Trojan Family Magazine Winter 2009 by University of Southern California

›› page 38

Henry Hudson lost his life while searching for the philosopher’s stone of his age: the fabled Northwest Passage.

Inside Features

24 How Can You

Mend a Broken Heart? At USC, doctors work in teams to plan treatment and follow-up care. By Sara Reeve and Katie Neith

28 With a Song in Their Hearts At age 125, the USC Thornton School of Music introduces a new program in popular music performance. By Julie Riggott

36 The Fatal Journey

of Henry Hudson

The unsolved mystery of an explorer’s death at the hands of his own men. By Peter C. Mancall

42 Policy without Borders International students in a rigorous public policy program also receive a crash course in American culture. By Elizabeth Segal

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“I would interview Springsteen for hours about his songs, then we’d go out for pizza on his motorcycle.” – Bob Santelli MA ’78, executive director of LA’s cutting-edge new Grammy Museum, describing research during the years he spent as a music journalist. Arthur C. Bartner

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USC Trojan Family Magazine Winter ’09 Published by the University of Southern California Volume 41 Number 4

Winter 2oo9 columns

4 Editor’s Note 5 President’s Page Music to our ears: 125 years of stories have built the USC Thornton School of Music.

64 Last Word Our heroic four-legged friends.

16 Shelf Life Kevin Starr continues his massive chronicle of California with Golden Dreams. 19 Arts & Culture Los Angeles’ new interactive Grammy Museum. 22

20 People Watch Legendary “Music Man” Art Bartner, in his own words. 22 Lab Work An Internet connection at home decreases family time together. departments

7 Mailbag Women scientists and engineers strike a chord with readers. 10 What’s New USC is not only the city’s largest private-sector employer, but it’s also one of the state’s major economic engines.

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Page 20 Keenan Cheung, USC Housing

director, whose kidney transplant involved a remarkable chain of donors including his wife, Jeanne. “This whole experience has been completely overwhelming emotionally.”

For past issues of USC Trojan Family Magazine, visit www.usc.edu/dept/pubrel/trojan_family

48 Family Ties The USC Alumni Association’s regional clubs are growing. 53 Class Notes Who’s doing what and where. On the cover: In the groove: Four freshmen in the new popular music performance program are, from left, Peter Johnson, Luke Walton, Leland Cox and Mia Minichiello. Photo by Mark Berndt

12 Global Horizons A new leadership team at the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Culture. 13 Reaching Out The high-school “Super STARS” of USC’s 20-year-old program, where local students become hands-on, real-life members of a scientific research team. 22 U S C T r o j a n Fa m i ly m a g a z i n e winter 2009

[ editor’s note ]

A “Genius Grant” for Elyn Saks

USC law professor Elyn Saks’ 2007 book describing her lifelong battle with schizophrenia touched a nerve with people across the country, including readers of this magazine. Our feature story on her (“Law and Disorder,” Autumn 2007) resulted in one of the largest outpourings of reader mail we’ve ever received, and she was contacted directly by many others.

tion as a 2009 fellow of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. This fellowship, known informally as the “genius grant,” provides each recipient with a $500,000 “no strings attached” award over five years. These singular grants are not, says the foundation, a reward for past accomplishment, but rather “an investment in a person’s originality, insight, and potential.” People are nominated anonymously by a body of nominators who submit recommendations to a small selection committee of about a dozen people, also anonymous. The committee then reviews every nominee and passes along its recommendations to the president and the board of directors. Most MacArthur Fellows first learn that they have even been considered when they receive the congratulatory phone call. For her part, Saks is excited about the award. “I’m really thrilled and honored,” she says. “I’m glad for the recognition of, among other things, my book (The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness, Hyperion, 2007), which I hope helps implode some myths about schizophrenia and diminishes the stigma. “The first thing I’m going to do with my award money is explore the lives of other people with schizophrenia so as to give hope to those who suffer from schizophrenia and understanding to those who don’t. This is an amazingly kind and generous program of the MacArthur Foundation.” In describing her accomplishments despite her illness, she told USC writer Melinda Vaughn that “for an unlucky person, I’m very lucky,” adding, “it will be nice to not have this secret anymore.” With her book, and this high-profile genius grant, it looks like her secret is out for good. – Susan Heitman

Rick Simner senior Editors

Allison Engel Diane Krieger Contributing Writers

Susan Andrews, Andrea Bennett Athan Bezaitis, Alex Boekelheide Mary Bruce, Ariel Carpenter Anna Cearley, Talia Cohen Mel Cowan, Lori Craig, Jackson DeMos, Bill Dotson Beth Dunham, Kevin Durkin James Grant, Richard Hoops Pamela J. Johnson,Timothy O. Knight Ross M. Levine, Meghan Lewit Cristy Lytal, Eric Mankin Carl Marziali, Steve McDonagh Cynthia Monticue, Annette Moore Jon Nalick, Katie Neith Eddie North-Hager, Justin Pierce Sara Reeve, Gilien Silsby Kukla Vera, Lauren Walser Suzanne Wu managing Editor

Mary Modina Design and production

Russell Ono Stacey Torii Photography

Allison Engel (coordinator) Dietmar Quistorf advertising/Circulation Manager

Vickie Kebler (213) 740-3162

Please attach your current mailing label and send to: USC Trojan Family Magazine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-7790. Or e-mail us at: magazines@usc.edu

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Susan Heitman Art Director

Her story – and her remarkable achievements – were also recognized this year with her selec-

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Trojan Family Magazine

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USC Trojan Family Magazine University of Southern California Los Angeles, California 90089-7790 tel: (213) 740-2684 / fax: (213) 821-1100 e-mail: magazines@usc.edu web: www.usc.edu/trojan_family USC Trojan Family Magazine (ISSN 8750-7927) is published four times a year, in February, May, August and November, by the University of Southern California, Office of University Public Relations, 3375 S. Hoover St, Los Angeles, CA 90089-7790.

home telephone

U S C T r o j a n Fa m i ly m a g a z i n e winter 2009

work telephone

photo by mark berndt

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President’s Page By Steven B. Sample

The foundation of every school and program at USC is

built upon the talents and accomplishments of its students, faculty and alumni. The foundation of the Virginia Ramo Hall of Music also rests on something else – a violin bow belonging to virtuoso Jascha Heifetz. Legend has it that during the construction of Ramo Hall, Heifetz, who was once a faculty member at the USC Thornton School of Music, met privately with

p h o t o © m o r n i n gs ta r p r o d uc t i o n s

USC President Steven B. Sample plays drums and USC Thornton School of Music Dean Robert Cutietta plays bass at the 2008 USC trustee conference.

Virginia Ramo, who was a longtime member of the USC Board of Trustees and, along with her husband, Si, was one of the USC Thornton School’s most faithful benefactors. To bring the school good fortune, Virginia Ramo and Jascha Heifetz buried the bow in an undisclosed section of the building’s foundation. Sadly, we may never know the exact location of the great master’s bow: Jascha Heifetz died in 1987, and Virginia Ramo, whose extraordinary legacy of support for the school and this university spanned more than four decades, passed away last summer, taking the secret with her. The legend of Jascha Heifetz’s bow is only one of the many fascinating stories in the history of the USC Thornton School, which is celebrating its 125th anniversary this year. (You can read more about the school’s anniversary on page 28.) Music has always played an important role at USC. When the university was founded in 1880, more than one-third of our students were music scholars. Four years later, the School of Music became USC’s first professional school. Over the last 125 years, the USC Thornton School has been a powerful force in the world of music, a center for the cultivation of musical talent, and an incubator for some of the world’s most gifted composers, conductors, singers and instrumentalists. For evidence of the school’s success and influence you need only spend a few moments listening to the majestic compositions of USC Distinguished Professors Morten Lauridsen or Stephen Hartke, the splendor of the symphonies conducted by Michael Tilson

Thomas, the intricate layers of Pepe Romero’s classical guitar music, the legendary voice of mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne or the distinctive trumpet playing of Herb Alpert. Those are just a few of the renowned artists who have graced the school’s halls as students or faculty members. TheUSCThorntonSchoolisalsoamajorcontributor to USC’s overall strength in the arts, and to cultural life in this region and around the globe. The school’s students, faculty and alumni are an important reason Los Angeles has been called the “creative capital of the world.” Practically every day, somewhere around the world, someone connected to the USC Thornton School is taking center stage along with orchestras, operas or ensembles, or working behind the scenes in the music, film or television industries. Down through the decades, the USC Thornton School of Music has earned a stellar reputation, thanks to the unwavering support of dedicated alumni and friends. In addition to Virginia and Si Ramo, we are grateful for the generosity and dedication of Flora Thornton – the namesake of the USC Thornton School of Music – whose $25 million endowment in 1999 was at that time the largest gift to an American music school. Many others have contributed their time, talents and resources to help elevate the USC Thornton School to the stature of an elite music conservatory within an elite research university. Although many things have changed for the USC Thornton School over the last 125 years, one thing has remained the same – the school’s dedication to being Southern California’s premier music educator and arts presenter. With a little luck from Heifetz’s bow, I am certain that over the next 125 years the USC Thornton School will continue to set the stage for a whole new generation of musical legacies. l

U S C T r o j a n Fa m i ly m a g a z i n e winter 2009

Mailbag

“To reach out to the unreached, to focus on helping hundreds of young people who far too often go overlooked, and to provide support and encouragement to prepare for college is rare and remarkable and heartwarming.” quoted ››

A Word to the WiSE As a professional writer, I wish to commend Diane Krieger for her article “The WiSE Women of Science” (Autumn 2009, p. 28). She not only did a great deal of research – much of which never appeared in the piece, I am sure – but she also spun a compelling story. I had not heard of the “leaky pipeline” in which women drop out of the doctoraltenure track to become adjuncts, “freeway fliers” or junior college instructors because they had to balance not only the academic demands, but also the problem(s) of raising children and maintaining a home. It seems to me that the simple answer to that would be to honor exceptional teaching as a path to tenure. While tenure is now granted largely on publications in the appropriate media, research is only one-third of the university’s stated mission. We not only publish our research, but we teach both undergrads and grads. (The third part of our mission or assumed responsibility, involvement in the public arena, may well be beyond the specific charge of individual faculty members, though any number of my colleagues honor that because they understand that they are, however privileged, part of a larger community.) Ed Cray Professor of Journalism ca m p u s

USC as an oasis of excellence in yet another set of disciplines. I suggest you follow with something like “The Wise Women of Science and Medicine,” to capture some of the absolutely superb science that continues to be accomplished on the Health Sciences campus. A good person to start with might be Caroll Miller, chief of USC’s Neuropathology Department. (Dr. Miller was the subject

[last word]

of a paper about women and science written by my daughter – who herself is now a second-year law student at USC – in junior high school.) John Karayan JD ’77 LA CAñADA-FLINTRIDGE, CA

In an otherwise excellent article about the changing roles of women in science at USC, the author writes that “when the demands of family call for compromise, it’s usually the woman’s career that will yield – be she a kindergarten teacher or a highpowered research professor.” This seems to imply that there is a vast divide between the work of kindergarten teachers and research professors, and moreover, that such a compromise may not be so drastic in the case of the former. Of course, there are differences in these

Alphabet Soup

Even in the age of therapeutic gene modulation and nanopharmaceuticals, the timeless debate over the status of medicine lingers: Is it an art or a science? Judging by the 177 Last Word entries we received, the argument for “art” is alive and well. Hardly two puzzlers produced the same answers. Perhaps this attests to the speed with which the medical profession continues to evolve. We adjusted accordingly, broadening, for example, the possible solutions to Clue 6 – originally PAT, for “paroxysmal atrial tachycardia” – to include SVT or PSVT or PVT. Time passes, jargon changes too. Interestingly, many of our contestants weren’t physicians. Of the 51 who got every answer right, only a handful appended M.D. to their names. A few others boasted a DDS or Pharm.D. credential. Several puzzlers pointed out a minor error in Clue 12, in which we had asked for a two-letter acronym for suppository. PR (per rectum), we concede, refers not to the suppository itself, but rather the route by which it is administered. Where ambiguity existed, know that we were generous in awarding credit. How else does one judge art? These five prizewinners were randomly selected to receive Borders gift certificates: Thomas A. Akin

Got the Autumn issue of USC Trojan Family Magazine today, and was delighted to see the banner article, “The WiSE Women of Science [and Engineering].” Very nicely written, and certainly shows once again

‘54, Teresa Goehner, Jack Lowe PharmD ‘57, John Schaller ‘80 and Michael Joseph Walsh ‘79. Congratulations to all our medically literate Last Worders. Answers ›› 1. DOA 2. EKG or ECG 3. Code Blue 4. CPR 5. AF 6. PAT 7. DTR 8. QAM and QHS 9. OU, PO, SQ and IM 10. PRN, AC, PC and HS 11. STAT 12. PR and NPR. l

We welcome letters from readers although we do reserve the right to select and edit for space. Please include your name, address, e-mail address, degree and year of graduation, if applicable, with each letter and mail to: USC Trojan Family Magazine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-7790 or e-mail us at: magazines@usc.edu. Please note that, because of our production schedule, it might be several months before your letter appears.

U S C T r o j an Fami ly maga z ine winter 2009

professional paths, but not as different as the author seems to suggest. At my daughter’s K-5 school in the Los Angeles Unified School District, many teachers hold master’s degrees in elementary education and often work alongside “high-powered research professors” from universities on educational research projects. They would take exception to the notion that they are at the far end of the spectrum from the scientists described in this article. Kimberly Miller MPH ’10 L o s A ngele s , C A

Fabulous article about the WiSE women in science. The diversity of the women’s backgrounds and the way the article was written was very interesting and informative. My comment is this: It amazes me that today’s society wants very much to see more women scientists, professors and high-ranking businesswomen without giving any support whatsoever to the reality of parenthood and family life. For that matter, the question really needs to be asked as to whether or not having any professor, man or woman, give multiple presentations out of town would be more beneficial to the scientific community while at the constant expense of one’s family! Maybe if professors, both men and women, were supported with regard to their professional scholarship as well as with regard to their family life, then all scientific as well as societal endeavors would flourish, including people’s children, who would not have to turn to electronic toys or engage in possibly antisocial behavior to fill the gap of missing their parents while they are gone pursuing an academic career. What would actually happen if we took T. Berry Brazelton’s advice and provided more support for all families at all stages of development? Society as a whole would benefit instead of us fooling ourselves into believing that by pushing our men and stressing our women without supporting our children under the guise of scientific advancement could create a more whole and advanced society across the board. We all pay a terrible price for missing and overstressed parents through the lack our children feel when we are gone. We need to reexamine this idea. Cindy L. Abrams MA ’83 V alle y V iew , C A

Presidential Treatment The first thing, and always one of the best things, I turn to when my USC Trojan Family Magazine arrives is the President’s Page. In the Autumn 2009 issue (p. 5), Steven

U S C T r o j an Fami ly maga z ine winter 2009

Sample once again highlights why USC is truly “second to none” among all universities in the nation. It is a given that an elite institution of higher learning will have gifted students, world-class professors and state-of-the-art facilities. USC, however, rises far above this. The Trojan Family also teaches and fosters a sense of community and volunteerism. There are too many such programs to mention here, though I have long been most especially impressed and inspired by USC’s Good Neighbors Campaign that – through its “Tradition of Giving” in which professors, faculty and staff donate a percentage of their paychecks – has raised more than $10 million since 1995 with 100 percent of these funds helping worthwhile neighboring community organizations. However, in my eyes the USC Neighborhood Academic Initiative that President Sample so beautifully shares with us in his column is even more of a Trojan jewel. To reach out to the unreached, to focus on helping hundreds of young people who far too often go overlooked, and to provide them a paved path and the support and encouragement to prepare for college is rare and remarkable and heartwarming. Furthermore, if these youths hold up their end of the partnership, to reward them with full financial scholarships to attend to USC is heroic. Yet again, USC stands as a role model for other universities to emulate. Woody Woodburn V ent u ra , C A

A Life Well Lived The elevation of professors Hartke and Boyle to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters (“Among the Elect,” What’s New, Autumn 2009, p. 12) is a great distinction though it may come as a surprise to some readers that such an institution exists in America. It is also a time to recall that USC has an earlier tie to the academy through writer Hamlin Garland. Garland was inducted in 1918 and two years later joined the academy’s board as acting secretary, a position he carried out with great energy and dedication alongside its later president, Columbia University’s Nicholas Murray Butler. A little ahead of the curve for those days by choosing to retire to Southern California in 1931, Garland regretfully gave up his duties with the academy only to be welcomed soon after his arrival in Los Angeles by another university president, USC’s Rufus von KleinSmid, who invited Garland to address the faculty and tour the as-yetunfinished main library.

The English department at USC lost no time in discovering Garland either, extending membership in its Epsilon Phi fraternity and regularly calling upon him to speak before its classes about his personal recollections of Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, William D. Howells, Henry James and Walt Whitman. The Los Angeles Times was comfortable in routinely calling Garland “Dean of American Letters,” and USC awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1935, electing him to Phi Beta Kappa a year later. Garland inaugurated the American Literature Collection in Doheny Library in 1939, and made a final journey across the country to his beloved academy the year before to deliver a fire-breathing address on the need to uphold standards. After his death at age 79 in 1940, Garland’s books, papers and voluminous correspondence came to USC and now reside in Doheny Library’s Special Collections. John Ahouse ’76 L o ng B eac h , ca

Spin on Spinster In response to the letter from Stacey Schmeidel titled “Can the Sexism” (Mailbag, Autumn 2009, p. 11): I’m getting tired of feminists trying to rewrite our language and conversation. The term “gal” is no more sexist or demeaning than the term “guy.” Both are used in everyday conversation and in casual letters. I would not call the president “guy,” nor would I call the queen of England “gal.” But these terms are good terms and well understood and not demeaning in any way. If Stacey Schmeidel does not want to be called “gal,” she has that option, but she should not try to demean others who use that term in conversation. There was a popular play Guys and Dolls; should this be stricken from our language? The term “spinster” was used as a clue to the 19th-century author Jane Austen. This is a perfectly good and accurate 19th-century term for an unmarried lady. It is used much less today, but should the equivalent term for unmarried men, “bachelor,” be demeaned also? True, spinsters do not spin wool at home anymore, but while teamsters do not drive teams any more, this term is used for a large labor union. Now a synonym for “spinster” can be “old maid.” This is still used in casual conversation, and even a card game for children is named Old Maid. Richard S. Clark MD ’59 W e s t Me m p h i s , A Z

Summer, Revisited It was exciting to read your article on my classmate Frank Gehry ’54 in the Sum-

mer 2009 issue (“Conversations with Frank Gehry,” by Barbara Isenberg, p. 40). My hat is off to an individual with his talent and courage. I can’t imagine the pressures in designing the Disney Hall and the creative energy to overcome the published reactions to the design of a few years ago. This article had so much interest to me, reflecting the process in his early Steves Residence. A later classmate, Richard Martin ’56, approached Greg Walsh and Frank with the Bel Air project for Richard’s future in-laws. Greg, also of the ’54 class, and Frank established a partnership after their Victor Gruen architectural firm internship and, as I understand, even now mutually collaborate on some projects. Also extremely talented, Greg was closely involved with many of the early Gehry and Walsh partnership design projects but is commonly overlooked in publications. I state this because Greg terrifically influenced my architectural education and was very helpful in our early careers, for which I will always be grateful. Coincidentally, in the article Frank mentioned an experience with Ron Goether, the Disney attorney. Back in the 70s, also

in Bel Air, I had designed a residence for Mr. and Mrs. Goether. They were accepting and appreciative clients, living happily in the “midcentury modern” house until Ron’s retirement in recent years. Thanks for continuing to print informative articles and information on fellow Trojans. John Corey ’54 Pa s adena , C a

How inspiring (“Master of Many Disciplines,” Summer 2009, p. 23). My daughter is a freshman at USC (undeclared). I sent the link for this article to her. I hope it will inspire her in deciding her major (and minor also maybe). All of the USC community (students, faculty and staff) should be encouraged to read the USC Trojan Family Magazine; it’s not just for alumni. The magazine overall is always inspiring. As a staff member I learn a lot about USC accomplishments in different fields by reading the magazine, which otherwise I would never know, and it makes me proud to be part of it. Vicky Fong L o s A ngele s , C A

Grill, Interrupted I am writing in regard to your article in the Autumn 2008 issue concerning the Trojan Grill by Linda Lisiecki and the response of USC historian Annette Moore. I transferred to USC from Notre Dame in 1950 and found out immediately why there were no beautiful coeds in South Bend. They were all in Los Angeles, on the USC campus and in the Trojan Grill for breakfast every morning. I returned to USC in 2002 for the “Statue of Troy” celebration honoring the 1953 Rose Bowl Champion Trojans and was disappointed in the absence of our cozy hangout. Although the Trojan Grill with its memories was missing, I was happy to find the USC coeds still on campus. Harry Welch ’53 A K R O N , OH

For the Record In the Autumn 2009 article, “The WiSE Women of Science,” Maria C. Yang was identified as the USC Viterbi School of Engineering’s first pre-tenured expectant mother. Maja Mataric´ holds that distinction.

