pools and fairy shrimp it would displace outside Merced, and concerns - that linger today - about whether a UC campus would be viable in one of California's poorest regions.

After years of court action and appeals, UC has knocked down the serious legal challenges. But UC Merced's debut still could be derailed.

The opening already has been delayed a year by state funding shortages. And this summer it must weather a partisan debate in which lawmakers will be struggling to carve billions of dollars out of the overextended state budget - many with an eye toward saving established health, welfare and education programs proposed for the chopping block.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has expressed support for UC Merced. But one of the Legislature's most influential figures - Senate President Pro Tem John Burton, a San Francisco Democrat and staunch defender of the state's programs for the poor - remains a harsh critic. He questions why the state would spend money to build a new school when existing campuses are being forced to shrink enrollment to cope with budget cuts.

"It makes no sense to me to be spending money on that place when we are turning kids away from established campuses," he said.

Despite the lingering uncertainties, faculty members such as Colvin are digging in for the long haul and administrators are actively recruiting students at high schools and community colleges throughout the San Joaquin Valley.

"It's like any startup," said Carol Tomlinson-Keasey, who was named chancellor of UC Merced back in 1999.

"There are these huge roller coaster events that you have to deal with, so that when things get tough, you remember the vision and the need are so great and that we are building a campus that will serve this state and the nation for a long, long time."

While construction crews transform a golf course and surrounding rangeland into the first 100 acres of campus, Colvin and a dozen like-minded faculty members are building the school's intellectual and academic foundation.

Twelve other professors will arrive over the next few months. By opening day in fall 2005, UC officials plan to have 60 faculty members on board.

Many are trading research positions at prestigious institutions such as Stanford, Purdue and the Smithsonian Institution. And some admit serious misgivings about signing on with a startup public university in the midst of a state budget crisis.

"When I first interviewed, they took me to a hotel in Oakland because there was no campus to even show me," said Jeff Wright, dean of the engineering school. "Quite frankly, it was going to be a long shot for me to leave Purdue."

In the end, most said, they were lured by the opportunity to mold not just a new university but a University of California, which carries its own mantle of prestige. For Colvin, the notion of shaping a UC that would draw from the poor, rural reaches of the Central Valley felt almost like a calling.

"I wanted to be able to work with students who maybe hadn't even thought they could go to a University of California, and maybe never thought they could do science," he said.

For Valerie Leppert, an engineering professor hired last summer, the appeal was in the empty canvas, the chance to create a wholly untraditional institution. She chooses not to dwell on the uncertainties.

"I just have to assume it's going to happen," she said. "It would be too difficult to function and build our programs if we thought about the budget all the time."

Working for now in refurbished offices at the former Castle Air Force Base in Atwater, the 13 professors are designing the first six undergraduate degrees - four will be in science and engineering programs.

They meet daily, making decisions that range from hiring other new faculty memebrs to writing curriculum to assigning course numbers.

"You think that maybe it will be something like a Burger King franchise where you just copy what's at UC Berkeley or some other university," said Colvin, who is creating the biological sciences program. "It's not that at all. We have the luxury here of starting with a blank slate."

Faculty members are starting from scratch on most everything, debating teaching styles and how to avoid the traditional lecture-driven classroom. They are designing courses that will be hands-on and in some cases combine disciplines, such as physics and calculus. There is lots of discussion about making the education "relevant" to students, particularly those who will come from the valley.

In the meantime, as UC professors, they are obliged to continue a robust level of research and scholarship - both to build campus prestige and attract grant money. Crammed in temporary quarters at Atwater, without laboratories and equipment to support their work, that can pose a challenge.

Leppert, for instance, specializes in the study of nanomaterials, particles that measure about one-billionth of a meter in diameter. She is researching whether it is possible alter the particulate matter released by diesel fuel - work that requires a $350,000 microscope so large it must be delivered by truck and so complex it takes a month to set up.

While she awaits its arrival at her temporary lab at Atwater, she commutes weekly to UC Berkeley and UC Davis to continue her research.

Faculty members such as Colvin and Leppert also are serving as public relations agents for the new campus, working closely with Encarnación Ruiz, UC Merced's first admissions director, to do student recruitment.

Ruiz is charged with ensuring that half the student body is drawn from the nine valley counties that stretch from Stockton to Bakersfield.

It could prove to be UC Merced's toughest challenge.

With 3.5 million residents, the San Joaquin Valley is home to greater proportions of poor families and new immigrants than any other region in the state.

The demographics help explain why in the counties the campus is targeting, only 5 percent to 6 percent of high school graduates have the grades, test scores and course requirements to be eligible for a University of California campus. In the rest of the state, closer to 13 percent of high school graduates meet UC qualifications.

Making up that disparity will fall to UC Merced's 25 outreach workers, who already are visiting valley high schools, trying to reshape the mentality of students and parents so that they see college as a possibility.

Ruiz says he is confident there are untapped students - with solid high school records - who are very close to being qualified.

"There's reality and there's perception," said Ruiz, a Tulare County native who has done UC outreach in the Valley for years. "There are lots of kids from here with a 3.5 GPA and all the (required) courses. That kid might not be able to get into Berkeley, but for us, that's a great kid."

Even among qualified students, the school could face recruitment challenges. While a brand-new campus will appeal to some high-schoolers, many won't consider a school that doesn't offer the traditional trappings of a mature university, with an established reputation and lively college town.

"Students get excited about being the first," he said. "(But then) kids ask, 'Are you going to have a cheerleading squad and a football team?' And I tell them, 'No, but you can be the first to form those organizations.'

"We need pioneers here," he said. "We are not going to have a football stadium and a marching band."