U S C T r o j an Fami ly maga z ine winter 2009

What’s New News

Notes on all things trojan

USC’s $5 Billion Economic Impact Spending on salaries, goods and services is an enormous boon to Los Angeles region, says new analysis. economic study on USC shows that the university – which is the City of Los Angeles’ largest privatesector employer – is also one of California’s major economic engines. The report, “Economic Impact Analysis of the University of Southern California Annual Operations,” shows that USC generates $4.9 billion annually in economic activity in the Los Angeles region and beyond. The study, commissioned by the university, reviewed the impact of USC’s operational expenditures during the 2008 fiscal year. It covers USC’s academic spending alone; it does not include the direct spending or impacts of USC-affiliated hospitals. During that period, USC produced about $2.1 billion in total direct spending: wage and payroll expenditures of $1 billion, capiA new independent

tal projects spending of $130 million and various purchasing expenditures of $430 million. Students spent another $503 million for goods and services, while visitors to USC spent about $12 million in the region. For every dollar spent by USC in Los Angeles County, an additional 63 cents of output was created elsewhere in the regional economy. “We are proud to be a leader in higher education and a catalyst for the economy of Los Angeles,” says USC President Steven B. Sample. “Even in this economic downturn, we continue to provide thousands of fulland part-time jobs in a wide range of fields. “USC also contributes to L.A.’s position as the capital of the Pacific Rim, as innovators and entrepreneurs, producers of art and culture, and through substantial capital investment that ripples out beyond our city

and state to the world.” Jack Kyser, founding economist at the Kyser Center for Economic Research at the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp., says: “USC is better positioned than ever to significantly impact not only the region’s economy but the world’s as well. The university is a growing economic asset to the city and the region as a whole.” The study’s author, economist David E. Bergman, who led the work at Economics Research Associates, calls USC “a vital economic engine for Southern California,” adding that these findings show the global, national and local economic impact USC’s contributions have on the economy. During fiscal 2008, USC directly em ployed 26,990 persons and stimulated another 19,100 jobs with its expenditures. The average salary for USC’s non-student employees was $61,000. “These study results support what we have known and have been saying when it comes to USC being the top economic engine in my district and our city,” says Los Angeles councilman Bernard C. Parks. Tom Sayles, USC’s newly appointed vice president for government and community relations, points to a number of construction projects that are generating income and taxes, and creating jobs on campus. “When you combine these with the strides we’re making through research aimed at solving a host of urban problems – from transportation and clean technology to health care – as well as our nationally renowned community-outreach programs, it’s clear that USC is a key player in the vitality of our city.” – James Grant

Running the Numbers USC Annual Outlays Various purchasing

$430 million

Spending by students

$503 million

Spending by visitors Capital projects Number of capital projects

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$1 billion

$12 million $130 million 58

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Payroll

cake and candles

USC Rossier Turns 100 The school’s focus on innovation in urban education continues with its new online master’s program. of the USC Rossier School of Education joined in celebration June 29 as the school kicked off its 100thanniversary celebration. Red and gold banners were unveiled on the sides of Waite Phillips Hall, as political dignitaries mingled with alumni, present and past faculty and students. Dean Karen Symms Gallagher spoke about how innovation and transformation have been the school’s guiding principles from the start. “The common thread throughout this school’s history – our very DNA – has been our commitment to change, to meet the needs of educators and of students, families and the communities they serve,” she said. “You cannot survive for 100 years, let alone thrive and lead, without embracing innovation and change.” Established in 1909, the USC Rossier School of Education has become recognized as a premier center for the study of urban education, ranked among the top 10 private graduate schools of education in the country and known for its diversity of faculty and student body. The school also has developed innovative curricula, including a nationally known Ed.D. program for practitioners, and programs that incorporate current technology, such as the first Master of Arts in teaching program – MAT@USC – delivered online by an elite research university. Family and friends

was the occasion for the introduction of the first holder of the school’s Katzman-Ernst Chair in Educational Entrepreneurship, Technology and Innovation. “USC and USC Rossier are ready to change the game for education,” said benefactor John Katzman, founder of The Princeton Review and CEO of 2tor, the school’s partner in the development of the MAT@ USC program. The new chair is held by David C. Dwyer, an expert in the application of technologies for learning with more than 30 years’ experience as an industry leader, researcher and educator. In his research and development work for Apple Computer, Apex Learning and most recently as co-founder and chief operating

photo by dietmar quistorf

the event also

officer for KD Learning, Dwyer has focused on technology and its impact on teaching and learning; technological innovations and their uses in education; and creating and developing products that make technology a more effective ally in the effort to motivate and educate students.

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program, which creates an interactive online environment based on streaming video, animation and other Web 2.0 technologies, has vastly exceeded expectations. In less than six months, more than 400 students have signed on to the new venture. One of them, Haley Scott DeMaria of Annapolis, Md., spoke at USC Rossier’s centennial celebration. A mother of two, she was a threeyear state champion swimmer and academic All-American for the University of Notre Dame when a car accident left her paralyzed from the waist down. She has chronicled her recovery, and her return to both walking and swimming, in a 2008 book. “Having the flexibility to study within my community and yet to have the wisdom and knowledge of 100 years of leadership in education at Rossier is a unique opportunity,” she said. Another student, Vivian Romero, said the MAT@USC program will help her transform her community of Boyle Heights in East Los Angeles. “There are other children in Boyle Heights receiving the same poor education I did, and I would love to go back and be an excellent teacher, something they deserve.” interest in the new mat@usc

– Andrea Bennett and Anna Cearley

A new Web site, http://rossier100.usc.edu, includes memories and a school timeline.

Tutor Campus Center Is Honored

With its doors yet to open to the public, the new Ronald Tutor Campus Center has already won an award. USC’s first Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certified structure has garnered a Green Building of America Award. “It was really important to the students that the university look at green building and the type of carbon footprint we’re leaving,” says Patrick Bailey, associate dean and executive director of the Ronald Tutor Campus Center. The Campus Center, which qualifies for LEED silver certification, incorporates radiant heating in the outdoor plaza, easily reforested bamboo wood, trash compactors that separate out biodegradables, and lighting with motion sensors and long-life bulbs. Special attention has been paid to water-saving measures, including low-flow plumbing and an underground retention basin to capture rainfall. The Campus Center also will serve as a model for future green construction projects at USC. “Protecting the environment is a huge issue not only for the university, but also for the country and the world,” says Stan Westfall ‘69, MA ’71, project manager for USC Capital Construction Development. – Cristy Lytal

Take a virtual tour of the Tutor Campus Center at www.usc.edu/student-affairs/construction/virtual_tour

U S C T roja n Fa m ily m a g a z i n e winter 2009

Global Horizons Datelines: Abu Dhabi and Dubai USC Marshall undergrads discover firsthand that the United Arab Emirates is not immune to a downturn. explored by the USC Marshall School of Business students who headed to the United Arab Emirates this past spring was whether the economic difficulties in the United States were affecting people in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Traveling as part of the International Experiential Corporate Environment Learning Program, 40 participants spent almost 10 days exploring Abu Dhabi and its more glamorous cousin, the gulf coast city of Dubai. On the trip, students met with officials from companies “shaping economic life in Abu Dhabi and Dubai,” says Sean O’Connell, director of the Undergraduate International Business Program at USC Marshall, who led the excursion. The learning program was created by USC Marshall to help undergraduates view business practices outside of the United States. The trip included visits to the companies that planned and built the Palm Islands, World Islands and Dubailand as well as several other $100-plus billion developments. “Many students came back believing that the gulf coast countries aren’t immune One of the issues

[shoah foundation]

from the effects of the economic downturn,” O’Connell says. “This is a global problem, with the United Arab Emirates facing many of the same problems that we do here, such as job

New Team

layoffs, a decline in real estate prices and a lack of liquidity.” Stanley Lam, a junior majoring in business administration with a double concentration in corporate finance and global management, came away from the trip impressed with the country’s ambitions. “Like it or not, Dubai stands as a prime example of what one city can accomplish with enough vision,” Lam says. “It has built the tallest building, the Burj Dubai, created several islands and multiple industries from scratch, and is in the process of building the largest collection of theme parks in the world, Dubailand.” Lam says he and others also noticed the contrasts in wealth within the country. “Upon arriving in Dubai, I saw on every street corner why the UAE was still called a ‘developing country,’ ” he says. “We saw enough five-star hotels and resorts to rival any major tourist destination, yet right next door to each one of these resorts would be undeveloped plots of dirt.” The undergraduate group also met with executives from McKinsey & Company and Nomura, the Japanese investment bank, who gave students an overview of their experiences in the region. For Lam – who also traveled with USC Marshall to Thailand last year and to Shanghai in 2007 – meeting with these business professionals broadened his worldview and made him realize “what living in a global economy” really means. “After this trip, I am much more open to working in another part of the world after I graduate because I know that there will be fewer opportunities available to me if I narrow my focus around only working in the United States.” – Anne Bergman

A new leadership team for the 15-year-old USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education has been appointed. In August, Stephen Smith became the new executive director of the institute, and Kim Simon, who served as interim executive director this past year, became the new managing director. Smith previously served as founding director of the Holocaust Centre, Britain’s

chairs the United Kingdom’s Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and has been involved in memorial projects around the world, including the creation of the Kigali Memorial Centre in Rwanda. He has lectured widely to international audiences on issues relating to Holocaust education, racism and prejudice. – Susan Andrews

For more on the USC Shoah Foundation, visit http://college.usc.edu/vhi

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i l l u s t r at i o n b y t i m b o w e r / p h o t o b y k i m f o x

first dedicated Holocaust memorial and education center. He also

WorldWATCH

Reaching Out

›› GHANA AND BACK Three pharmacy students from Ghana were hosted this summer at the USC School of Pharmacy as part of an exchange program that took USC students to Ghana and Taiwan last year. The African students were intrigued by the robotic system used at the USC Plaza Pharmacy, by the USC Travel Clinic and by the variety of drugs in American pharmacies. “In Ghana, everything is behind the counter, including over-the-counter products,” one noted.

›› DIPLOMATIC MOVE USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism professor Philip Seib has been appointed the new director of the USC Center on Public Diplomacy, succeeding Geoffrey Wiseman. The center established the first master’s program for public diplomacy in the country and the first summer program for mid-career practitioners. Seib concentrates on the links between media, war and terrorism. He also serves as USC Annenberg’s liaison to American University in Dubai, assisting with curriculum development.

›› FULL PLATE IN CHINA Tsinghua University’s School of Information Science and Technology in Beijing recently hosted a delegation from the USC Viterbi School of Engineering for an annual workshop between the two schools. The workshops were initiated by Feng Deng MS ’03, an alumnus of both schools, who supports the series financially. This year’s workshop focused on green and smart information technology. An agreement was signed to form an ongoing joint energy research center, and USC Viterbi Dean Yannis C. Yortsos was appointed as a Tsinghua advisory board member.

photo by philip channing

›› TRACKING TERRORISM Stephen C. Hora ‘64, DBA ‘73 was named the director of USC’s Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events (CREATE), the nation’s first Department of Homeland Security Research Center of Excellence. Established in 2004, CREATE supports interdisciplinary research in applying advanced risk, decision and economic analysis and modeling tools to evaluate the costs and consequences of terrorism. Hora is a professor of management science and statistics at the University of Hawaii-Hilo. l For more news about USC’s global programs, visit http://uscnews.usc.edu/global

Director Roberta Diaz Brinton, center, with STAR student Esosa Agbonwaneten, right.

Research Super STARS For 20 years, high schoolers have transformed their lives by becoming medical researchers in USC labs. The USC Science Technology and Research

(STAR) Program has an enviable record of providing seniors at Francisco Bravo Medical Magnet High School in east Los Angeles the opportunity to work as an integral part of a USC research team. Coordinated through the science curriculum at Bravo, the STAR experience counts as a course, allowing students to spend about 20 hours each week in the lab during the school year. In addition, STAR students do a six-week, full-time stint in the lab over the summer. “This isn’t a spectator lab experience,” says Roberta Diaz Brinton, holder of the R. Pete Vanderveen Chair in Therapeutic Discovery and Development. “These students are consequential members of the research team – they are mentored and learn how to do what scientists do, including lab techniques and the thinking that is required to solve a problem.” Brinton, a professor at the USC School of Pharmacy, remembers the first STAR student she had in her lab 20 years ago. “She was much like the students of today, full of awe and packed with potential. Once they finish STAR, they leave empowered.” That first student, Wing Cheung, went

on to study at Caltech and Harvard Medical School and today is a liver transplant surgeon. This year’s crop of graduates is similarly impressive – heading off to top schools and feeling enlightened by their STAR experiences. In fact, every student who has ever graduated from the STAR Program has gone on to college. Julian Lemus, who headed to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology this fall to study aerospace engineering, says that he had no idea what was done in a research lab until STAR. That’s hard to imagine when you see him today, confidently interacting with others in the lab – from other STAR students to doctoral students, postdocs and the lab director. “STAR has made me part of where the science happens – you don’t get this from books,” says Tiffany Lam, a 2009 graduate who is attending Wellesley College this fall. “My experience in Dr. Brinton’s lab has helped me see the big picture and the role that the day-to-day experimentation has in following a trajectory to the result.” STAR students have a way of staying connected. The Brinton lab welcomes them back at various points in their career paths. For example, this summer Jimmy To, a

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STAR student in 2006-07, came back to conduct research while on break from the University of California, San Diego. “It’s like a family here,” To says. “STAR really taught me what science is and really gave me an advantage when I went off to college.” He hopes to return to USC for his postgraduate degree in pharmacy. Likewise, STAR alum Syeda Ahmed, currently working in the Brinton lab while contemplating medical school applications, says: “Very few high schoolers ever get to do research at this level. It’s a door opener when you get to college.” Esosa Agbonwaneten, off to the University of California, Irvine, where she plans

to study biological sciences and eventually hopes to become a neurosurgeon, says, “Now I see the complexity of a research project, and it has been amazing to apply the science and not just read about it.” Each year the STAR Program places about 25 students in laboratories at the School of Pharmacy, the Keck School of Medicine of USC and the School of Dentistry. Brinton directs the program and Joseph Cocozza coordinates it for Bravo. The program is supported by a USC Neighborhood Outreach grant funded through the annual Good Neighbors Campaign.

the USC Trio program for getting them to college. USC Trio, which serves students in South and East Los Angeles, is part of a federally funded program for students who are the first in their families to go to college. The program starts in junior high and continues through high school with tutoring, Saturday classes and many other activities that focus on science, math and reading. Instructors help with applications, financial aid documents and the many forms needed to make that daunting leap to college. More than 80 percent of the students who graduate from USC Trio go on to college. – Kukla Vera “Although my mom wanted us to continue our education, she did not know how to get us there,” Miriam says. “USC Trio gave us the resources and the means to get there.” SISTER ACT Dina, the second daughter, agrees: “It was because of USC Trio that I went to college. They took us to college tours and helped us apply. With the classes they provided, I was Four sisters from a South L.A. family made it to four-year able to maintain my high grades.” Blanca-Maribel, a language studies major universities, thanks to their mother and USC. at UC Santa Cruz, says her mother let nothing stand in the way of One by one, Blanca Martinez prepared school. her daughters for success. She gave up her One time their mothjob and essentially her life to drive them er’s car kept stalling. So six days a week to the 32nd Street/USC their mother made the Visual and Performing Arts Magnet and to girls get up for school an special afternoon and Saturday classes at hour early and then drove USC Trio. surface streets to USC – And one by one they have made it stopping every few miles through high school, graduated from the to restart the engine. USC Trio program and now are attend“To be honest, I ing four-year state universities. don’t think I made any Debbie, the youngest, graduated in June big sacrifices; being from the 32nd Street/USC Visual and Perpart of the USC Trio forming Arts Magnet and is enrolled at the program was fun,” says University of California, Riverside. Blanca-Maribel. “My “I know my mom could have gone to mom, on the other hand, Debbie, Blanca-Maribel, Dina and Miriam Martinez school if she would have known what that wonderful woman, resources were available for her,” says was like Superwoman. Miriam, the eldest, who will graduate from the resources possible were available to us.” There was never an excuse when it came the University of California, Berkeley, next Miriam, who is studying Latin American down to our education and attending Saturspring. “That is why she made sure that all literature and architecture, is now prodding day Academy; not gas prices, not car probher mom to finish her education, which was lems, nothing.” interrupted by the outbreak of El Salvador’s Dina recalls the effort it took to reach civil war. It wouldn’t be the first time the the University of California, Santa Barbara, overheard ›› matriarch of the family returned to school, where she is a Spanish and sociology major. says Blanca-Maribel, the third daughter. In “I remember once I was angry because I order to get a free computer, her mom comdidn’t want to stay for after-school tutoring,” pleted a semester course at the USC ComDina says. “Then she was like, ‘You know munity Computing Center. what – you are still going to go no matter “My mother is always the one pushing us how hard it is.’ I think that’s when I realized to take advantage of the opportunities we that it was a sacrifice that we both made.” had and were being offered,” Blanca-Maribel For a video of the family’s story, visit says. “She is the perfect example for us.” www.youtube.com/usc and check the ComIn addition to the efforts of their parents, munities playlist. Roberto and Blanca, the daughters credit – Eddie North-Hager – John Dean of the USC Annenberg School, former

“Young people don’t know enough about Watergate. I don’t think schools teach about Watergate unless they still have very old textbooks and can’t afford new ones.” White House counsel in the Nixon administration

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p h o t o b y e dd i e n o r t h - h a g e r

Quartet Is Grateful for Trio

WRITE WAY

Catching a Creative Fever Novelist Aimee Bender and poet Cecilia Woloch teach undergrads how to pass on writing skills. Alex Flores clamps down hard on a pencil to finish his story that begins, “One day I came to school and no one was there.” In his tale, Alex turns invisible and hears Mario singing the SpongeBob SquarePants theme song in the shower. Mario shrinks to the size of a “puny egg,” then becomes a giant. Kirby appears and inhales Mario, morphing into Mario-Kirby. The story ends when a sumo wrestler enters the scene and inhales Mario-Kirby. Only one writer could have shepherded young Alex into a world so curious that people morph to the size of puny eggs and can inhale each other through their nostrils. “Shake your hands out; you got it,” writer Aimee Bender instructs Alex, who mimics his teacher by rigorously flapping his tired little hands. “That, my friend, is called writer’s cramp,” Bender tells Alex inside his classroom at the 32nd Street/USC Visual and Performing Arts Magnet near USC. Bender, a USC College associate professor of English whose waggish, fantastical novels once compelled the Los Angeles Times to dub her “Hemingway on acid,” was coaching children in a new course called “The Writer in the Community.” In the course, College undergraduates learn to teach fiction and poetry to elementary- and middle-school students. Fourth-grader

Bender and acclaimed poet Cecilia Woloch invented and teach the course, funded by the College’s Joint Educational Project and USC’s Center for Excellence in Teaching. “The results have been nothing short of amazing,” says Woloch, who has taught in hospitals, homeless shelters and prisons. The 32nd Street students always greeted the USC poet-teachers with enthusiasm. “It was both humbling and thrilling to see the torch of poetry being passed along,” Woloch says. The course begins with instruction at USC before undergraduates develop their own curricula and venture out in to schools to observe Bender and Woloch instructing the children. Then the undergrads try their hand at teaching. Most students, like Lorna Alkana, are creative writing majors. Alkana says breaking down fiction writing into lesson plans helped her become a more organized writer. One lesson plan asked youngsters to create their own monsters, listing the contents of their creatures’ refrigerators. The 32nd Street students learn the craft by writing before studying theories. “The kids got to take a step back and look at poetry through a purely creative lens, rather than from an academic angle,” says teacher Sarah Bruno, whose students were taught by Woloch and the undergrads. – Pamela J. Johnson

TrojanCONNECTIONS ›› PAY DAY On July 1, USC Gould School of Law students headed to their summer jobs and put in a full day’s work with no expectation of a paycheck. Instead, their salaries went to a good cause: the Public Interest Law Foundation’s Pledge-A-Day fundraiser. The event asks students to pledge a day’s wages to support summer grants awarded to as many as 30 first- and second-year students who spend their summer working in government, nonprofit or other public-interest organizations.

›› FRESH SMILES In August, Remote Area Medical, a nonprofit volunteer group, ventured into a metropolitan area for the first time to provide free health services at the Forum in Los Angeles for a week. The USC School of Dentistry’s Mobile Dental Clinic was there to help the thousands who showed up. “We’re performing root canals, restorations, extractions – anything that can be done in a day,” said volunteer Sunjay Lad ’09. Assistant professor Santosh Sundaresan was able to complete a full restoration on an unemployed man who had not been able to afford to fix his broken front teeth for a year.

›› MORE THAN A GAME When the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Joint Forces Command sponsored a conference last spring on how small military units can maintain consistent success, they invited high-ranking officers, bright academicians, top scientists and USC head football coach Pete Carroll. Carroll’s talk focused on his “Win Forever” philosophy. “To be involved with people who compete on that level, what more could I ask for?” says Carroll. “They’re competing every day to try and keep our country safe and save lives.”

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›› NEIGHBORHOOD NEEDS In June, nearly 40 programs in the neighborhoods surrounding USC’s campuses were awarded $850,000 from USC Neighborhood Outreach, funded by the USC Good Neighbors Campaign. Los Angeles Councilman Bernard Parks praised the university for putting money behind community programs. New programs funded this year include Team Robotics, a partnership between Foshay Learning Center and the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. l Visit the new Web site on USC in the community at http://communities.usc.edu

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California governor Goodwin J. Knight honeymooning near Catalina in 1954.

Sprawl with a Golden Gleam Kevin Starr examines California in its postwar years, when newcomers flocked to where the living was easy. Golden Dreams: California in the Age of Abundance, 1950-1963

By Kevin Starr OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, $34.95

historian Kevin Starr’s omnibus look at California, detailing the ascendency of the state in the postWorld War II era, had the exquisite timing of appearing in July, at the very moment the Golden State was bankrupt. There could be no better person to explain what went wrong than Starr, 69, the University Professor, State Librarian of California Emeritus and National Humanities Medal winner who is about the closest thing this The eighth volume of

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state has to a living legend. Starr, in fact, had already released his magisterial look at California in the 1990s, which turned over the seeds of our current discontent. (That volume was written out of chronological order in his series, he says, because he has abundant “field notes” from those years.) “We are on the verge of being a failed state because we can’t agree on anything,” Starr says. “So how did the men and women of 50 to 60 years ago in Sacramento, all those good ol’ boys and good ol’ girls, those Masons with their rimless glasses and double-breasted suits, who were only legislators for six months every other year, go up there and negotiate and help arrange for

and supervise and enable and fiscalize the infrastructure of a global mega state?” His answer is simple. “They horse-traded, they did deals. Aristotle defines politics as the art of the possible. It’s ‘what can we get done,’ not ‘I’m ideologically opposed to you and I’m going to destroy you.’ ” Golden Dreams presents California’s glory days in what USC historian William Deverell describes as “a book of astonishing sweep … an exuberant portrait of the sheer boldness of postwar California and a thoughtful, even wistful, reckoning of the state’s ability to inspire dreams.” Want to know about Herb Caen’s San Francisco, that Baghdad by the Bay, where sports, restaurants, swank department stores, newspapers and culture had their own distinctive swagger? California’s Levittowns and the giants of midcentury modern architecture and landscape design? Larger-thanlife characters such as Walter O’Malley, Earl Warren, Dorothy “Buff” Chandler and Archbishop James Francis Cardinal McIntyre? The epic construction of freeways, the rise of the UC and Cal State campuses and the state water project? The influence of Asian traditions, environmentalism and the Beats and the Rat Pack? It’s all here and much, much more, in lucid narrative that packs an impossible amount of detail in its 480 pages. (Not enough detail? Read the 49-page biographical essay that follows the text for even more intriguing book and journal recommendations.) As author Carolyn See puts it, “Starr works like the Flying Wallendas, high up on the wire, without a net, balancing absolutely every aspect of California culture.” Starr explains just how we’ve gone off the rails since the halcyon ’50s and ’60s. One change that led to the present political calcification, he says, was getting rid of cross-filings for primaries in 1958. Crossfiling allowed Democrats and Republicans to enter each other’s primaries and kept everyone running to the center. “It’s not rocket science,” Starr says. “If you have hardening of attitudes, if you have control of the parties by their extreme wings, you’re not going to have politics.” A second roadblock is the two-thirds majority needed to pass legislation, although Starr notes it has been in effect since 1933. A third is term limits, which work against having legislators who know the intricacies of finance, are experts in transportation, water, education or other fields and can practice legislative oversight. Add in unfunded mandates, he says, and suddenly, less than 10 in an interview,

l o s a n g e l e s e x a m i n e r , USC s p e c i a l c o l l e c t i o n s, f r o m g o l d e n d r e a m s : c a l i f o r n i a i n t h e a g e o f a b u n d a n c e , 1 9 5 0 - 1 9 6 3

Shelf Life

percent of the state’s budget is flexible. He calls Prop. 13 a symptom of the current malaise, but notes that it didn’t spring from the professional politician class. “It might be a generational thing. A certain group of people who chose to come to California or came of age here when everything was easy, when the global economy had not come in and taken effect, when you could buy a home for $50,000. But then the state grows more complex, it gets younger, the global economy hits us and suddenly your home is worth a million dollars and the taxes have gotten out of control…. There are a lot of people who feel that time has passed them by. And so they want to roll it all back, particularly the public sector. “The more disgusted people get with politicians, the less likely they are going to be to lift the draconian restrictions on them, even though the draconian restrictions are helping make them dysfunctional.” What gives Starr particular hope? He mentions Dean Jack Knott of USC’s School of Policy, Planning, and Development (where Starr holds a joint appointment, along with his appointment in USC College) forming an institute on the future of California. Starr says: “We use institutes to solve problems in medicine and scientific research, so universities should say that solving California’s problems is another

[wrinkle-free]

thing we should be helping out with.” True to his librarian’s background, Starr has an omnivorous interest in all disciplines. His next projects are a book on the Golden Gate Bridge and a fine press book, Clio on the Coast, on the writing of California history from 1848 to 1948.

– Allison Engel FRANKLY SPEAKING

The Other Oppenheimer Science journalist K. C. Cole pens a biography/memoir of Robert’s kid brother, who was her friend and mentor.

May You Stay Forever Young

Before plastic surgery and Botox, an ancient culture had a different way of dealing with the quest for eternal youth. Why not simply live forever? In medieval China, circa third century B.C., people believed it possible to be 800 years old, only without the pesky wrinkles and liver spots. “Transcendents” were deathless, godlike beings with supernormal powers. They not only had eternal life, but people also believed they could fly, heal the sick, be in several places at once, predict the future, read thoughts, disappear – and do it all with a youthful glow. “Human beings have a universal fear of death,” says Robert Campany, professor of religion at USC College. “You can understand why one would want the ability to live forever.” Campany’s Making Transcendents: Ascetics and Social Memory in Early Medieval China looks at how and why thousands in medieval China believed it possible for individuals to disappear into the mountains alone and return as godlike eccentrics. People believed transcendents could stage their deaths to fool the gods into forgetting to snatch them on their predestined days of death. Society today is too scientifically savvy to buy into it, Campany says. Yet imagine the money that could be saved on p h o t o b y m a r k ta n n e r

Is there anything that doesn’t interest Starr? He responds in Latin (he took four years of Latin and three years of Greek before entering college), quoting Terence: “Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto. I am a human being. Nothing human is alien to me.”

Botox ... – Pamela J. Johnson

Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens: Frank Oppenheimer and the World He Made Up

By K. C. Cole houghton mifflin, $27

about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the Promethean figure who gave us the atomic bomb. Numerous biographers have chronicled his rise and precipitous fall. Composer John Adams made him the Faust-like hero of a recent opera. But few people know much about his kid brother, Frank Oppenheimer – also a pioneering physicist, also a pacifist who worked on the Manhattan Project, also a hapless victim of McCarthyism. That’s about to change. In August, veteran science journalist and USC Annenberg professor K. C. Cole published Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens: Frank Oppenheimer and the World He Made Up. It is the first biography of this under-celebrated, mid-century visionary. But don’t expect too much pathos. Unlike Robert’s story, Frank’s takes an unexpected turn from melodrama to comic fantasy. Hounded out of academe for his socialist leanings, Frank rose from the ashes of his ruined career to reinvent himself – and to create from whole cloth a new kind of educational institution: the hands-on science center. Cole describes in affectionate detail how Frank Oppenheimer – her friend and mentor – retreated to Colorado in the 1950s to take up a life of quiet ranching; how he ventured back into the classroom, teaching science at rural Pagosa Springs High School (whence he launched an unlikely generation of future researchers, including Nobel laureate James Heckman); how he inched his way back into academic life at the University of Colorado; and most improbably, People know all

For this full story, see http://uscnews.usc.edu/politics_society/may_you_stay_forever_young.html

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Frank Oppenheimer and K. C. Cole

The Presidents We Imagine: Two Centuries of White House Fictions on the Page, on the Stage, Onscreen, and Online

By Jeff Smith THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN PRESS, $26.95

In such popular television series as The West Wing and 24, in Tom Clancy’s thrillers, and in recent films, plays, graphic novels and Internet cartoons, America has been led by an amazing variety of chief executives. Jeff Smith, assistant professor at the USC Marshall School of Business, examines the presidency’s everchanging place in the American imagination by examining plays of the 18th century to digital products of the 21st.

Laffit: Anatomy of a Winner

By Madelyn Cain AFFIRMED PRESS, $27.95

He was called the greatest jockey who ever rode, but few have known that Laffit Pincay Jr. was only months away from losing his wife to suicide, or that when he won the title of winningest jockey, he was the subject of an FBI investigation. Madelyn Cain, lecturer in USC College’s Master of Professional Writing Program, reveals Pincay’s triumphs and fiercest struggles: the famed races, the self-discipline, the cheating, betrayals and violence.

The Brightest Moon of the Century

By Christopher Meeks WHITE WHISKER BOOKS, $18.95

In his first novel, Christopher Meeks, lecturer in USC College’s Master of Professional Writing Program, introduces Edward, a Minnesotan shipped off to a private boys’ school. Readers follow Edward’s life from age 14 to 45 as he stumbles into high school romance, careens through college dorm life and becomes swept up in a tornado of love problems as a mini-mart owner in Alabama. l To see more recent releases by USC faculty, visit http://uscnews.usc.edu/inprint

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how he conceived, birthed and fostered his greatest invention – the Exploratorium, a San Francisco landmark that has enchanted millions of visitors, young and old, with the magic of scientific phenomena. “There was absolutely nothing like it anywhere,” says Cole of the 90,000-squarefoot facility, which she first saw soon after it opened in the early 1970s. At the time, she was a general-interest reporter, “completely uninterested in science,” she says. Her editor at the venerable Saturday Review had sent her to report on the strange new tenant in the stately Palace of Fine Arts complex. “I walked in and it changed my idea about science,” Cole recalls. “I almost couldn’t believe that all the stuff he was showing me was science, because it was all so intriguing and wonderful – like this big house full of great toys.” Today, there are interactive science museums the world over modeled on the Exploratorium – including one in USC’s backyard: the California Science Center. “It was, in effect, a playground,” writes Cole. “But in place of jungle gyms and slides were nifty gadgets and natural phenomena – rainbows and magnetic fields and electric oscillations. It was not so much a place as a way of being in the world – a verb rather than a noun: spin, blow, reach, vary, strum, look, throw, fiddle, watch, wonder.” as cole got to know Frank Oppenheimer,

her fascination grew: “He was probably the most interesting person I had ever known.” She started writing brochures and labels for the Exploratorium in her spare time and, pretty soon, she was hooked on science. She was already an established young writer, with a New York Times magazine cover story on world politics under her belt.

It was Oppenheimer who encouraged her to shift gears and become a science writer – something Cole has done with considerable success. She is the author of seven nonfiction books, including Mind Over Matter, The Hole in the Universe and The Universe and the Teacup – the latter achieving international bestseller status. A longtime science columnist with the Los Angeles Times, she has written for Smithsonian, Discover, Newsweek, The New Yorker, Newsday and Esquire. Her articles are frequently reprinted in anthologies of the year’s best science writing. Cole wrote Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens as a biography-memoir, framing the story of Frank Oppenheimer through the lens of her own relationship with the quirky physicist-educator-humanitarian. She was singularly well-placed for the task, having conducted many hours of taperecorded interviews with him in the years before his death in 1985. They had planned to co-author a book setting out Oppenheimer’s ideas – he had a great many of them, elaborate theses on topics ranging from science education to art-making to the path toward world peace. The “ideas” book never materialized, but Cole put her many hours of interviews to good use in Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens. The book’s title, incidentally, comes from an article Oppenheimer wrote in 1980, in which he recounted his childhood explorations in chemistry – mixing household detergents, spices and over-thecounter drugs in an empty milk bottle to see what would happen. “Of course, nothing happened,” he wrote. “I ended up with a sticky gray-brown mess…. Much research ends up with the same amorphous mess and is or should be thrown out only to then start playing around in some other way. But a research physicist gets paid for this ‘waste of time’ and so do the people who develop exhibits at the Exploratorium. Occasionally though, something incredibly wonderful happens.” The overarching goal of the Exploratorium, Cole explains, came directly out of his atomic bomb experience. “It was about empowering people to understand, making them feel confident in a world of science and technology and art, not to just listen to what the experts say. “He really believed that if the world was to stay out of war – that was his main purpose, to figure our ways that we could maintain a decent, civil and safe society – people had to feel confident that they could think for themselves.” – Diane Krieger

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NewRELEASES

Arts & Culture Music Man Music historian Bob Santelli’s passions play out in the ground-breaking new Grammy Museum in Los Angeles.

Story and song. In Bob Santelli’s eyes – or rather, to his ears – tunes and tales are inextricably linked. “Some of the best songs are narrative; they’re short stories put to music,” says the USC alum and former music journalist. “They leave you entertained but with a concept to ponder.” That’s the idea, too, behind the cuttingedge new Grammy Museum, where Santelli is executive director. “In essence, you have stories here at the museum,” he says, “stories into the creative process, the history of the Grammys, the technology behind the music.” Opened in December 2008, the interactive museum at L.A. Live lets visitors listen and learn about more than 100 genres of music, trace the journey of a song through the writing and recording processes, and ponder music’s profound influence on society. Touch-screen tables, soundproof booths, film clips and computerized maps encourage guests to “get underneath the music and get their hands dirty,” says Santelli, who also has Louis Armstrong’s lip balm, Johnny Rotten’s lyric sheets and JLo’s iconic green Versace

photo by philip channing

Song and story.

gown on display for good measure. “The whole point of all this is to inspire you to think critically about the way music impacts you personally, or impacts the culture.” As song-writing, guitar-strumming Jersey boy, Santelli longed for the West Coast. “In the late ’60s in Jersey, we were all surfers;

[picture this]

it was everyone’s dream to come to California,” says the lifelong Trojan football fan. He finally made it to USC in 1977, earning a master’s degree in American studies. His focus: the intersection of history, politics and culture with popular American music. “SC gave me the freedom to create my path,” says Santelli, who went on to teach at Monmouth and Rutgers universities. “I got the idea there: Why not incorporate elements of American music when you’re teaching history? When I taught the Depression, I taught it through the music of Woody Guthrie. When I taught World War I, I taught it through the music of George M. Cohan. And how could you teach the ’60s without using Bob Dylan?” It was at USC that Santelli began writing his first book, Aquarius Rising, a history of rock festivals. He went on to author and edit more than a dozen books about music, including volumes on the blues and rock’n’ roll drummers. He spent years interviewing legends like Bob Marley and The Boss. “I would interview Springsteen for hours about his songs, then we’d go out for pizza on his motorcycle,” he recalls. In 1993, Santelli became a curator at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. In 2000, he was named CEO of the Experience Music Project in Seattle, which convinced him that the future of museums is in hands-on – or headphones-on – participation rather than passive observation of artifacts. “He is the guru in visioning and developing music museums,” says Recording Academy CEO Neil Portnow, who hired Santelli to helm the Grammy Museum. “He is an educator, historian and expert on music, and he is completely passionate about and dedicated to this work.”

– Starshine Roshell

Compelling Celluloid

Writer/director Gregg Helvey MFA ’09 of the USC School of Cinematic Arts turned bricks into gold with his first film, Kavi, which won the top medal for narrative short film at the 36th annual Student Academy Awards in June. Kavi is the story of a young Indian boy who wants to play cricket and go to school, but is forced to work in a brick kiln as a modern-day slave. Kavi benefited from the expertise of other Trojan personnel, including director of photography John Harrison MFA ’08, sound designer

Gentry Smith MFA ’04, and composer and USC Thornton School of Music adjunct professor Patrick Kirst. The inspiration for the film came when Helvey learned that more slaves exist today than during the entire 400 years of transatlantic slave trade. Helvey spent a month location-scouting at brick kilns across India, meeting child workers. Helvey says: “It was an extremely emotional process, and I am so thankful that I can give a voice to the voiceless in this small way.” – Mel Cowan For more on Kavi, visit http://uscnews.usc.edu/arts/sca_alumnus_helvey_wins_student_oscar.html

U S C T roja n Fa m ily m a g a z i n e winter 2009

How One Kidney Became Four One Trojan family is part of a chain of Good Samaritans donating kidneys to strangers. The story of Keenan Cheung and

his new kidney began ordinarily enough. When Cheung, director of housing services at USC, began losing function of his kidneys, he was placed on dialysis. Because his wife, Jeanne, has an incompatible blood type and was unable to give him one of hers, he began the long wait for a donor. Cheung then did what hundreds of thousands of people in need of a kidney (or any other organ) have done: He turned to the universal donor system, which gave him an estimated seven to 10 years before an organ would be available through a deceased donor. The Cheungs also signed up with the UCLA Kidney Exchange program. Through this program, “donor chains” are created, matching people who are unable to receive a kidney from a willing Jeanne Cheung donated a friend or family member with othkidney to a stranger after ers in similar situations. husband Keenan, a USC employee, received one. There are multiple benefits of participating in this program. Recipients often receive kidneys sooner than they would through the uniCheung found himself in the middle of a versal donor list. In addition, they receive rare and amazing kidney transplant chain. kidneys from living donors, which on averCheung and at least three others, so far, age last longer than kidneys from deceased owe their newfound health to a Michigan donors. firefighter named Harry Damon. As of June, Cheung, the father of three Damon wanted to honor the memory of young boys, had been on dialysis for three his son, who died in a snowmobile accident and a half years, the first three of which at the age of 24, so he contacted UCLA to were relatively uneventful. But at the end see about becoming an altruistic donor. As it of last year, Cheung’s health took a downturned out, he was a match for Sheila Whitward turn. His dialysis method had become ney of Compton, Calif., whose son, Reginal ineffective, and his levels of creatinine, a Griffin, wanted to donate to her, but was chemical waste that is filtered out by the prevented from doing so because of incomkidneys, was up to 24 milligrams – stunning patible blood types. when one considers that an adult male with Once Whitney received Damon’s kida healthy set of kidneys has creatinine levney, the chain was set in motion. Griffin els between 0.6 and 1.2 milligrams. then donated a kidney to Cheung, the next Cheung was preparing to switch to a difcompatible person on UCLA’s donor list. In ferent type of dialysis in May. But then he turn, Jeanne Cheung gave one of her kidgot a phone call that would put his dialysis neys to a teacher in Commerce, who had days in the past: A compatible kidney donor been on dialysis for six years. Her friend had been located. And with that, Kevin then donated one of her kidneys, taking the

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chain up the coast to San Francisco, where all hope it will continue. The chain did more than free Cheung and the others from a life on dialysis: With each person who received a kidney through this chain, someone else awaiting a donor moved up a spot on the universal donor list, getting that much closer to receiving a transplant. Today, Cheung feels better than ever. Four hours after he entered the operating room on June 8, he had a new, functioning kidney that began working immediately. His energy has increased, color has returned to his face and he has slimmed down after losing nearly 14 pounds of toxins that had been trapped in his body. And in less than a week, his creatinine levels fell to 1.7 – a level he had not been at for nearly two decades. “I feel absolutely unbelievable,” Cheung says. “I truly feel like a new person.” Two days after his surgery, Cheung was able to meet both his kidney donor and Damon, the man who started it all. “Emotionally, you feel like you’ve known this person your whole life,” Cheung says. Cheung plans to keep in touch with Damon and Griffin, and a one-year reunion of all those involved in the chain is already in the works. “This whole experience has been completely overwhelming emotionally,” Cheung says. “There’s no other word for it. “But the true story is about all the donors. Without a wife who loves me so much, and without Harry, this never would have happened.” – Lauren Walser

overheard

›› “America has

two problems to deal with in the health-care debate, and only one relates to health care. The other is our increasing inability to have a conversation with each other without screaming, vilifying, threatening and boycotting.” – Susan Estrich of USC Law in an op-ed in the Miami Herald on contentious meetings over healthcare.

photo by roger snider

People Watch

A Conversation with Arthur c. bartner

“I’m married to this job. You can’t separate the band from me, me from the band.” So says Arthur C. Bartner after four decades leading the Spirit of Troy – possibly the most recogniz-

Playing the Field This doctor of music has operated with unparalleled spirit here longer than any president, dean, football coach or trustee.

able marching band in the world. Next May, USC will celebrate this milestone with a 40th anniversary gala dinner and concert at the Galen Center. A commemorative book also is in the works. USC Trojan Family Magazine’s Diane Krieger caught up with the legendary band director in mid-August, just before the weeklong band camp that puts hundreds of new Spirit of Troy hopefuls through the paces of Bartner’s signature “drive it” style. In an article that appeared five years ago, you said you would never leave this job. Do you still feel that way? My new expression is “I will not retire until Pete Carroll leaves.” I’m having too much fun. I’m 69 years old and I’m running around like a kid. It’s who I am. As long as Pete Carroll stays, I stay. Are you a sports fan? Big. Big. I was a basketball player in high school. My claim to fame was that I was an All-State trumpet player and an All-State basketball player. This is the perfect job, because it’s a great school of music and we have great teams. I can combine the physicality of the rah-rah sports with the musicianship. Plus, we’re in Hollywood’s backyard, where we do movies, TV shows and the Academy Awards. Where else in the country can you combine all this at a great university? Do you ever get to watch the games? Your back is turned when the plays are happening. One of my assistant directors, Ben Chua, who also conducts at the women’s basketball and women’s volleyball games, stands right in front of me. We have this little sign language. He’ll let me know if it’s a first down, if it’s a stop or if it’s a penalty. Sometimes I might sneak a look, but I really need to focus completely on the 300-plus kids in the band. Are there signals for each piece of music? Yes. This is “Tribute to Troy” (forms a T-shape with his hands). This is “Charge” (holds a fluttering hand in front of his face). This is the third chorus of “Fight On” (holds up three fingers). Do band players ever lose their focus because they’re watching the game? Absolutely. There are times, after a touchdown, when they’re so elated that they’re just jumping up and down. It’s a wonderful feeling. Gradually, I’ll get the section leader’s attention and blow the whistle. Hopefully after eight to 10 seconds, I can get them to settle down. What kind of music do you listen to? My roots are in classical music. On my iPod, I listen to Brahms, Beethoven, Mahler and Puccini operas, but my first love is big band. I grew up in suburban New Jersey, and I hung out in New York big band/jazz clubs during my high school years. But I make my living listening to what these kids bring in to me even though I’ve never heard of half the groups. This band is very much a student effort. The student leaders bring me show ideas. If you went to a student party, these would be the sing-along tunes: Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer,” KISS’ “Rock and Roll All Night,” Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin.’ “ How much of being a band player is about musicianship, and how much is about stamina, pride, hard work? In band camp, I talk about five things. No. 1, you’ve got to be a great player, a great musician. Second, you have to march great. We have a unique style in which we “drive” out the leg and there’s a horn swagger. It’s different than any other band in the country. The third goal is to be able to play and march at the same time. And this is real difficult, because you’re asking someone to memorize a piece of music, march to a spot where they do a dance step and play at the same time. The fourth thing is spirit. You want them to be the biggest Trojan fan in the stadium. And No. 5, they have to represent USC in its highest standards. They really have to be a great citizen. They have to go to class, get good

photo by philip channing

grades and represent the university well. Accountability. Spirit. Respect. This is the most visible band in this country, and if something funny happens even when they’re away from band, they’re going to be held accountable. We spend a lot of time talking about that. l

To read about Bartner’s strike at a Dodger game, visit http://uscnews.usc.edu/university/bartner.html

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Lab Work Digital Divide, Family-Style Time spent socializing with family decreases with Internet use, USC Annenberg researchers discover. of America’s Internetconnected households report erosion of face-to-face family time, increased feelings of being ignored by family members using the Web and growing concerns that children are spending too much time online. Researchers at the USC Annenberg Center for the Digital Future report the percentage of people who say they spend less time with household members since being connected to the Internet at home has nearly tripled, from 11 percent in 2006 to 28 percent in 2008. Total hours devoted to family socializing contracted sharply over this three-year period. Through the middle of the decade, shared family time averaged about 26 hours per month. By 2008, shared time had dropped by more than 30 percent to 17.9 hours. Reports of feeling ignored, at least sometimes, by family members using the Internet grew by 40 percent over the same period. Michael Gilbert, author of The Disposable Male and a senior fellow at the center, said diminishing family time coincides with the explosive growth of social networks. The reduced family-time Internet patterns More and more

Newsmakers ›› feathered friend The nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, was awarded to Joseph Medicine

Crow MA ’39 in August at the White House. Medicine Crow, who received an honorary doctor of humane letters from USC in 2003, is 95 years old and the historian of the Crow Indian Tribe. He is the tribe’s sole surviving war chief and the nation’s only surviving authentic plains war chief. His master’s is in anthropology.

›› Crowning glory David Warburton, professor at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and the USC School of Dentistry, received the insignia of an officer in the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire from the Princess Royal, acting on behalf of Queen Elizabeth II, at Buckingham Palace in June. “This is indeed a great honor,” says Warburton, adding that the Brits say the OBE is given for Other Blokes’ Efforts. “This means I owe a great debt of gratitude to everyone in the collective Childrens Hospital Los Angeles and USC family.”

apply across most demographic categories, although higher income households may be suffering greater family-time erosion: 35 percent report a reduction in face-to-face time. Women report being ignored by a family Internet user more often: Almost half said they are sometimes or often ignored versus fewer than 40 percent of men. Gilbert thinks this may reflect the varying emphases the sexes place on relationships, the balance women appear to maintain in their home computer use or the persistent call of their other home responsibilities. The center also has been tracking rising misgivings about the amount of time youngsters spend online. In 2000, 11 percent of respondents said family members under 18 were spending too much time online, a concern that grew to 28 percent by 2008. American families have always easily absorbed new technologies, Gilbert points out. “But the Internet delivers an engrossing interactive universe into our homes and demands much greater individual commitment.” This can wreak havoc with our personal boundaries, he says. – Justin Pierce

a former combat pilot, Marine Corps major general, veteran space shuttle commander – and a Trojan. Charles F. Bolden Jr. MS ’77, who served as a USC trustee from 2003 until he resigned to take the NASA appointment, was nominated for the NASA post by President Barack Obama. Bolden served in the Marine Corps for 34 years and is a former NASA astronaut, flying two shuttle missions as pilot and two as commander. l For daily updates on news at USC, visit http://usc news.usc.edu

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i l l u s t r at i o n b y m i c h a e l k l e i n, p h o t o o f m e d i c i n e c r o w b y A P / A l e x b r a n d o n

›› flying high The new chief of NASA is

Chunqi Jiang and Parish Sedghizadeh

ROOTING AROUND

Cool Plasma Packs Heat USC dentists and engineers find that tooth bacteria can be attacked – surprise! – by room-temperature plasma. like a tiny purple blowtorch, a pencil-sized plume of plasma on the tip of a small probe remains at room temperature as it swiftly dismantles tough bacterial colonies deep inside a human tooth. It’s not another futuristic product of George Lucas’ imagination – it’s the exciting work of USC School of Dentistry and USC Viterbi School of Engineering researchers looking for new ways to safely fight tenacious biofilm infections in patients. Two of the study’s authors are Chunqi Jiang, a research assistant professor in the Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering-Electrophysics, and Parish Sedghizadeh, assistant professor of clinical dentistry and director of the USC Center for Biofilms. “Nanosecond Pulsed Plasma Dental Probe” appears in the June issue of Plasma Processes and Polymers. Sedghizadeh explains that biofilms are complex colonies of bacteria suspended in a slimy matrix that grants them added protection from conventional antibiotics. Biofilms are responsible for many hard-to-fight infections in the mouth and elsewhere. But in the study, biofilms cultivated in the root canals of extracted human teeth were easily destroyed with the plasma dental probe, as evidenced by scanning electron microscope

photo by philip channing

Though it looks

images of near-pristine tooth surfaces after plasma treatment. Plasma, the fourth state of matter, consists of electrons, ions and neutral species and is the most common form found in space, stars and lightning, Jiang says. But while many natural plasmas are hot, or thermal, the

[mad men]

probe developed for the study is a non-thermal, room-temperature plasma that’s safe to touch. The researchers placed temperature sensors on the extracted teeth before treatment and found that the temperature of the tooth increased just five degrees after 10 minutes of exposure to the plasma, Jiang says. The cooler nature of the plasma comes from its pulsed power supply, with an average power of less than two watts. “Atomic oxygen [a single atom of oxygen, instead of the more common O2 molecule] appears to be the antibacterial agent,” according to plasma emission spectroscopy obtained during the experiments, she says. Sedghizadeh said the oxygen-free radicals might be disrupting the cellular membranes of the biofilms in order to cause their demise and that the plasma plume’s adjustable, fluid reach allowed the disinfection to occur even in the hardest-to-reach areas of the root canal. Given that preliminary research indicates that non-thermal plasma is safe for surrounding tissues, Sedghizadeh said he was optimistic about its future dental and medical uses. “Plasma is the future,” Sedghizadeh says. “It’s been used before for other sterilization purposes, but not for clinical medical applications, and we hope to be the first to apply it in a clinical setting.” “We believe we’re the first team to apply plasma for biofilm disinfection in root canals,” Jiang adds. “This collaboration is unique. We’re attacking frontier problems, and we’re happy to be broadening our fields.” – Beth Dunham

Gambling and Stress

Stressed out, Dude? Don’t go to Vegas. Research published July 1 in the journal PLoS One shows that men under stress may be more likely to take risks, correlating to such real-life behaviors as gambling, smoking, unsafe sex and illegal drug use. In contrast, stressed women moderate their behavior and may be less likely to make risky choices. “Evolutionarily speaking, it’s perhaps more beneficial for men to be aggressive in stressful, high-arousal situations where risk and reward are involved,” says Nichole Lighthall of the USC Davis School of Gerontology and lead author of the paper. The researchers asked participants to play a game called the Balloon Analogue Risk Task in which inflating a balloon earns money. Participants could cash out their earnings at any point in the game. However, the balloon would explode if it was inflated beyond its randomly determined breakpoint. In the control group, men and women displayed statistically similar levels of risk taking. However, women in the stressed group inflated the balloon more than 30 percent less often than their stressed male counterparts. – Suzanne Wu

For more news on research at USC, visit http://www.usc.edu/research

U S C T roja n Fa m ily m a g a z i n e winter 2009

WHEN EXPERIENCE COUNTS USC heart surgeons Vaughn Starnes, left, and Craig Baker perform a coronary artery bypass and mitral valve repair at USC University Hospital.

USC’s cardiac doctors are breaking down the barriers between subspecialties to come up with a unique treatment plan for each patient. by sara reeve and katie neith

How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?

ealing with heart trouble can be a scary process. Being overwhelmed by different doctors and different options and opinions can be even scarier. USC offers a solution. “Normally when patients go to see a doctor, they get different opinions from different doctors – maybe one is a surgeon, one is a cardiologist and one is an interventional cardiologist,” says Vaughn A. Starnes, founding director of the USC Cardiovascular Thoracic Institute and surgeon-in-chief of USC University Hospital and USC Norris Cancer Hospital. “Our goal in building the institute was to create an environment where a patient can come for treatment, knowing that a variety of doctors and specialists have collaborated to find the best possible option.” Founded in 2006, the innovative institute brings cardiothoracic and vascular surgeons, cardiologists, pulmonologists and basic scientists together to provide comprehensive, interdisciplinary patient care. Leslie Saxon, a renowned specialist in diagnosis and treatment of arrhythmias and chief of cardiovascular medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, says that treating a cardiac patient as a consumer sets USC apart from the field. “Let’s say a patient comes into an institution with an abnormal heart rhythm and sees a cardiologist,” she says. “For all sorts of economic or other reasons, a cardiologist may not want to refer that patient to a subspecialist who can cure that arrhythmia. We don’t have any of those sorts of barriers here.” In the case of a very common rhythm disorder called atrial fibrillation, all USC

patients are reviewed by a team of medical and surgical specialists who work together to plan treatment and follow-up care. This cooperation strives to ensure that a broad view is taken, and that the patient will have access to all available treatment options. “Often with patients with particularly complex disease, the best solutions for the patient require that we all work together,” says Saxon. “The patient may need surgery, and a procedure from a cardiologist and prescription. The patient may ultimately end up being treated by one of our vascular specialists who perform stent placement, and this person may be an interventional cardiologist, vascular or heart surgeon, depending on the details of that particular patient’s problem. We think that we have a model that works beautifully for patients.” When surgery is required, the institute’s

surgeons bring a lot of experience to the table. Under Starnes’ leadership, USC surgeons have performed more than 15,000 open-heart surgeries for valve repair and replacement and coronary artery bypass, and more than 10,000 surgeries for diseases of the lungs, esophagus and chest wall. According to Ray Matthews, professor of clinical medicine at the Keck School and director of interventional cardiology at USC University Hospital, one of the best examples of merging different techniques for better heart care is a growing interest in replacing heart valves without major surgery. He points out that expertise is still needed from surgeons to help guide interventional cardiologists in exploring new, minimally invasive options for valve replacement. “Heart treatment at USC is centered on what’s best for the patient, not on what I think I can do best,” says Matthews. “However, even if your care is patient-centered, you still have to get the right people on the bus, in terms of skilled physicians. And I think we have them.” Matthews is an interventional cardiologist, meaning he specializes in catheter-based treatments for heart disease. By inserting catheters into major arteries, such as the femoral artery in the thigh, he can reach the heart without the need for major surgery. “We are able to gain access to the circulation system and open up other arteries that may be blocked from supplying sufficient

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In addition to patient care, Cesario and his colleagues – including Saxon – have an active research program to evaluate new and better ways to treat atrial fibrillation. The doctors are also examining better ways to diagnose cardiac arrhythmias with wireless monitors and researching cutting-edge implantable devices that will be able to monitor left atrial pressure and deliver cardiac resynchronization for heart failure patients. OPTIONS FOR HEART PATIENTS Interventional cardiologist Ray Matthews says heart treatment at USC is centered on what’s best for the patient.

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lightheadedness.” Some common problems treated by cardiac electrophysiologists are atrial fibrillation – the most common arrhythmia, which can cause significant morbidity and mortality – and slow heart rhythms that require pacemaker implantation. “Cardiac electrophysiology fits into the larger institute because we focus on one particular heart problem, namely abnormal heart rhythms,” says Cesario. “We work closely with our colleagues in cardiology, cardiac surgery and vascular surgery to provide optimal patient-oriented care.”

The Heart of the Matter The USC Cardiovascular Thoracic Institute is housed on the USC Health Sciences campus, just three miles from downtown Los Angeles and conveniently located near the intersection of the 5 and 10 freeways. The institute is home to a full range of state-of-the-art cardiovascular programs and services, including: Adult Congenital Heart Disease Program: As more and more children born with congenital heart disease grow into adulthood, this program provides coordinated subspecialty care for those patients. Body Computing: The institute is a recognized leader in the use of implanted wireless devices that transmit up-to-the-second physiologic data to physicians, patients and patients’ loved ones. Robotic Surgery: Institute physicians and scientists conduct clinical and bench research to advance the use of robotic techniques in the fields of heart and lung surgery. For more information about services at the institute, visit www.DoctorsofUSC.com or call 1-866-764-CVTI (1-866-764-2884).

p r e v i o u s pa g e p h o t o b y p h i l i p c h a n n i n g, p h o t o b y b i l l y o u n g b l o o d

blood to the brain, kidneys and extremities,” he explains. Matthews and his team are also able to use interventional cardiology to close defects within the heart by placing specialized devices via catheters. In addition, they can perform diagnostic techniques that measure blood pressure and flow, and tell the narrowness of heart valves or arteries. Matthews enjoys working within the cardiovascular institute because of the unique framework that gathers medical specialists in heart care to work together, rather than compete for patients. “For the majority of patients, we get each other’s opinion to decide the best treatment plan,” he says. “This gives balance to the patients, as they aren’t pigeonholed into being treated by the first doctor they see.” Matthews emphasizes this collaborative spirit also is important in exploring new technologies. “It only makes sense that we take advantage of each other’s expertise,” he says. For David Cesario, a recent recruit to the Department of Medicine at the Keck School, heart care is all about making connections – electrical connections. As director of cardiac electrophysiology in the division of cardiovascular medicine, he provides clinical heart care by applying the science of treating the electrical activities of the heart. “Anyone who has an abnormal heartbeat – either too fast or too slow – can benefit from seeing a cardiac electrophysiologist,” says Cesario. “This can be anyone who feels extra or rapid heartbeats or notices a low pulse rate that can present as fatigue or

“At the cardiovascular thoracic institute we have a unique approach to patient care that is focused on the needs of each individual patient,” says Cesario. “We are attempting to break down the traditional barriers between subspecialties and have our cardiac surgeons, vascular surgeons and cardiologists work as a team to provide the optimal treatment plan for each patient we see.” For Bonnie Hawthorne, Cesario’s first patient upon his arrival at USC in 2008, his dedication to individual patients was evident from the start. “I’m dangerous with an Internet connection and came to him with a ton of questions,” says Hawthorne, who was successfully treated by Cesario for atrial fibrillation. “He met every single question with good

photo courtesy of michelle keogh, photo by bill youngblood

factual data, and was unbelievably kind and patient. He was my total hero.” The doctors who run the heart transplant program at USC University Hospital say that patient satisfaction is central to their success. “We have a family feel to our program,” says Mark Barr, co-director of cardiothoracic transplantation and associate professor of cardiothoracic surgery at the Keck School. “We steward patients and develop relationships with them and their families before, during and after surgery.” The USC heart transplantation program provides transplant services for patients with end-stage cardiac disease for whom other medical or surgical therapies are not advisable. Most transplant patients are otherwise healthy, are under the age of 70 and usually carry the diagnosis of cardiomyopathy or coronary disease. Collaboration with other disciplines through the institute has streamlined the care offered by the transplant program. “Having all of the specialty clinics in close proximity facilitates referrals and care between doctors, and makes things easier for patients,” says Barr. “A patient can see me, see Dr. Cesario, see Dr. Matthews, all in one day, moving from exam room to exam room.” Michelle Keogh, of Oceanside, Calif., was only 26 and three months pregnant when she had a heart attack in 2006. After numerous trips to her local emergency room, she was diagnosed with endocarditis, an infection of the lining of the heart. The condition destroyed her mitral valve. After giving birth to her daughter early, Keogh underwent multiple surgeries at a local hospital to replace the valve. Months of complications ensued before she was referred to the care of Barr and his team at USC University Hospital. Says Keogh: “I was so scared of a heart transplant, but then Dr. Barr said: ‘You will be followed at USC for the rest of your life. The sooner we get you wearing a Trojan sweatshirt, the better!’ For a patient who had seen so many doctors, it was a relief to know that there was one person who would be with me for the long haul.” Within three months, Keogh had a successful heart transplant surgery. “Dr. Barr and his team saw me as a whole person – a mother, a 26-year-old woman,” she says. “They thought about what I needed for my future, and how I would go on to care for my children. The other hospi-

CELEBRATING SUCCESS USC heart transplant patient Michelle Keogh shares the spotlight with her three children, from left, Savanna, 8, Christopher, 10, and Kaylee, 3, at a Rancho Cucamonga Quakes minor league baseball game in April 2009. Keogh threw out the first pitch to commemorate Organ Donation Awareness Month.

tals just saw me as a patient.” Patient satisfaction like Keogh’s would not be so high if the program did not offer outstanding outcomes. In a July 2009 report, the U.S. Transplant Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients announced that the heart transplant program at USC University Hospital has a statistically higher three-year survival rate than the national average. The report compiled risk-adjusted survival rates for the 125 heart transplant centers across the country, and USC was one of only three centers to achieve a statistically higher survival rating. This report marked the second year in a row that USC achieved a statistically higher survival rating. “Having patient survival rates statistically higher than the national average over multiple years speaks to our consistency of quality care,” says Barr. “Any program can have a good year, or even a bad year, once in a while. But year over year? That speaks to the fact

that we are doing a lot of things right.” Doing things right for patients is a key component to the continuing success of the institute, according to Starnes, who is also chairman of the Department of Surgery at the Keck School. “Because of our cooperative process, our patients are very satisfied and our patient volumes have grown,” he says. “We have created a user friendly environment that gets the best efforts out of our doctors and brings the best results to our patients.” l Additional reporting by Cheryl Bruyninckx. If you have questions or comments on this article, please send them to magazines@usc.edu.

SPECIALISTS WORKING TOGETHER Leslie Saxon, a specialist in diagnosis and treatment of arrhythmias, says heart patients at USC are reviewed by a team of medical and surgical specialists who work together to plan treatment and follow-up care.

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Wıth a

Song ın their by julie riggott

Hearts

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As it celebrates its 125th anniversary, the USC Thornton School of Music continues its trailbreaking ways by introducing a new program in popular music performance, a genre that includes basically everything on the radio today: pop/rock, folk/rock, R&B/urban, Latin/salsa, blues, country and more.

Like Franz Schubert’s Eighth or Anton Bruckner’s

Ninth, the USC Thornton School of Music is an unfinished symphony. The composition began in 1884, and over the past 125 years, accomplished students, faculty and alumni have been adding to the score, building and solidifying the school’s reputation as one of the country’s finest institutions of music education. It consistently ranks in the top 1 percent of music schools and conservatories nationwide. The difference between this symphony and the great unfinished works of Schubert or Bruckner is that the school is a continually evolving piece, never meant to be finished. USC Thornton and its creative composers are using this milestone to plan for the next 125 years. “This whole anniversary is about the future and what we do to prepare the school for 2134, which is our 250th anniversary,” says an enthusiastic Robert Cutietta, who has been dean of USC Thornton for the past seven years. New developments include increasing 28

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Singers Rozzi Crane, left, and Meghan Mahowald, bassist Nick Campbell and drummer Logan Shrewsbury in a studio classroom. Photograph by Mark Berndt

the school’s physical size by 50 percent; adding several new distinguished faculty members, including a Pulitzer Prize winner and internationally renowned performers; inaugurating four undergraduate programs – including the high-profile popular music performance program – and announcing that the school’s $125 million capital campaign goal has been exceeded. “All of the new curricula have been timed to unveil during our 125th anniversary celebration,” Cutietta says, “as a statement that, yes, we’ve been great for 125 years, and we are full speed ahead, folks.”

USC Thornton has been known for years as a premier nurturer

of classical musicians, with faculty that have included such lumi naries as Jascha Heifetz, Gregor Piatigorsky, Eudice Shapiro, William Primrose, Gwendolyn Koldofsky, Ingolf Dahl, and Eleonore and Alice Schoenfeld, along with modern-day artists and teachers such as Midori Goto, Stephen Hartke, Morten Lauridsen, Daniel Pollack, Pepe Romero and Carl St.Clair. Since its inception in the early 1900s, the USC Thornton Symphony has been a visible artistic presence in the Los Angeles music community, as have the

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musical milestone school’s other orchestras and ensembles. The school also is known for being forward-looking, especially in the way it introduces programs that are often the first or among the earliest of their kind in the nation. Examples include the departments of keyboard studies/keyboard collaborative arts (established in 1947), classical guitar (1968), jazz studies (1980) and music industry (1985). Now, it’s the new popular music performance prog ram – including the school’s first-of-its-kind drum lab – that is the talk of the academic world. This genre includes basically everything on the radio today: pop/rock, folk/rock, R&B/urban, Latin/salsa, blues, country and more. The program’s novel curriculum focuses on live performance and songwriting as well as the business side of music, and includes the school’s first drum proficiency requirement. The 25 pioneering students, selected after live auditions on campus, include vocalists, singer-songwriters, drummers, keyboardists, guitarists, bass players and even a rock violinist. As high school students, these musicians formed their own bands, booked their own tours and recorded their own music. “Rather than coming up through the school orchestra, band or choir program, they probably had to create their own musical opportunities,” says Chris Sampson, director of the program and associate dean of the school. Like many of the students in the first class, Rozzi Crane, an 18-year-old singer-songwriter from San Francisco, already has quite a résumé. In addition to singing with her own band and other groups, she has recorded with producers and created a three-

song demo of her own material with high-profile musicians Mic Gillette (Tower of Power) and Tal Morris (Creedence Clearwater Revisited). Crane was accepted at a number of other schools, but USC Thornton was an easy choice. “It seemed like a dream come true that there was a program starting the year I would be entering college centered in arguably the Mecca of the music industry and designed to prepare musicians for legitimate careers in popular music,” she says. Interestingly, both Sampson and Cutietta are the kinds of musicians who would have benefited years ago from a program such as this. In high school, Sampson was a rock and roll drummer who toured on the East Coast. Since continuing on that path was not an option in any university, he taught himself classical guitar. He earned his BA and MA degrees at USC and reinvented himself as a songwriter and a player of roots music and American blues. Cutietta originally wasn’t planning on going to college because he was busy playing electric bass in shows and in studios. “It drove me crazy that I could not major in the instrument I was making a living at,” he says. Sure, the bass guitar was fairly new when he was in school in the early 1970s, he says, but now? “We are discriminating against a whole group of instruments. There should be a place for serious musicians who prefer this style and these instruments. Chopin was a fabulous musician and composer, but if you’re an electric guitarist, playing Chopin makes no sense whatsoever.” Personal experiences aside, there were changes taking place on campus that helped propel the idea. For one, Sampson noticed that the jazz and classical students were “looking to diversify

“It drove me crazy that I could not major in the instrument

USC Thornton dean Robert Cutietta says he should walk the halls with an autograph book, to snare the many superstars on the faculty.

their skill set so that they could cross genres.” Enrollment in the songwriting classes started to skyrocket, and musicians were increasingly seeking out showcases and other performance opportunities. “You could tell they wanted guidance, some direction in how to do this,” Sampson says. Many in the music world see this as an idea whose time has definitely come. Neil Portnow, president and CEO of the Recording Academy and the Grammy Foundation, applauded USC Thornton for initiating the new program. Prefix magazine opined: “There have been classes and themes of study for pop music and rock in many universities, but this is the first time you can major in pop music. This probably means the floodgates will be opening soon. Cue references to the Thornton School being the

photo by Mark Berndt

I was making a living at,” says Dean Robert Cutietta, who grew up playing bass guitar. “We are discriminating against a whole group of instruments.”

The school’s namesake is music lover Flora L. Thornton, who is shown here enjoying its 125th birthday bash on Sept. 10.

School of Rock.” Even the school’s namesake, Flora Thornton, is on board with the program. Although she was “rather surprised” to hear about the new major, she thinks the dean is doing a remarkable job and says she hopes he will never retire. “I’ve been exhilarated by the success of the school,” she says. Maybe her support shouldn’t come as a surprise, since Thornton, who never misses an opera production at USC’s Bing Theatre and is a founding angel of the LA Opera, admits that classical is not her favorite genre. What is? “Well, I hate to tell you, but popular music and jazz,” she says. “I’ve always loved jazz.” in music education to realize that the program was going to be controversial. The obvious question was: Is popular music as serious a discipline as classical and jazz? Answers Sampson: “What’s happened now is that it’s been determined that popular music is not a fad. It’s developed its own body of literature, so there are entire aspects of ethnomusicology devoted to the study of popular music. We do have a body of re search we can draw from.” Cutietta says some of the faculty debates about the program remind him of the controversy sparked by the creation of the scoring for motion pictures and television department in the 1980s. Although it took years for that subject to gain acceptance in aca demia, now schools all over the country include it. The same thing happened with the jazz program, Sampson recalls. “I think now that we’ve opened the floodgates, we’re going to see schools following and rushing to try to catch up,” Cutietta says. Cutietta believes it was natural that USC Thornton should have been the first with popular music. He explains: “If most schools had done this, they would have been seen as selling out. I think it took a school of our stature to do it because our classical and opera and jazz areas are so strong that no one could ever say that about us. “We have faculty in our orchestral area like Midori and Ralph Kirshbaum, and we have people in opera like Rod Gilfry. These are legendary names. So we needed to make sure that area was really strong and above reproach so people would take us seriously in this other.” Ara Guzelimian, provost and dean at the Juilliard School, says he admires Cutietta and his colleagues for taking the lead with this program and believes music schools everywhere will be watching with great interest. “Los Angeles, with everything it offers in music and media, is a very natural testing ground for a popular music program in a university setting,” says Guzelimian, who spent seven years as program director at Classical KUSC radio. “I grew up in the days when Heifetz and Piatigorsky were on the USC faculty, and so I’ve long regarded the Thornton School

photo by Steve Cohn

It didn’t take a PhD

The Evolution of a Music School In 1884, students in USC’s music school had two choices: Study voice or piano. Now, they can choose from 18 programs (including two separate keyboard programs). Here’s a roadmap to the school, including what’s new. Choral/Sacred Music This 63-year-old department just inaugurated a new BA in choral music, the first of its kind in the nation. New faculty chair Jo-Michael Scheibe is adding a university chorus made up of students, faculty, staff and community members to the current four choirs, two of which are also open to any USC student. The department also has released a two-CD set, The Legacy of the USC Chamber Singers. Highlighting nearly 60 years of greatest hits from the department’s premier ensemble, the recordings start with the Charles Hirt years in 1952 and include music conducted by James Vail, Rodney Eichenberger, Paul Salamunovich and William Dehning. Classical Guitar Remember the big slide guitar lick at the beginning of each Looney Tunes cartoon? The musician who played it also launched USC Thornton’s classical guitar department. That would be E. C. “Duke” Miller, guitar and lap-steel player who was the top staff guitarist for Warner Bros. studios. Teachers who have been with the program since the late ’60s include department chair James Smith and Pepe Romero, of the “Royal Family of the Guitar” Romeros. The classical guitar program spawned the Falla Trio and the Grammy-winning Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, two of whose members, William Kanengiser ’81 MM ’83 and Scott Tennant MM ’86, now sit on the other side of the desk as faculty. Composition Established in 1920, composition boasts the only two Distinguished Professors in the school: Morten Lauridsen and Stephen Hartke. Lauridsen, a three-time alumnus who has been on the faculty more than 30 years, is one of the nation’s most performed composers. He was named an “American Choral Master” by the National Endowment for the Arts in 2006 and received the prestigious National Medal of Arts in 2007. Hartke was inducted into the highly selective American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2009. His new organ symphony, commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, pre-

mieres in 2010. Student composers get to hear their works performed in various concerts and by the USC Thornton Contemporary Music Ensemble. Under the direction of prolific composer Donald Crockett ’74 MM ’76 since 1984, this top-notch ensemble has worked with the likes of Steven Stucky and Chinary Ung, and performed in the LA Phil’s Green Umbrella new-music series.

Conducting/Ensembles With classical, jazz and vocal ensembles cranking out more than 500 concerts on campus each year, there is no shortage of performance opportunities for USC Thornton students. The flagship USC Thornton Symphony, conceived in the early 1900s and with principal conductor Carl St.Clair and resident conductor Sharon Lavery at the helm, works with the world’s most esteemed conductors, composers and musicians, such as Yo-Yo Ma, Isaac Stern and Esa-Pekka Salonen. The USC Trojan Marching Band, directed by Arthur C. Bartner, is also something of a phenomenon, having performed at every USC football game since 1987, in nine major films (including Forrest Gump) and at Academy and Grammy award shows, including one with Radiohead in 2009. Early Music Some of the most gifted musicians at USC Thornton can be heard in the USC Thornton Baroque Sinfonia, which specializes in music from the 17th through mid-18th centuries. Adam Gilbert, the leader of the ensemble and director of the early music program, strives to make that era accessible with concerts and interactive events across campus. Talk about unique talents: Gilbert is an expert in the recorder, historical double reeds and Renaissance shawm (ancient oboe). He also plays Renaissance bagpipe and is a founding member of the 15th-century music ensemble Ciaramella. A degree in early music is far from a historic relic. Graduates participate in everything from solo and ensemble performances and researching, performing and directing historically accurate musical arrangements. Continued on page 32

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Jazz Studies And the Grammy goes to … USC Thornton faculty. Bob Mintzer, longtime member of the Grammy-winning Yellowjackets, fills the Bowen H. “Buzz” McCoy and Barbara M. McCoy Endowed Chair in Jazz. Since he also earned a Grammy with his Big Band, it’s fitting that he leads the flagship USC Thornton Jazz Orchestra, which focuses on the swinging style of the classic big bands. Peter Erskine, another multiple Grammy winner who has played on more than 500 albums and film scores, was instrumental in the creation of the new Roland Drum Lab. (See story at right.) The faculty jazz quartet with Erskine on drums, Mintzer on saxophone, new department chair Alan Pasqua on piano and Darek Oles on bass plays to critical raves. Pasqua and Erskine earned a Grammy nomination for their trio album (with Dave Carpenter), Standards, in 2008. Keyboard Studies & Keyboard Collaborative Arts In this program, aspiring pianists are able to develop their skills as solo artists. But since not all 88-key players dream of becoming the next Lang Lang, the department offers a collaborative arts program, allowing students to concentrate on ensemble work and study with faculty members in the strings, vocal arts and opera departments, among others. The collaborative program was the first in the world when it was established in 1947 by Gwendolyn Koldofsky. Keyboard faculty include renowned artists such as chair Alan Smith, who holds a named chair as the Marian Douglas Martin Master Teacher, and Daniel Pollack, known to classical music audiences worldwide for more than 50 years. Music Education It used to be that only students who graduated from four-year programs aimed at training them to be high school band, orchestra or choir directors could go into a master’s program in music education. USC Thornton dean Robert Cutietta, an expert in the field, thought that system was outdated. So the program was converted to a fifth-year master’s degree program open to all music graduates who want to become teachers. Now other schools, such as the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and the University of Utah, have adopted the innovation.

Music Industry It’s vital for musicians to become familiar with the business side of the industry. Department chair Richard McIlvery founded this groundbreaking department in 1985, using his experience as a guitarist, producer and engineer as well as his contacts in the industry to develop the curriculum. In one popular course, Ken Lopez’s Live Music Production, students promote and produce a concert. Graduates go on to success in myriad areas; alumni include a Grammy-winning producer and engineer, a manager of music production at Disney, and Ashley “Tåmar” Davis BM ’02, 2007 Grammy nominee (with Prince) for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group. Musicology This department offers a PhD in historical musicology, in which students can explore a wide range of musical forms. Faculty member Joanna Demers specializes in 20th- and 21stcentury popular music (and teaches a popular hip-hop class for undergraduates). Chair Bruce Alan Brown’s interests lie in late 18th-century opera and ballet. Adjunct professors cover everything from medieval to Armenian music. New to the faculty is Pulitzer Prize-winning music critic Tim Page, who offers a course examining composers outside of the mainstream, such as Spike Jones, John Cage and Meredith Monk. Organ Studies What can graduates do with a degree in organ studies? In addition to being a church organist and teacher, department chair Ladd Thomas has performed with orchestras around the world and recorded for various movie studios. Lawrence Strohm MM ’03, who frequently performs in holiday-themed productions at the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, Calif., helped assemble the Walt Disney Concert Hall organ. Among the school’s instruments available to students is a rare console with a pedal board, toe studs and expression boxes that move up and down to accommodate the height of the organist. Popular Music Performance Bass players in rock bands, vocalists who sing R&B, and other musicians outside the traditional classical and jazz genres now can earn a bachelor’s degree in popular music. The curriculum for the popular music perContinued on page 35

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as one of the important musical training grounds in the world.” Sampson and Cutietta have been working on this program for years, getting input from students, faculty and music professionals. Musicians Randy Newman and Steve Miller also contributed ideas, and Motown songwriting legend Lamont Dozier has been heavily involved in shaping the direction of the program. They discovered that a different approach was required to train musicians in this field. “If we built a rigid curriculum, it would be irrelevant in four or five years once the industry changed,” Sampson says. The solution was to build in a high degree of flexibility with electives, so that students can “craft much of their own curriculum to meet their goals.” Students can take advantage of USC Thornton’s location in a major research university and explore classes in USC’s School of Cinematic Arts and School of Theatre, as well as in the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism and USC Marshall School of Business. One of the program’s incoming freshmen, Sampson notes, already knows she wants to minor in

A Groovy Kind of Class Be they vocalists or violinists, all popular music majors have to pick up sticks. All of the new popular music performance majors at USC Thornton will be required to get behind a drumset for at least a couple of semesters. That means even singer-songwriters will learn to keep the beat, improvise drum fills and bang out original solos in the school’s new Roland Drum Lab. The drum lab, a room in the Music Practice and Instructional Center building with nine electronic drum kits, is the first of its kind. So, why should students who have no aspiration to follow in the footsteps of, say, Phil Collins, Ringo Starr or John Bonham have to learn the drums? “Time awareness and, for lack of a better word, groove, being able to really feel the rhythm, is critical for a successful popular musician,” says Chris Sampson, program director. “There is no better way to get that training than to have the visceral experience of playing the drums and feeling that sense of time.” Apparently, it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that groove. It is wisdom gleaned – with a tip of the hat to Duke Ellington – from jazz, the genre from which popular music evolved. For those who need a formal definition, “groove is rhythm that makes the music feel good,” explains Peter Erskine, the two-time Grammy-winning drummer on the jazz studies faculty who developed the curriculum.

Erskine literally wrote the book on groove, and his Time Awareness for All Musicians is one of the texts used in the drum lab. In addition to learning about the evolution of popular music and the history of the drumset, which arrived with “the dawn of the jazz age,” Erskine says, the most important thing students will take away from the class is a better understanding of rhythm and beats. It was jazz guitarist Pat Metheny, who taught master classes at the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance when it was at USC, who suggested the idea of a drum lab to Dean Robert Cutietta. The dean’s immediate response? “Duh! Of course we should,” Cutietta recalls with his characteristic sense of humor. “All major music programs at any college or university require piano proficiency, the piano being viewed as the granddaddy of all instruments,” Erskine says. “Well, in jazz and popular music, the drums are really the granddaddy because the music is defined by its rhythm. “The best musicians I’ve known throughout my career – no matter whether they played piano, bass or saxophone, for example – they were all competent if not excellent drummers. This would include Chick Corea, Jaco Pastorius, Michael Brecker, USC’s own Bob Mintzer, to name a few – even the Beatles. You

musical milestone international relations. And he is particularly excited about plans to partner with USC College’s English and creative writing departments, which will open sections of their creative writing and poetry workshops to the lyricists in the popular music program. Tim Page, who won a Pulitzer Prize for music criticism while at The Washington Post, is a new faculty member in the program with a joint appointment at USC Annenberg. While his background and writing focus are in classical music, he says that “open-mindedness” is important to him. “One of the things that I want to try to work against is the whole idea that there are only five great composers and then 10 composers who are almost as great – I want to have people listening to everything,” says Page, whose course, called Musical Visionaries, features composers outside of the mainstream. of the curriculum will be courses in music industry and technology. For those courses, USC Thornton will draw on its already very strong music industry program,

photo by Mark Berndt

Another substantial part

know, Paul McCartney played drums on quite a few Beatles tracks.” Incoming popular music major Bryan Jarett of Vernon Hills, Ill., a drummer who has played with a jazz combo and a death-metal band, was impressed with the faculty he has already met, including Erskine and Ndugu Chancler, for whom he played during his audition. “The drum instruction doesn’t get any better than at USC,” he says. “It’s like the major league of drummers.” The drum lab is one of those ideas that, once executed, makes you wonder why it was never done before. The answer is simply one of practicality. “It was really impossible before because you can’t have 10 drumsets in a room,” Sampson says. “It would be pandemonium.” The Roland TD-9 V-Drums solved that problem, and Erskine’s new relationship with the Roland Corporation set the wheels in motion. For the drummer wearing headphones, the V-Drum sounds like a real drumset, while it remains relatively quiet to the outside listener. In a large room, eight student kits are arranged in a semicircle around the instructor’s kit. On the last day of classes for a pilot course in the spring, the students and teaching assistant Jake Reed played a beat in unison and took turns breaking in with an improvised solo. “The instructor can listen to and address each student discretely, tapping into one, two or any combination,” Erskine explains. “If some students are having a better day, or are slightly more advanced with some challenge or exercise, the

which enrolls 38 percent of the school’s undergraduates. Richard McIlvery, who was a professional musician, producer and engineer for years before joining the faculty, created the program in the mid-1980s to address the realities of the industry. “If you don’t know how to promote yourself and invoice, and how the business works, you’re really at a loss,” he says. “Most of us in music have a disease, it’s a terminal disease, that makes us play music, and we completely disregard logic or finance or anything else.” Sampson says a music industry course called Live Music Production was one of the inspirations for the popular music program. In this real-world, hands-on course, developed by Ken Lopez in 1996, students analyze concert revenue streams, investigate the production capabilities of local venues, network with industry guest speakers and learn how the concert business works. For the final project, students put on a show. Each small group of students has to find the talent, wrangle a deal with a venue and promote a show. The stakes are high because the students have no budget and at least need to break even. Lopez has attended

Peter Erskine (standing) and TA Brian Carmody (foreground) teach non-drummers how to keep the beat in the new digital lab.

instructor can say, ‘Why don’t you guys go to the next exercise or page? And Sarah, Bill and Tom, let’s stick with this and let me hear each of you do it.’” The “brain of the drumset” stores play-along material (which students upload with a USB stick), allows students to record what they’re playing and has a metronome. “The V-Drum is a much more developed idea than samplers,” Erskine says. “It uses those elements but creates computer models of drums in any number of situations

real or imagined.” That means the kit can sound like a jazz drumset, a rhythm-and-blues drumset or a heavy-metal drumset, for example, and the size of the drums, drum heads and even the size of the room they’re being played in can be changed. “Each student has at his or her fingertips 50 drumsets in 50 different environments,” Erskine says. Mihir Sheth, currently a sophomore majoring in computer science/ games, signed up for the course last spring when he noticed Erskine, whose drumming he admired and

whose signature sticks he’d been using for years, was teaching it. Plus, it got Sheth access to a drumset, a luxury he didn’t have in the dorms. “This lab is open all the time,” he says. “I would just come in here for hours during the week and play.” Other students had little or no experience with the instrument. Erskine was thrilled to be attracting students from across campus, and sections of the course are open to all majors. “I think it’s just what the world needs: more drummers.” – Julie Riggott

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musical milestone as many as 16 shows in one semester. One night, he says, his students had four shows on the Sunset Strip, at major venues such as the Key Club, the Roxy and the Viper Room. “They are graded not only on how successful it was in terms of attendance, but also on how well it was promoted, how well they worked as a team, how well they shared responsibilities and kept to production schedules,” Lopez says. “It’s like a little business incubator; it’s very entrepreneurial. I believe that is the future not only of the live music industry but also of the music industry in general. It will require that these young people make their own way.” Sampson says all of the incoming popular music students are passionate about being on stage, as well they should be. But they might end up on different paths. “The performance part of it that we see on television is the top of a very broad pyramid,” he explains. “And while I fully expect that a good percentage of these students are going to graduate and be successful performers – I actually have zero doubts about that – I also expect that there is going to be a good number of them that are going to find passion in being music directors, in being arrangers, in working in publishing, all of which is going to draw on the education they receive here.” So what were those auditions like? With the popularity of American Idol, you probably can’t help but imagine at least a few embarrassingly bad performances. Forget that notion. Only the cream of the crop was invited after submitting a video. Vocalist Crane had a revelatory experience. “When asked about my musical influences, I named various artists including Joss Stone. Chris then asked me if I liked the song “Spoiled” that is

on one of her albums, and I said that I did like the song and that it’s a song that I’ve performed before. Chris pointed to the guy sitting next to him and said, ‘He wrote it.’ It was then that I really knew what kinds of heavy hitters I was dealing with.” The guy who (with his son Beau) wrote “Spoiled” for the English soul singer is Lamont Dozier, the Motown songwriter who, coincidentally, was also a guest judge on American Idol. If students are going to learn anything about songwriting, they should learn it from him. Dozier, along with Eddie and Brian Holland, created the Motown sound in the ’60s and ’70s, producing 54 No. 1 and 78 Top 10 hits for groups such as the Supremes, the Four Tops and the Temptations. Already in the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and the recipient of its Johnny Mercer Award this June, Dozier has worked more recently with Phil Collins, George Benson and Solange Knowles, among many others, and opened a Broadwaybound musical in San Diego this summer, for which he and the Holland brothers wrote the music and lyrics. Dozier will be on campus three or four times a semester to pre sent master classes as the program’s first artist-in-residence. As with the music industry program , jazz studies overlaps

with popular music. The drum lab serves both departments, and new jazz studies chair Alan Pasqua sees the two interfacing in many ways because the genres are not so clear-cut any more. “I see the lines are getting more blurry with each and every year,” says Pasqua, whose career has been in popular music. He was a keyboardist with Bob Dylan’s band and with Santana for

“If we built a rigid curriculum, it would be irrelevant in four

Chris Sampson helped build the popular music performance major, overseeing the metamorphosis of the new drum lab.

a couple of years, and has played on hundreds of Top 10 hits. “I think that’s a really good thing – the crosspollination, if you will, of the cultures – and it can only make all these different musical genres that much more interesting.” “We have faculty in the jazz department who are not only extraordinary educators, but also extraordinary jazz artists in their own right,” he says, adding that is one reason the department ranks as one of the best. The newest faculty member is Grammy-winning saxophonist Bob Mintzer, a longtime member of the Grammy-winning Yellowjackets. He and the rest of the faculty juggle touring and recording with teaching, and often play together on CDs. “Now with Bob Mintzer and Alan and myself and bassist Darek Oles,

p h o t o b y d i e t m a r q uis t o r f

or five years once the industry changed. Electives allow students to craft much of their own curriculum to meet their goals,” says Sampson.

who’s coming in to replace John Clayton, our own faculty quartet is just ridiculous, as good as any band playing anywhere,” says drummer Peter Erskine. “This is very exciting.” new faculty in all areas of the curriculum is always, he says, to match the quality of the faculty already here; this is particularly true in the school’s long-established classical music programs. “The Thornton School has a wonderful past,” he says. “Everyone knows that Heifetz taught here, Piatigorsky taught here. You hear these things all the time. It’s a wonderful tradition. “But you know what? That happened way before any of the current students were born, and before some of their parents were born. Those were the heydays in the ’60s, early ’70s. And we have wonderful faculty here now.” Cutietta’s “wonderful faculty” includes National Medal of Arts recipient Morten Lauridsen and American Academy of Arts and Letters member Stephen Hartke, both composers of considerable renown, as well as international star Midori, who holds the Jascha Heifetz Chair in Violin and chairs the strings department. New recruits from the international stage include cellist Ralph Kirshbaum, violinist Hagai Shaham and opera star Rod Gilfry. All of these artists, at the tops of their fields, cited the school’s outstanding reputation and distinguished faculty as reasons for coming on board. Baritone Gilfry, who built a reputation as a Mozart specialist, is also well known for introducing roles in new operas. In his first year as the Stephen Crocker Professor in Voice, he organized, with Midori, a master-class series funded by the Los Angeles Philanthropic Committee for the Arts. With that series, her work with student quartets and the Midori Center for Community Engagement (a resource, research and training center bringing music education to area youth), Midori has demonstrated a strong commitment to student learning. Back in his office, with a bust of Stravinsky behind him, Cutietta says, “I often like to say I feel that I should walk the halls with an autograph book because we have so many superstars on our faculty.” It’s not a far-fetched idea. A couple of years ago, Cutietta started asking celebrities who visit USC Thornton to autograph things. On his bookcase are batons signed by John Williams and Zubin Mehta and a Beach Boys Pet Sounds CD signed by Brian Wilson, who received the USC Thornton Legacy Award at the annual Charles Dickens Dinner last year. Leaning against the side of that bookcase is Pat Metheny’s guitar synthesizer. Scattered about the room are a Yo-Yo Ma cello, a Midori violin and a toy piano signed by Randy Newman. Maybe there’s a USC Thornton Rock Café in the future? All those pieces of music history could be displayed, and celebrity faculty – and students, including the new popular music performance majors – could perform there. Cutietta points out there really isn’t a good place to do that on campus right now. But he’ll keep adding to the collection and figure something out. “I don’t like passing up opportunities,” he says. It sounds like the USC Thornton symphony remains, happily, unfinished. l Cutietta’s goal in recruiting

If you have questions or comments on this article, please send them to magazines@usc.edu. Julie Riggott is a freelance writer and the creator and editor of http:// CultureSpotLA.com, which covers arts and culture in Los Angeles. This is her first piece for USC Trojan Family Magazine.

Continued from page 32 formance major is as rigorous as the school’s classical and jazz programs; it includes courses in music industry and technology as well as theory and history. Open to instrumentalists, vocalists and songwriters in pop/rock, folk-rock, R&B/urban, Latin/salsa and other styles, the program brought in its first students this fall.

Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television Los Angeles is the entertainment capital of the world and USC Thornton has strong connections with the industry, so students have unparalleled opportunities, including performing with the Hollywood Studio Orchestra, recording at scoring stages at major studios and interning with composers for popular television series. USC Thornton students are the only ones ever to record at George Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch. In partnership with the USC School of Cinematic Arts, USC Thornton students produce music for 14 courses, as well as for video games and more than 70 films each year. Faculty and alumni have racked up Oscar, Emmy and Golden Globe nominations and awards. Among the most famous alumni is James Horner ’74, whose scores can be heard on numerous major films, including Titanic. Strings Midori Goto, who has enjoyed international fame since the age of 14, is the chair of this department, one of the nation’s finest. She filled the Jascha Heifetz Chair in Violin in 2004 and takes education as seriously as she does performing, which she continues to do around the world. She created the Midori Center for Community Engagement, which reaches out to young musicians in the area, and regularly plays second fiddle with student quartets on campus. With the addition of Hagai Shaham and Ralph Kirshbaum, holder of the Gregor Piatigorsky Chair in Violoncello, there is a new era of superstar string players on the faculty. Plus, USC Thornton attracts other luminaries to campus to teach master classes, guest-conduct student ensembles and more. The USC Thornton Symphony, featured every year on the nation’s largest classical radio station, KUSC, has played with the best over the years: Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman, Isaac Stern, John Williams and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, among others.

Studio/Jazz Guitar E. C. “Duke” Miller, who founded the classical guitar program, also was instrumental in founding the studio/ jazz guitar department, which is a veritable hothouse of guitar styles. Faculty since its inception in the late 1970s have included world-class touring and recording artists; current chair Frank Potenza, protégé of the legendary jazz guitarist Joe Pass, toured with the Gene Harris Quartet. Alumni have gone on to play on film and television scores, with classical ensembles and as touring sidemen and recording artists, working with celebrities as diverse as Ray Charles, Frankie Valli, Madonna and Snoop Dogg. Vocal Arts and Opera How talented are the students in this internationally recognized program? Watch any of the fully staged operas produced twice a year with the USC Thornton Chamber Orchestra and under the guidance of music director Brent McMunn and resident stage director Ken Cazan, and it’ll be obvious. One current grad student already debuted with the Metropolitan Opera, and a 2009 grad is headed to Vienna as a Fulbright Scholar. The program also produced a graduate who has earned acclaim as a Mozart specialist and for introducing roles in new operas. Baritone Rod Gilfry, whose 1995 Don Giovanni CD earned a Grammy nomination, joined the faculty last year. Cazan, who has worked on operas and musicals around the world, recently unveiled a new project created with Billy Pace. Prodigy, a musical based on the life of artist Jean-Michel Basquiat with Latino, alternative and rock music, received its first reading at USC this year. Wind and Percussion This department knows how to make beautiful noise with instruments including the flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, saxophone, French horn, trumpet, trombone and tuba. The USC Thornton Wind Ensemble was the first to receive a standing ovation from the College Band Directors National Association, and the USC Thornton Percussion Ensemble has premiered many new works, including music written for it by such composers as Michael Abels and Erica Muhl. Graduates have joined major orchestras and ensembles and music school faculties, and work as recording artists for major motion picture and television studios. – Julie Riggott

U S C T r o j an Fami ly ma g a z ine winter 2009

The Fatal Journey of

Henry Hudson

On the 4ooth anniversary of Hudson’s arrival in New York, USC historian and anthropologist Peter C. Mancall has written a gripping tale of the unsolved mystery of the explorer’s death at the hands of his own men. by Peter C. Mancall with an introduction by Diane Krieger

Illustrations by Kent Barton

historian and anthropologist Peter Mancall appeared on The Daily Show in July, kicking off a book tour for Fatal Journey: The Final Expedition of Henry Hudson, host Jon Stewart confessed: “Here in New York, because of how city-centric we are, we assume that Hudson’s greatest discoveries and most adventurous times were here in New York City.” It’s a mistake that should be corrected during the flurry of festivities scheduled in 2009 to mark the 400th anniversary of Hudson’s arrival in New York. His most important find, it turns out, was not the 315-mile river that runs from the Adirondacks to the Big Apple, but rather the vast Arctic sea that bears the explorer’s name, Canada’s Hudson Bay. What was Hudson doing there? Searching for the philosopher’s stone of his age: the fabled Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific, a priceless shortcut to the coveted spice markets of the Orient. The man who discovered it first could claim it for his employers, and clear the way for future empires. (Jon Stewart quipped: “Why would English explorers search for these spice routes and yet never end up putting these spices into their food?” “I actually don’t have a very good explanation for that,” Mancall chuckled in response.) Today’s geography students know that before the warming of the planet there was no such thing as a Northwest Passage – if it existed, Teddy Roosevelt never would have bothered to build the Panama Canal. (In the past two years, the passage has become theoretically navigable, but difficult.) When

U S C T r o j a n Fa m i ly m a g a z i n e winter 2009

In Hudson’s day, investors and sea captains alike were convinced a route had to exist. The only other way to reach the East Indies was by sailing round the southern tip of Africa or South America – either way, a long and perilous voyage. Spanish and Portuguese vessels had been plying this route for more than a century, but the English and Dutch persevered in the quest for a short cut. The most direct route, hypothetically, would be across the North Pole. The next shortest would run through the waters north of Russia and into the Northwest Pacific. The third possibility would stretch through the interior of North America. From 1607 to 1609, Henry Hudson looked for all three of them. He probably would have kept on had not his fourth voyage ended in disaster.

What happened on Hudson’s final expedition aboard the Discovery, a small ship with a crew of 22 men and two boys? The explorer never returned to tell his tale. What is known is that after a winter locked in ice off the desolate coast of what is now James Bay, the crew mutinied. “They lowered Hudson, his 17-year-old son, and seven other men onto a small boat known as a shallop, which was tethered to the ship,” Mancall writes. “Then the rebels cut the rope and sailed away.” Mancall delves into the many facets of this un solved mystery – reconstructing a true story that’s part history and anthropology, part adventure travelogue, part whodunit, part courtroom drama, and never dull. Here, USC Trojan Family Magazine reprints selected excerpts.

The Mysterious Henry Hudson

ittle is known about Hudson’s life before his first attempt to navigate northward to Asia in 1607. The date and place of his birth remain uncertain, as does his family background. He was probably born in the 1560s, and it is possible that in 1584, when he was a teenager or young man, he lived in the small coastal hamlet of Longhoughton (or nearby Bowmer), midway between Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Berwick-upon-Tweed on the Northumberland coast of the North Sea, in an area then known as the East Marches. If this is the case, he could have become accomplished in navigating along rocky coastlines and coping with bitter winters

U S C T r o j a n Fa m i ly m a g a z i n e winter 2009

– two sets of skills that would have been of great use to someone who dreamed of leading a ship through the North Atlantic…. Hudson made his first confirmed appearance in the historical record in 1607 as the master of a ship called the Hopewell bound for China and Japan via the North Pole…. Presumably Hudson had been involved with No portraits of Hudson are known to exist, but posthumous renderings like this often appear in books about him. earlier ventures in exploraHakluyt’s manuscripts, and Purchas pubThe Americans tion, because it is virtually impossible that lished them in 1625. Hudson was not a parhe Halve Maen soon began to enan inexperienced sailor could have otherwise ticularly elegant writer, and Juet possessed counter Algonquians, probably Micobtained the financing to captain such an exminimal talents, though he could evoke a macs, the indigenous people of Nova pedition. Perhaps he had been involved in scene vividly and he kept a day-by-day ac Scotia…. By 1609 Europeans sailing across earlier English voyages in search of the Northcounting of much of the 1609 expedition. the Atlantic would have had some idea of west Passage, though no evidence confirms what these Americans would be like…. One such theories. But the silence in the record On April 6, 1609, Hudson embarked on his third morning, six of the locals paddled out to the is not impenetrable. It is likely that he was a voyage, departing from Amsterdam in the employ of ship. “We gave them trifles, and they eat and member of a family that had supported overthe Dutch East Indian Company and with a mixed drank with us” Juet reported, adding that the seas exploration and mercantile investments Dutch and English crew. “None of those who boardIndians told Hudson and his crew that they that stretched from Brazil to Newfoundland to ed the 80-ton Halve Maen (Half Moon) could were near copper, silver and gold mines. The Muscovy (Russia) in the middle decades of have known that they had joined what would become Europeans also learned that the Americans had the 16th century. Possibly born in London Hudson’s most famous journey,” writes Mancall. been trading with the French…. The men on (if not in Northumberland), Hudson had “They were a typical crew, able but anonymous; the Halve Maen began to trade with the locals three sons with his wife, Katherine: John, none was sufficiently famous to have had his portoo. But they were less diplomatic than the his father’s constant companion on his adtrait painted, not even Hudson himself.” FollowFrench and came to the conclusion that the ventures; Richard, who eventually traveled ing his investors’ directions, Hudson set out in Americans were going to rob them…. with the East India Company to Japan and search of a Northeast Passage, along the coast of On August 24, they reached 35º 41’ N, offIndia (where he died in 1644); and Oliver, Scandinavia and Russia. He soon realized that shore from the outer banks of modern North about whom little is known. History may not this was a dead end. With the consent of his men, Carolina and close to the site of the earlier, record much about Hudson’s private life, Hudson turned his ship around and made for the disastrous English settlement at Roanoke. but he left detailed narratives of his jourmid-Atlantic coast of North America. It was CapSoon the Halve Maen reversed directions and neys of 1607 (written with the assistance of tain John Smith (of Jamestown fame) who had headed north, reaching latitude 40º 30’ N, apa crewman named John Playse) and 1608. tipped Hudson off about a likely route emanatproximately the coastal border of present-day Robert Juet, his mate, wrote an account of ing from there. By early July, the crew had arrived New York and New Jersey, on September their 1609 voyage to the mid-Atlantic coast along the shore of Newfoundland. They proceeded 3…. That same day, the men of the Halve of North America. Those narratives fell into to cruise down the coast from Nova Scotia to the Maen came into contact for the first time with the hands of Richard Hakluyt, who in his outer banks of North Carolina, with a long detour the Munsees, a group of Delawares (also efforts to promote overseas exploration and into the undiscovered river that now bears Hudknown as Lenapes)…. Juet reported that commerce, passed them to Samuel Purchas, son’s name. the Munsees were happy to see the English the Anglican priest who acquired many of and offered the newcomers green tobacco in exchange for beads and knives. The English Peter C. Mancall is a professor of history and anthropology in USC’s College of Letters, Arts and Sciences found them “very civil” and noted their large and director of the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute. He is the author of four books and supply of maize.... But despite the peaceful is also writing American Origins, which will be volume one of the Oxford History of the United States. exchanges, the English and Dutch men on He has a Ph.D. in history from Harvard University.

U S C T r o j a n Fa m i ly m a g a z i n e winter 2009

The Fatal Journey of Henry Hudson

Shipboard mutinies have come to capture the modern imagination, thanks to the 1789 rebellion against William Bligh on the Bounty, but they were in fact very rare in Hudson’s age. the ship once again felt that the locals could not be trusted. The following day Hudson sent a party of five to the shore again to scout the territory. Their explorations went well for a while.… As they returned from rowing into what Juet called an “open sea,” they were approached by 26 local men paddling toward them in two canoes. As night fell it began to rain, and the Munsees attacked, injuring three sailors. One of them, a man named John Coleman, who had probably sailed with Hudson in 1607, took an arrow in his throat and soon died. They buried Coleman nearby, naming a point of the land after him, and maintained a vigilant watch the entire night. To Juet’s way of thinking, the assault they suffered was unprovoked. But the Europeans did not yet have sufficient understanding or knowledge of the Americans to identify precisely who among the indigenous peoples were their enemies. They continued to meet with the locals, some of whom even came on board the ship. The crew watched them warily, always trying to figure out which of them (if any) had killed their shipmate. Tensions grew over the next few days, and the English and Dutch decided the time had come to leave. They began to sail up a large river, presumably because they believed that it led to the Northwest Passage. As they ascended what would later become known as the Hudson River, the captain and his men met more of the Indians, some of whom offered not just tobacco but wheat, the kind of hospitality typically offered by the Algonquian peoples who controlled this part of the American mainland. “They appear to be a friendly people,” Hudson later remarked, “but have a great propensity to steal, and are exceedingly adroit in carrying away whatever they take a fancy to.” The assault that took Coleman’s life in Sep tember confirmed the crew’s misgivings about Americans. Thereafter, even peaceful meetings with locals heightened their anxiety. On Sept. 9 the Europeans, fearful that two canoes filled with men aimed to attack them, tried unsuccessfully to capture several of the locals. Three days later the men of the Halve Maen faced the largest group of Algonquians they had

yet encountered when 28 canoes carrying men, women and children paddled out to the ship. Juet believed they had come “to betray us.” But the Halve Maen anchored and the two parties did trade with each other, presumably on the shore. The sailors acquired beans and oysters from the Indians, and Juet was impressed with the Americans’ yellow copper pipes. By late September, the Halve Maen had ventured as far as it could up the great river. Hudson had dispatched a small group to paddle upriver to take a sounding, and they returned with the news that only 25 miles farther upstream the river was only 7 feet deep. At that moment, Hudson and the others knew that this could not be the Northwest Passage, a least not a channel deep enough for an oceangoing ship. On the 23rd, the men turned the ship around near modern-day Albany and began to retrace their route downstream. … On Oct. 1, the crew hosted visitors whom Juet identified only as the “people of the Mountain.”… The Europeans purchased some small skins from them. As the group remained on board, Juet wrote, one local man paddled his canoe close, leaped onto the rudder of the Halve Maen, and climbed into the window of the cabin, where he stole Juet’s pillow, two bandoliers and two shirts. One of the sailors shot him in the breast and killed him. The other visitors then immediately jumped off the ship into the river. The English gave chase, leaping into a shallop, and one of the Indians grabbed hold of their rowboat and tried to overturn it. The ship’s cook chopped off the man’s hand with a sword, and the man soon drowned. The others swam away. The Europeans had seen enough. They mounted the Halve Maen and hurried downstream.

Still determined to find the elusive Northwest Passage, Hudson returned to America the following spring, this time taking a northerly route toward Davis Strait, up the west coast of Greenland. Forty years earlier, English explorer Martin Frobisher had led three expeditions into these frigid waters and come up empty. Hudson was determined to do better. On April 17, 1610, he led the Discovery out of the docks at St. Katherine’s toward his destiny.

The men of the Discovery had signed on for a journey they believed would take them relatively quickly through the Northwest Passage and to the South Sea. But by the time they reached the southern reaches of James Bay, they had been away from home for six months. All of them knew there was no hope for a return to England before the next summer. On Nov. 1, the crew steered the Discovery toward what would become its winter home. By Nov. 10, James Bay had iced over and the ship could not escape. In the middle of November, John Williams, the ship’s gunner, died. The voyage’s chronicler, Abacuk Pricket, did not explain the circumstances, noting only that “God pardon the Masters [Hudson’s] uncharitable dealing with this man.” No account survives of what happened to the men on the Discovery during the brutal months from November 1610 to June 1611. But Pricket’s journal – written after the fact, no doubt with an eye toward keeping himself free of the hangman’s noose – supplies a version of the events. By mid June, the ice had thawed and the Discovery was free. Two weeks later, just as Hudson would have been making his final calculations to sail his ship toward the East Indies, the angry men rebelled.

Mutiny

hen morning broke, Bennet Math ews went up on the deck to fetch water for his kettle. Immediately the rebels shut the hatch beside him, keeping him away from the others. Greene and one of the others pulled Staffe aside to tell him about what was going on. Hudson then emerged from his own cabin, and Wilson ambushed him and tied his hands behind his back. Hudson demanded to know what was going on. “Theytoldhim,”Pricketreported,“heshould know when he is in the Shallop.” Hudson’s remaining allies confronted the plotters. Hudson cried out for the carpenter, to let his friend Philip Staffe know that he was now bound. But no reply came. Arnold Ladley and Michael Bute yelled at Greene and the others, warning them that “their knavery would shew itself.” The mutineers then raised the shallop and forced “the poor, sick and lame men” out of their cabins and onto the shallow craft.

U S C T r o j a n Fa m i ly m a g a z i n e winter 2009

The Fatal Journey of Henry Hudson

The mystery of what happened to Hudson became the stuff of legend. One tale claimed that Hudson survived and several years later carved his initials in a rock, which a road crew unearthed in Deep River, Ontario, in 196o. Finally Hudson called for Pricket, who struggled to get out of his cabin, presumably because he was weak from illness. Pricket later claimed that he tried to reach the captain, but got only as far as the hatch where he hoped he might be heard. Pricket fell to his knees in front of the rebels and pleaded that “for the love of God, to remember themselves, and to do as they would be done unto.” The rebels told him to hold his tongue and get back into his cabin. … Most of the men that Greene, Wilson and the others wanted to get rid of were on the shallop. The mutineers had already decided to keep Pricket on board, but the fate of Staffe, the ship’s carpenter, was not yet sealed. “Will you be hanged when you get home?” the carpenter asked the rebels. He told them that he would stay on the Discovery only if the mutineers forced him to do so. The rebels told him that he should get on board the shallop…. The shallop had been tied to the Discovery’s stern. The mutineers cut the rope and immediately began to drift away, even though some of the ship’s sails remained tethered. The rebels also continued to rifle through the possessions of the departed men. As some had suspected, they found quite a bit of food in the hold that Hudson had apparently secreted away. They found enough meal, beer, butter, peas and pork to sate their hunger. Someone on board spotted the shallop trying to catch up to the ship. Hudson and the others had managed to rig a small sail, though it would never be sufficient to gather enough speed to catch up. The mutineers unfurled both the mainsail and the topsail, and the Discovery caught the wind. As Pricket described it, they then took off and flew “as from an Enemy.”… Shipboard mutinies have come to capture the modern imagination, thanks to the 1789 rebellion against William Bligh on the Bounty, but they were in fact very rare in Hudson’s age. It was not until 1689 that English lawmakers enacted the first statute specifically designed to punish mutineers. When writers or dramatists (including Shakespeare) used the term “mutiny” during Hudson’s lifetime, they tended to refer to insurrections on land, not at sea.

U S C T r o j a n Fa m i ly m a g a z i n e winter 2009

Only one attempted mutiny had occurred on an English ship within recent memory of the English. That effort, against Sir Francis Drake during his circumnavigation of the Earth from 1578 to 1580, failed, and the leader of the putative insurrection went to the gallows.

In the later chapters of Fatal Journey, Mancall documents the investigations that followed the mutiny. As it happened, none of the ringleaders survived to stand trial. Most had died in a bloody confrontation with a group of Inuit at Digges Cape, near the mouth of Hudson Strait, on July 29, 1611. Another died of starvation on the voyage home. Only eight men of the original 24 made it back to England. Four were eventually charged with mutiny, tried and acquitted. But what of the fate of Hudson, his son and the seven other men abandoned on the shallop? Here the historical record is far less clear.

Survivor?

he masters of Trinity House, the judges of the High Court of Admi ralty and other contemporary observers shared one common belief: Henry Hudson died soon after the mutiny on the Discovery in June 1611.… Still, despite early 17th-century speculations, there is no reason to believe that Hudson and the others died so quickly. More likely, they survived for some time. Like five men Frobisher had left behind in 1576, Hudson and his allies may have even contemplated sailing homeward. Their fate remained a subject of fascination, especially for later English mariners who sailed into those same frigid seas. Henry Hudson was not a man who would have accepted what the English later saw as a death penalty…. By June 1611, Hudson and the others on the shallop had already acquired substantial information about the region and its resources. They knew about the migrating birds, which Pricket had described in his journal. They had consumed the grasses that sprang so quickly after a thaw and which they knew would help ward off scurvy. They understood how to fish and had honed some clumsy skill at hunting. Henry Hudson may have hoped and

even expected that if he could just manage to endure another winter in James Bay, a new expedition would come to rescue him, returning him to England where he could bear witness against those who had usurped his command. Perhaps he even hoped to meet with his investors and prepare for yet another foray toward the Northwest Passage. If so, he was sadly mistaken. After 1611, Europeans did not return to James Bay until the 1630s, when the English explorers Thomas James and Luke Foxe traveled there, and no one else sailed there until perhaps 1670, when yet another group of English travelers visited. … As James and his crew prepared for the imminent winter, he kept a close eye out for indications of Hudson. At one point, on Danby Island, his men found two stakes driven into the ground and the remains of an ancient fire. James pulled the stakes up. They were about the width of his arm, with a pointed end that seemed like it had been chopped by an iron tool, perhaps a hatchet, and then driven into the ground. James admitted that he could not determine why someone would drive stakes into the ground close to the water unless it was to serve as some kind of marker for boats – something that an Englishman might make but which would have been unlikely for indigenous use. Finding the stakes made James eager to speak with some of the Crees, “for without doubt they could have given notice of some Christians, with whom they had commerce.” James’s find convinced him that some European had to have been there earlier – either to cut the stakes or to trade the tools to make them. It is possible that the stakes had been left by Hudson and the others on the shallop. Though he did not mention it as such, perhaps James had found evidence of Hudson’s presence. Almost 40 years after James spent the winter there, another English expedition traveled into Hudson Bay and then southward into James Bay. Like the crew of the Discovery, these men had to wait out the winter near the shores of the bay. A surviving account of their journey, left by a man named Thomas Gorst, suggests what an English crew living in that

killed them if they had failed to lay in enough cockle grass to ward it off. If they fell victim to the disease their gums would have bled, their teeth might eventually have fallen out, and any bones broken earlier could have fractured again; the men would have become dehydrated from diarrhea, sunk into depression and eventually expired. Some On the 1609 voyage, Hudson and his men encountered the indigenous people known as the Munsees. might have suffered frostbite, leading to gangrene and region would have experienced and possibly In all likelihood, after failing to catch up to death…. Animal attacks, especially by polar what had happened to Hudson. the fast-escaping Discovery, the men paddled bears or wolves, could also have taken them. Setting off from Charles Fort at the end of their shallow craft to a nearby island, quite At first, the ill or injured could have been June, the English sailed toward Point Comfort. possibly the one that Thomas Gorst explored tended by those who remained healthy. But There they went ashore to chop wood for the six decades later. In June, this island would eventually, the men still able to nurse others homeward voyage. … As men gathered suphave shed its winter ice and sprouted cockle also would have grown so weak that they could plies, Gorst and a few others boarded a shaland other fast-growing summer plants that do no more than haul the corpses of their comlop and set out to explore the local area. They could have provided at least some nutrition panions into the snow…. By the time other paddled out to a nearby island. There, Gorst for hungry humans. Philip Staffe would have English sailors happened by 20 or even 60 wrote, “we found an old wigwam not built built a winter shelter from driftwood and years later, nothing was left of Hudson’s by Indians, but supposed it rather to be the trees, and any able-bodied men would have party but the most meager markings of remarkplace where poor Hudson ended his days.” gathered firewood for the approaching winter. able lives – sharpened stakes, a ruined shelter. Gorst wrote no more about what he saw on They had ample opportunity to hunt ptarThe mystery of what happened to Hudson the island. On another nearby island they migan, geese, thick-billed murres and other and his men became the stuff of legend. One found signs of another English winter camp. migratory birds, which had arrived by the tale claimed that Hudson survived and several They found bones, possibly the remains of thousands to breed in the brief Arctic sumyears later carved his initials in a rock, which a men who had died on the James expedition, mer. The stranded men might also have rigged road crew unearthed in Deep River, Ontario, though perhaps they had stumbled on reup seines to drop from the shallop into shalin 1960. Another told how the Crees adopted mains from Hudson’s party. … low water, enabling them to gather a plentiful Hudson’s son. In the small settlement of Stakes driven in the ground, a house built by harvest of fish if schools were nearby. This was Wemidji at the mouth of the Maquatua River nonnative peoples, an environment capable of hardly a certainty, though, given the crew’s in northern Quebec, the keepers of oral hissupporting newcomers if they were willing to earlier mixed record hauling in a catch.… tory reported that a place called Qaamistiengage in trade with the locals, an abundance But the coming winter would be cruel. kushiish in the Paint Hills area of James Bay of seasonal birds and fish, summer grasses that Hudson and his men were more exposed and meant “young Englishman” – possibly after could ward off scurvy, forests providing ample isolated than they had been the previous year. John Hudson or his father – and referred to supplies for a dwelling, animals whose skins Without English rescuers or help from the someone who had been buried there long ago. could be used to provide shelter – each may Crees they were lost. Hudson and his men But a recent expedition to find the supposed provide a clue about Hudson’s ultimate fate. probably died on that island during the winter grave proved fruitless. One legend purported So what happened to Henry Hudson and of 1611-1612. Perhaps their desperation drove that John Hudson trudged southward, where the others on the shallop? Hudson knew them to attempt a voyage homeward on the he found Samuel Champlain, who was in the enough not to try to sail back to England in a shallop. If so, the fierce storms in the region process of establishing New France, but there small open boat. Such a journey would have could have capsized even skilled seamen, is no evidence to support it. l been doomed from the start. Of course, the erasing any sign of them. late summer swarm of mosquitoes and stingThey probably died one after another, sucExcerpted from Fatal Journey: The Final Exing green flies might have driven sane men to cumbing to a brutal chill that never ceased pedition of Henry Hudson by Peter Mancall seek extravagant escapes from the torment. to freeze their bodies. Or scurvy could have (Basic Books, 2009).

U S C T r o j a n Fa m i ly m a g a z i n e winter 2009

CARING ON CAMPUS IPPAM class members raised money for medical kits for African orphans, which they assembled in McCarthy Quad last April.

U S C T r o j a n Fa m i ly m a g a z i n e winter 2009

Policy Without Borders Every year, USC’s School of Policy, Planning, and Development shepherds a mini-United Nations of mid-career professionals through both a rigorous program in public policy and a crash course in American culture.

teeth are bright white; his smile is huge and infectious. He doesn’t seem the least bit nervous as he and his team mount the podium for their presentation in the auditorium of USC’s Leavey Library on a spring afternoon. “Nervous?” he exclaims joyfully. “I know everyone here, they’re not going to hurt me!” The auditorium is crowded with classmates, Professor Melissa Lopez and several other faculty members from USC’s School of Policy, Planning, and Development, all here to poke holes in this group’s and others’ work for the graduate course Public Policy and Development 571. As the PowerPoint slide “Illegal Immigration in California, Presented to the Office of the Governor, State of California” is projected onto the screen behind him (fact: California has 37.9 million immigrants, over 11.7 million are illegal), as stats and recommendations fly (team solution: greater worksite enforcement of immigration, stiffer penalties), as points are made and then refuted (fact: California can’t increase penalties at the state level; it would have to get the OK from the feds), Jalloh takes it all in with a big grin. Despite the reality that this project represents 45 percent of his grade, Jalloh is, as he suggests, really not nervous. Compared to what he has seen, the academic scrum in Leavey Auditorium is peanuts. A native of Sierra Leone, “Mo,” as he is called by his classmates, moved to Liberia as a youngster because of Sierra Leone’s civil war. A conflict soon started in Liberia, and he lost track of Mohammed Jalloh’s

photo by dietmar quistorf

By Elizabeth Segal his family, ending up in Sweden, where he played professional soccer at the age of 16. An uncle in the Netherlands got in touch and told him that his family had become refugees in Carson, Calif. The young man soon moved there, and in a classic pullyourself-up-by-your-bootstraps story, went to community college and on to Cal State Long Beach, where he supported himself while earning a finance and accounting degree. He then came to USC, lured by an unusual course of study – the International Public Policy and Management Program, or IPPAM – that convenes a mini-United Nations of graduate student scholars each year. Jalloh, like most of his IPPAM classmates, hopes to work globally in the public policy realm. For Jalloh, it might be “a program like USAID,” something he says would expose him to people’s problems. And then, of course, there is always the presidency in Sierra Leone in 2022. “I’m there,” he says confidently. It’s hard to doubt him. The international

U S C T r o j a n Fa m i ly m a g a z i n e winter 2009

MAKING WAVES Shortly after arriving at USC, the group hit the beach in Santa Monica. “Everyone was absolutely happy,” said Han-Yu Tsai of Taiwan. “That’s the trip we started to feel connected.”

reason is we have to improve our English skills; we need to learn the U.S. culture!” he exclaims. Okuda, who arrived stateside with his family, has enjoyed the comparative nature of his studies. As he prepares his Public Policy and Development 571 presentation on e-waste management in the United States, he ponders: “It’s difficult to implement a program here like the one we have in Japan. There, we have a disposal fee when we throw out e-waste. But then, Japan is a small country, and people feel more obligation in terms of community.” When asked what he’s enjoyed in Southern California, he breaks into a wide grin. “Every event has interested me! I liked the football games because they show a lot of us getting together at this university. In Japan, I have a community, but it’s very small, just my lab members, 20 or 30 members.

students in IPPAM 11 – the 11th class since the program began – are an accomplished group, many of them rising political and policy stars in their home countries, and Jalloh was elected student body president of IPPAM for this year. ambitions may be particularly lofty, he is not alone. He and all of his fellow IPPAM classmates seek an international reach. Each IPPAM class is made up of 40 students who come to USC for 13 months to be steeped in economics, policy analysis, statistics and more, in preparation for careers abroad. Glenn Melnick, the outgoing director of IPPAM, gives a one-sentence description of the flourishing program he has chaired for over a decade: “It’s like an MBA for the social sector,” he says, “but without all the finance.” He adds: “The program gives the students the analytical skills to work in education, health, transportation, urban planning and government in parts of the world that are growing rapidly. Each year, these countries need better and better trained people; even if government is only 10 percent of the Although Jalloh’s

economy in some of these developing countries, it’s still growing by leaps and bounds.” And, perhaps unexpectedly, the IPPAM students often become the best of friends as they learn about American culture, complete pro bono international service aid projects (this year’s class raised $2,500 on campus to buy 68 HIV caregiver kits to send to countries stricken with AIDS), discover skiing in the Golden State and enjoy a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. Classmates tend to stay in touch, creating a global network that often has far-flung reunions, either with their individual classes or with all IPPAM students living in a particular region. The students of the 11th class of IPPAM, who graduated in July 2009, came from 15 countries. Asian countries were particularly well represented. The five American-born students were kept busy helping classmates navigate their country’s popular culture, which most of the international students seem to relish or, at the very least, find intriguing. Take Shuji Okuda, one of many students who work for the Japanese government and are sent to USC for the program. “One

“When I go back to Japan, I will work for the Ministry of Technology, which supported my trip here; I’m not sure in which area I will work. Our ministry changes our appointments every two years. I really want to do something in energy conservation. I will also miss my family, as I won’t have so much time to spend with them…” He trails off, then grins again with true Trojan spirit. “And of course, I’ll miss the football games!” This is typical, Melnick says. “The IPPAM professors kid themselves into believing the foreign students are remembering their classes. They remember those football games.” More seriously, he adds: “The bonding on cultural events has been much more meaningful than we realized. The foreign students have enthusiastically learned all about our holidays, such as Thanksgiving, and especially Halloween. They loved the costumes!” The classmates this year bonded together so well that they took group ski trips to Mt. Baldy, as well as flying to Hawaii for a student’s wedding. “One of our great professors, Bob Biller, used to order a yearly print of the Revolution-

Elizabeth Segal lives in Los Angeles, and has written for the Los Angeles Times, Salon.com and Seattle’s The Stranger Weekly. One of her favorite recent features for USC Trojan Family Magazine was a profile on USC economist Richard Easterlin.

U S C T r o j a n Fa m i ly m a g a z i n e winter 2009

p h o t o b y ya o - c h u n g h s i a o

If a class has different age groups, it can conduct more thorough brainstorming because students’ life experiences are so different. Policy education does not emphasize competition, but collaboration. It’s not winning or losing, as in the business field, but win-win.

Policy Without Borders

ary War film The Patriot for students to see, and he would then give a lecture about early American history,” Melnick says. “Though it’s just a Hollywood movie, it showed the students something really unique about America – that, unlike their countries, we were forged by a group of people who came together for a reason, democracy, as well as against a common enemy. “This is different from other countries. America is not perfect by any means, but students who come here from overseas do so because they understand what makes it so great – it’s our freedom of expression, our sense of opportunity and all the things we take for granted, which they get to see and learn about firsthand. They really teach us about ourselves in many ways.” Chinese IPPAM student Long Wen offers an example of this dynamic. “The first time I arrived here, and passed the 10 freeway, I saw a signboard saying, ‘$1,000 fine for littering.’ That’s a big number! In

China, if you throw wastepaper away, it’s less than one dollar, and nobody cares if you throw something along the freeway.” Wen came to IPPAM on a Ford Foundation scholarship. A former member of United Nations peacekeeping units in both East Timor and Liberia, he works for his government in counter-terrorism. “It’s very important for me to study skills and technology here,” he says quietly. Though he cannot talk much about his work back home, he says that his unit was established after 9/11. He concedes that the terrorist threat in China is small, and confined to the Western part of the country, but it is growing. With the greater development of his analytical skills, he plans to research and write a counter-intelligence handbook for the public, and help the counter-terrorism task force to grow. The cultural exchanges that define IPPAM work both ways – the international students also become very interested in

teaching Americans about themselves and their customs. Sara Al-Mufarrej, who hails from Kuwait by way of Boston (her father was one of the country’s former ministers of justice) talks about her desire to explain her origins, as well as her brand of faith. “For Muslims, there’s a really different perception about not covering up,” she says, referring to the hijab headscarf many Muslim women wear in the Middle East. “A lot of people just believe that what you see in the media is what you get. I feel good that I can explain to classmates when they have questions, which they do. “It’s quite funny. Initially, a lot of people come up and give me the camel joke. They say, ‘Do you commute?’ ” And it’s not just Americans who benefit from the IPPAM melting pot. “Take, for example, the Indonesians,” Melnick says. “In Indonesia, where Chinese nationals are often very successful businesspeople, the Chinese experience a tremendous amount

IPPAM at a Glance

››

The USC School of Policy,

and management skills, the students

Planning, and Development’s

arm themselves with the theories,

Master of International Public

methods and technical know-how

the world, each bringing a unique

international relations one policy

Policy and Management (IPPAM)

that will help them become masters

skill or set of experiences to the

change at a time.

began as a program focused primar-

of their chosen fields.

table. But IPPAM students all have

ily on health financing and health

location. USC has enrolled more

as the program grew and evolved, so,

international students than any

too, did the scope of concentrations it

other American university for seven

offered. Today, in addition to health-

straight years. In addition, Southern

care issues, students can specialize in

California offers a profusion of non-

any number of fields, including public

profits and nongovernmental orga-

policy, public sector management,

nizations from which students can

education policy, urban planning,

learn. They pursue internships, go on

nonprofit management and commu-

site visits to businesses and organiza-

nications policy.

tions around the region, and enjoy a

The program is geared toward

distinguished speaker seminar series

students who work in international

that draws leading policy makers and

settings. It targets mid-career profes-

analysts from around the world.

photo by dietmar quistorf

one thing in common: a drive to improve the world and strengthen

–Lauren Walser

Leading the classrooms is an

ment, nonprofit agencies or business

impressive roster of USC faculty

firms that deal with the design,

members and professionals from

planning and management of social

around Southern California:

programs and services.

Researchers from RAND (a public

For 13 months, students are

The students come from around

One big draw is the program’s

insurance in developing countries. But

sionals with experience in govern-

program attracts.

policy think tank), international

immersed in classes that run the

development consultants for the

gamut of policy and management

Asian Development Bank and World

issues: economics, data and policy

Bank, hospital and insurance manag-

analysis, survey research, and applied

ers, nonprofit managers and govern-

statistics, among others. With a cur-

ment leaders are just a few of the

riculum that emphasizes leadership

industry heavyweights the IPPAM

From left, Thein Aung (Myanmar), Min-Hsu Tseng (Taiwan) and Jinwen Ma (China) at graduation.

of discrimination and hostility. So for many years, Chinese New Year and other Chinese cultural events were not openly celebrated in Indonesia. “Joining our Chinese-born students for Chinese New Year was an eye-opening experience for them.” the director of IPPAM’s executive education program, points out that there can be a steep learning curve for IPPAM students. “Sometimes their English is lagging,” she says. “But the program has a clever design to it. Come their first day, the only class they have to take is a statistics class. Stats is universal, it’s the language of numbers, and during this time, they enroll in USC’s English language-intensive class. “We find that that design has worked very well.” Yu and Melnick both have flown around the world many times in the last 12 years, from Bangkok to Shanghai to Nairobi to Buenos Aires, building contacts for their program and interviewing everyone from students to government officials to get the word out. Melnick reminisces: “During the Suharto days in Indonesia, women in government often didn’t get a chance. But we built such good relationships with officials there that we could promote greater opportunities for women. It worked. We got some really formidable students.” The powers that be at IPPAM also have made it their purpose to be inclusive of second-career students of a certain age. Yu reports that older foreign students often are at a career juncture where they’d like to branch off into working with or creating nongovernmental agencies to fill the gaps that they’ve observed during their working lives. (She adds that NGOs are a new phenomenon, especially in Asian countries.) “Older people usually can identify problems more precisely and provide more reasonable solutions than younger ones,” she says. “If a class has different age groups (20s, 30s, 40s or even 50s), it can conduct more thorough brainstorming because students’ life experiences are so different. Policy education does not emphasize competition, but collaboration. It’s not winning or losing, as in the business field, but win-win.” Student Miho Pederson (aka Mimi), who is in her 40s, was born in Tokyo, grew up in South Dakota, earned three undergraduate degrees and moved to Salt Lake City. She says: “I saved up enough money to either buy a red Porsche or go to grad school. I have a friend at home who is a biochemist who decided to go to law school in her 40s. She Joanna Yu,

U S C T r o j a n Fa m i ly m a g a z i n e winter 2009

was my inspiration! I said, ‘Why not?’ ” Pederson has always been big on volunteering. Given her proximity to Denver, the Japanese consulate would call on her for her gratis interpretation skills; she also established an Asian Chamber of Commerce in Salt Lake City to give Asian mom-and-pop shops in the area a collective voice. Says Pederson, who plans to live overseas and take her three (enthusiastic) 20-something boys with her, “When I look at a developing country, if I see some need that’s not being met, I want to meet that need.” She is warming to the idea of working in crisis communication, and says that Singapore has a good model that could be implemented in Thailand. “They could use some guidelines to go with it,” she says, adding, “Because I have a master’s, people will expect me to go into management. I just want to do hands-on work where I can deliver the goods rather than sitting in an office, telling people what to do.” Pederson’s project for the 571 class focused on micro-finance in India. “It’s a complex issue, but strangely, is neither cultural nor religious, as you might imagine,” she says. “It’s that people keep going to informal sources to borrow money, the store owners who sell groceries. Indian banks have been less successful lending to people, and they’re less focused on micro-finance. The business model just doesn’t exist for them.” wound down, and IPPAM 11 students headed towards their final projects, one group traveled to Brazil as part of an annual international lab organized by the school. There, they were briefed by As the year

government tourism officials on issues pertaining to sustainable tourism. But there remained one yearly rite of passage the grad students had yet to conquer: the IPPAM talent show. On a balmy May afternoon, the students streamed into the USC University Club with costumes and boom boxes in hand, ready once again to bridge the cultural divides between the larger community of IPPAM alums, professors, families and each other. Emcee Sorangel Hernandez from Guatemala introduced the acts. Classmates “Mo” Jalloh from Sierra Leone, Terrah Brown from California and Miwa Kawamura from Japan sang a spirited karaoke version of the crossover classic, “La Bamba,” and dragged professors Joanna Yu and Melissa Lopez onstage to pony-step with them. Next, Mong-Kai Hung (aka Kai) and Edward Lin, both from Taiwan, performed magic tricks, sporting rainbow-colored wigs. Glen Becerra, originally from Hawaii and the Philippines by way of a military upbringing, peeled off his tank top to great yelps from the audience as he revealed his chiseled physique and printed skirt, and did a graceful, flowing Hawaiian dance. He chortled at the overwhelming response: “Oh yeah! Like that wasn’t embarrassing at all!” Surada Chundasuta (aka Shane) from Thailand belted out the romantic ballad “Just Once” as the audience swooned, then did the Wave together. On a somber note, the performers then took a break for a public service announcement by Terrah Brown. She explained that the two children of Sitti Safarah, a graduate of IPPAM 4 who died in the East Asian

photo by melissa gomez

GROUP HUG Incoming director Joyce Mann, center, with IPPAM students at USC’s graduation. Class president Mohammed Jalloh is at left, on the phone.

Policy Without Borders

tsunami, were being officially adopted by IPPAM, which had committed to putting them through school and college; would anybody like to make a contribution? Almost everyone in the room did, and the levity resumed. Finally, after the screening of a short movie by Hernandez, an Irish jig by the Taiwanese Yao-Chung Hsiao (aka David), who played guitar along with his twin Thomas, a graduate student at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, and a sexy salsa dance demonstration by Becerra and Yvonne Cornejo from Mexico, many of the Asian students gathered onstage for an Asian-style hip-hop extravaganza, which then dissolved into a raucous audience-participation version of “The Macarena.” And then, suddenly, it was July, the time when the IPPAM 11 students had to prepare for their return to the outside world. Mimi Pederson presented her paper, “Employing Information Technology to Improve Public Health: Using the Immunization Registry to Improve Immunization Coverage,”

the IPPAM 12 students arrived to start their classes. IPPAM 11 greeted them, mentored them, sold them their books and cars, helped them find apartments, and gave them important advice about surviving the upcoming year. Both groups communed at a July 4th barbeque at director Yu’s home. Said incoming student Genevieve Blanche, who was raised in Chile: “Terrah Brown is mentoring me. She said: ‘Be focused. Take classes outside of IPPAM in the School of Policy, Planning, and Development, if you can. Get involved with the students.’ ” Blanche, a graduate of UC San Diego who had worked for the last two years on immigration and election issues, had recently been involved with the U.S. Doctors for Africa/African First Ladies summit in Los Angeles, where she translated from the Spanish for UK prime minister Gordon Brown’s wife, Sarah, and California First Lady Maria Shriver. “I want to be an ambassador,” she says. “I mean, after getting my Ph.D. and going to Also in the summer,

Konjit Kiros, an Ethiopia-born refugee who has done systems consulting for Kaiser Permanente in the United States and wants to return to work in her homeland; and Namtran Le, a Vietnamese refugee now living in the United States who wants to start an NGO in underdeveloped countries. (She and classmate Quyen Le are IPPAM’s first students with Vietnamese ties.) On graduation day, IPPAM 11 turned out with pride, wearing native and other highly decorative dress, and marching before applauding family and friends, while bearing flags from their homelands. Incoming director Joyce Mann, who previously served as the program’s academic director, noted that IPPAM is a microcosm of society and represents a fertile opportunity for collaboration across borders. She showered the class with praise, saying: “You changed. And you changed us. And we are so proud of you!” Also cheering them on was Ann Abrahamyan, the program’s business manager, who was particularly close to this cohort of

IPPAM 11 classmate Tso-Jen Wang (aka Anderson), a psychiatrist from Taiwan, summed up what was really in the hearts of all the IPPAM grads: “From here, we carry with us a lifetime of friendships. And we will rock you! From many different countries! Fight on!” and hoped to land a job in Thailand. Glen Becerra prepared for his foreign service exam, and hoped to be posted as a cultural officer in Portugal or France (“My heart is in Paris!” he said.) Shuji Okuda returned to the Japanese Ministry of Technology, and was assigned to promote using robots in elder care. Mohammed Jalloh was encouraged to apply for a research position at RAND. Shane Chundasuta returned to Bangkok to lecture in politics at Suan-Dusit University. These kinds of job opportunities are not unusual for IPPAM students, according to adjunct professor Susan Sinclair, who instructed the clan in global communications and international trade policy. “The nature of the program is so globally focused that the students are one step ahead when they leave here,” she says. “They’ve been focused on state-of-the-art global themes, which they’ve learned from an organizational and community point of view; they also get a smattering of everything, unlike in other degree programs. “They really learn the big picture here. This makes them attractive to employers, as well as able to function on the job from day one.”

the Peace Corps!” She is hoping to work in either India or the Congo, and also hopes to win the IPPAM 12 student body presidency. As the incoming and outgoing students milled about, playing trust-development games such as the Human Knot, as well as Hawaiian baseball (i.e., baseball played with a volleyball), others from IPPAM 12 told of their reach-for-the-sky ambitions. Yun Lu (aka Eve), an auditor from an accounting firm in China, sees lots of opportunities for the growth of public health in rural parts of her country. Wan-Chun Liao (aka Sandy), an elementary school teacher, wants to learn from U.S. cultural organizations about their promotion of culture, so that she can parlay her knowledge into a position in the Taiwanese Culture Ministry (her mother is a Taiwanese Assembly member). And Jiun Lin Liu (aka Willis), a business administration grad, wants to continue to help veterans at the Taipei Veterans Center. Says he: “In the U.S., vets are honored. At home, the government doesn’t care. They’re ignored. And they have such stories!” Other IPPAM 12 newcomers include Amit Jain, a tax reformer from New Delhi;

IPPAM students. Last summer, Abraham yan gave birth to a daughter, Elise, and brought her infant to nearly all the group’s social events, delighting the students. Former IPPAM 8 student Steven McCarty, who plans to earn his D.Phil. from Oxford University starting this fall, spoke to the class about the importance of their presence in America. He quoted CBS correspondent Morley Safer: “As diverse as America has become, it remains remarkably inward-looking. Without an educational and media establishment that takes on the responsibility of teaching and informing and respecting the riches of foreign cultures, this country could become a paranoid and parochial suburb of a vital global village.” IPPAM 11 classmate Tso-Jen Wang (aka Anderson), a psychiatrist from Taiwan, summed up what was really in the hearts of all the IPPAM grads: “From here, we carry with us a lifetime of friendships. And we will rock you! From many different countries! Fight on!” l If you have questions or comments on this article, please send them to magazines@usc.edu.

U S C T r o j a n Fa m i ly m a g a z i n e winter 2009

Family Ties news from the usc alumni association

Reaching beyond the End Zone USC’s regional alumni clubs expand their programming to include politics, art, business, technology and more. of the Trojan Family more evident than in the eclectic programming slates of the USC Alumni Association’s regional clubs. While maintaining their traditional role of hosting gamewatches, raising scholarship money and welcoming new students to USC, the 50plus alumni clubs nationwide are partnering with USC, expanding and enhancing their event calendars to engage alumni of all ages, backgrounds and interests. Politically themed events feature compelling speakers, including deans, professors and senior administrators, for lively talks with alumni. In January, Dan Schnur Nowhere is the diversity

(director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics in USC College) kicked off the Orange County Regional Alumni Board’s 11th annual Distinguished Speaker Series and addressed the challenges facing the Obama administration. In May, Schnur joined Susan Estrich (Robert Kingsley Professor of Law and Political Science at the USC Gould School of Law) in a spirited discussion of the Obama administration’s first 100 days at the “USC in D.C.” event, which was co-sponsored by the USC Alumni Club of the Nation’s Capital. Held at the Washington, D.C., Brookings Institution, this discussion/reception attracted more

than 150 alumni and other members of the Trojan Family, including four USC deans. Estrich and Schnur sparred on topics ranging from Supreme Court appointments to health-care reform. In July, the USC Alumni Club of Kansas City heard an insider’s view of America’s presence in Iraq. Jen Vitela ’96, a senior governance specialist in Iraq’s Al-Anbar Pro vince since September 2008, shared her experiences in an informal breakfast talk titled “Trojan Adventure: Jen in Iraq.” Arts- and culture-themed events are an other area of programming popular to USC alumni clubs. Last spring, the USC Alumni Club of the Desert welcomed the USC Thornton Chamber Singers to Palm Springs, Calif.,where conductor Jo-Michael Scheibe led the ensemble in a program that included a series of nocturnes by USC Thornton composition professor Morten Lauridsen, a 2007 National Medal of Arts recipient.

p h o t o b y J o s e p h L av i g n a n i , R i c c a r d o Pr o d u c t i o n s

The NYC Tommy Awards in June featured musical performances by USC alums, many of them Broadway veterans. From left to right: Bryce Ryness ’02, Danielle Faitelson ’07, James Snyder ’03, Katie Coleman ’06, Kyle Barisich ’99 and Meredith Anderson ’04.

p h o t o b y Al e x C h a n g

p h o t o b y D av e S c av o n e p h o t o b y D a n Av i l a

Clockw ise from top left: Moderator Catalina Camia ’86 is flanked by Dan Schnur and Susan Estrich at the “USC in D.C.” event; Gamble House curator Anne Mallek, USC Alumni Club of New England president Chuck Langenhagen MBA ’91 and Gamble House director Ted Bosley at the Greene & Greene exhibition at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts; and at a Columbus, Ohio, hotel, a crowd of eager Trojans await the USC “Spirit of Troy” Trojan Marching Band at a pep rally the night before the USC-Ohio State game on September 12, 2009.

In March, playwright Oliver Mayer, an associate professor in the USC School of Theatre, attended a performance of Kaufman and Hart’s The Man Who Came to Dinner with Houston-area Trojans. Portland alums turned out in April to hear bestselling author and USC Executive Vice Provost Barry Glassner discuss his latest book, The Gospel of Food, and book lovers in Portland and Seattle enjoyed a stimulating talk in June by USC Libraries Dean Catherine Quinlan on “Rediscovering the Library.” And in July, the USC Alumni Club of New England co-sponsored a private tour of the exhibition A New and Native Beauty: The Art and Craft of Greene and Greene at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. Anne Mallek, curator of the USC-operated Gamble House in Pasadena, gave New England Trojans a special presentation on the work of these architectural visionaries. Science- and technology-themed events

also are part of the USC alumni clubs’ expanded programming. In April, the Bay Area alumni clubs partnered with the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, the USC Stevens Institute for Innovation and the USC Alumni Association to present “Meet the Innovators.” Among the speakers was Paul Debevec, associate director for graphics research at the university’s Institute for Creative Technologies, named by 3D World magazine as one of the seven most important pioneers in computer graphics. USC alumni club events would not be complete without their sports-themed programming. The alumni association continued to produce pep rallies and tailgate parties for away football games, partnering this year with clubs in the Bay Area, Chicago, Phoenix, Portland and Seattle. The sheer variety of these programs is even more impressive considering that USC alumni club members volunteer their time

to produce club events. One of the most ambitious recent club undertakings was the first NYC Tommy Awards in June, presented by the USC Alumni Club of New York. Months in the planning, this gala was a tribute to five New York-based Trojans who have excelled in the arts, business and professional sports. It featured musical performances by several USC alumni who are Broadway veterans. In addition to recognizing alumni achievements, the club awarded more than $30,000 to eight incoming and current USC students. In the words of New York City club president and NYC Tommy Awards producer Amir Akhavan’02, “We wanted to create an annual signature event that celebrated our community’s diverse talents, highlighted our alumni scholarships and brought the various schools and associations to New York.” Scott M. Mory, associate senior vice president for alumni relations, said that Trojans can expect more innovative club programs in the future. He summed up, “These events remind us of the limitless potential of the Trojan Family and how we’re all working together for a common goal: a stronger, more engaged alumni community that’s truly lifelong and worldwide.” – Timothy O. Knight

U S C T rojan Family maga z ine winter 2009

Strength in Diversity

The Alumni SCene Celebrating wine and water, the finish line and fresh starts.

p h o t o b y Er i k S a n j u rj o

p h o t o b y K at h e r i n e B o y n t o n

1. Sail, Britannia Instead of celebrating American independence last July 4th, many Brits – including members of the USC Alumni Club of London – spent the day at the Henley Royal Regatta, founded in 1839. The USC men’s crew team, a.k.a. “the Trojan Navy,” has raced at Henley four times in the past five years, and in 2008 fell just short of becoming only the third collegiate team in history to win the Grand Challenge Cup, the regatta’s oldest, most prestigious award. Left to right are London club members Walter Ladwig ’98, Wes Thornburgh ’92 and Jennifer Gaines ’01. 2. Hail, Asian Pacific Grads The annual USC Asian Pacific Graduate Celebration, which took place on May 14, has many facets: recognizing the achieve-

photo by Devin Begley

p h o t o b y S h e l b o u r n e P h o t o g r a p h y, L L C

U S C T rojan Family maga z ine winter 2009

ments of USC’s Asian Pacific students; wel coming them to the USC Alumni Association and the USC Asian Pacific Alumni Association; celebrating the rich Asian Pacific culture and heritage at USC; honoring students who have demonstrated excellence in academics and leadership; and providing guidance and opportunities for careerrelated programming, networking mixers and philanthropic endeavors benefiting the Asian Pacific community.

3. Vintage Gathering On July 19, members and friends of the USC Lambda LGBT Alumni Association got together at Silver Lake Wine in Los Angeles to savor fine wine and cheese while raising money for the USC Lambda scholarship fund. Left to right are Michael Villegas ’98, Lambda board member Michael Vacha

Jr. ’05, Lambda president Vincent Wong ’03, Lambda board member Michael Rabinovici ’00, DDS ’04, Barry Yamaoka and Steve Martinez ’00. Since its founding in 1992, USC Lambda, through seven annual scholarships, has awarded more than $250,000.

4. Southern SCend Off Repeated across the country and around the globe, multiple generations of the Trojan Family pose during a summer SCend Off welcoming new USC students and their parents into the fold. This SCend Off took place in Richmond, Va., and was sponsored by the USC Alumni Club of Central Virginia. Pictured are two past presidents of the Central Virginia club, Bill Casey ’85 (directly behind the USC flag) and John Mulligan ’85 (far right). More than 3,000 people attended over 40 SCend Offs this summer. l

legions of leaders

Volunteers Are the Toast of the Town USC alumni volunteers assemble on campus for the 8th annual USC Alumni Leadership Conference.

USC Alumni Leadership Conference to date turned two days in September into a celebration of Trojan Family volunteers, the lifeblood of the USC alumni network. Approximately 300 alumni leaders from across the nation and around the world met on the University Park campus to fortify their leadership skills and exchange ideas. Attendees included leaders and members of alumni clubs, alumnae groups, multicultural organizations, the Alumni Association Board of Governors, USC school alumni associations and USC Athletics support groups. According to associate senior vice president for alumni relations Scott M. Mory, “At the conference we strengthen the ties we share, both as alumni leaders and ambassadors of USC.” Participants were welcomed to the conference on Sept. 24 by USC Alumni Association President Robert Padgett ’68, Mory and Martha Harris, senior vice president, university relations, who brought greetings from USC President Steven B. Sample. Afterwards, volunteers experienced the high caliber of research at USC during the second annual “Best of USC” panel. This year’s panelists included Caleb Finch, professor of gerontology and biological sciences; Geneva Overholser, director of the School of Journalism at the USC Annenberg School for Communication; Anthony Hassan, inaugural director of the Center for Research and Innovation on Veterans and Military Families; and Ian Whittinghill ’08, student founder of

photos by devin begley

The most ambitious

the USC Rocket Propulsion Laboratory. Rounding out the first day was an opportunity for participants to network while watching a USC football practice session. This was followed by an excursion to a USC Thornton School of Music Chamber Orchestra concert, part of that school’s 125th anniversary celebration. The next day, USC Executive Vice President and Provost C. L. Max Nikias hosted a special breakfast at the USC Davidson Continuing Education Center. Mitchell R. Creem, CEO for USC University and USC Norris Cancer hospitals, Katharine Harrington, dean of admission and financial aid, and Thomas S. Sayles, USC vice president for government and community relations, then briefed volunteers about the latest developments at the university. Following a networking lunch at USC Town & Gown, conference participants enjoyed the second annual “Lessons in Leadership” panel at the USC Norris Theatre. Moderated by Classical KUSC program director Gail Eichenthal, the panel featured Art Gastelum MPA ’81, CEO and president of Gateway Science and Engineering, Inc.; Bob Osher, ’81, president of Sony Pictures Entertainment Digital Productions and COO of the Columbia Pictures Motion Picture Group; Jeff Smulyan ’69, JD ’72, USC trustee and founder and CEO of Emmis Communications Corporation; and Nita Song ’97, president and COO of IW Group, Inc.

Clockwise from left: Flanked by Scott M. Mory and Robert Padgett ’68 are the 2009 President’s Award honorees: Toper Taylor ’85, Candace “Candy” Duncan ’52, MS ’83, Kathy Goodman ’62, Herb Goodman ’58, Christopher J. Harrer ’96, MS ’00, Jane Bensussen MA ’69, Richard A. DeBeikes Jr. ’78, Mark McKinley ’69 and Jonathan Kaji ’76; Board of Governors members John Clendening ’85 MBA ’92, Ramona Cappello ’81, Gregory Pollack ’86 MBA ’94 and Stephen Paulin ’78; and wearing hardhats are 2009 Widney Alumni House Award honoree Julie Miller ’69 MEd ’72 and past USC Alumni Association president Ann Hill ’71.

For many, the conference highlight came when volunteers donned hardhats for tours of the new Epstein Family Alumni Center and Ronald N. Tutor Campus Center, scheduled to open in fall 2010. In the evening, exceptional alumni volunteers were honored for their dedication and hard work at the USC Alumni Association Volunteer Recognition Dinner. The top awards, known as the President’s Awards, went to the honorees pictured above. Carmy Peters of the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center and the USC Alumni Association’s Grace Shiba were named Alumni Volunteer Friends of the Year, while the Alumni Volunteer Organizations of the Year were the Trojan League Associates of San Diego County, the USC Alumni Club of Kansas City and the USC Alumni Club of New York. Fifty-six volunteers took home Widney Alumni House Awards. Association president Padgett summed up, “I am continually amazed by the passion and dedication these awardees bring to their volunteerism on behalf of USC.” – Ross M. Levine

U S C T rojan Family maga z ine winter 2009

Class Notes who’s doing what

& where

’37 Fred Keenan is president of Keenan

Investment Company in Burbank, Calif., which he established in 1963.

’50 F. Gillar Boyd Jr. JD ’53 of Palm Springs, Calif., retired this spring after 35 years serving on the board of directors for Desert Water Agency, a nonprofit agency and state water contractor.

’55 Michael Halperin recently saw the

Los Angeles premiere of Freedom, Texas, a play he wrote about a Jewish kid from Los Angeles who moves to Texas in 1953 to become a radio star. Halperin lives in Sherman Oaks, Calif.

’58 Arnold J. Cole, former Daily Trojan

managing editor, is the author of the book Lomita … A Century Remembered, a history book coinciding with the centennial celebration of the city of Lomita, Calif. He was named the 2008 Outstanding Older American by Lomita and Los Angeles County.

’59 Michael August Faia PhD ’66 pub-

›› art party

In 1965, a new crop of inter national residents moved to USC. Hailing from England, the Netherlands, Flanders, Germany and Italy, they included 50 big names in Euro pean art, including Rembrandt, Rubens and Brueghel the Elder. The paintings were a gift from Armand Hammer (left), pictured with former USC president Norman Topping (center) and curator of USC’s University Galleries Edward S. Peck enjoying the exhibition at the USC Eliza beth Holmes Fisher Gallery. This November, the museum, now the USC Fisher Museum of Art, celebrates its 70th anniversary. l

lished Liberation Ichthyology, a historic novella that appeared in two parts in The Copperfield Review, an online literary magazine. He lives in Bandera, Texas. • Jack D. Forbes PhD is a professor emeritus of Native American studies and anthropology at UC Davis. He recently published The American Discovery of Europe, a book investigating the early voyages of Native Americans to the European continent.

’63 Ernest Nagamatsu DDS, a practicing

dentist in Los Angeles, recently published a book, Foods of the Kingdom of Bhutan, featuring photographs he and his son Eric have taken during numerous trips to the Kingdom of Bhutan.

’64 Alicemarie Stotler JD ’67 of Santa Ana,

Calif., has served as a chief judge on the U.S. District Court since 2005 and took senior status in January. She has spent more than 24 years on the bench.

’66 Fred Dear MS ’69 has been appointed

co-director of the Los Angeles district for the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. He serves on the Los Angeles Opera League board of directors as education chair and chair of regional gatherings. • L. Bovard “Bo” Martin was recently honored by the Southern California Social Science Association for his longtime support of social studies teachers and geography education. He has retired from his 32-year career selling educational publishing materials and lives with his wife, Florence, in Irvine, Calif.

’67 Bill Altaffer MS ’69 of San Diego,

Calif., was featured in the September issue of Men’s Journal in an article on competitive travel. The article highlighted his many travels and noted that he was named Most Traveled Man, 2005-2006, on the Web site MostTraveledPeople.com.

’68 Ronald A. Altoon, partner of Altoon +

Porter Architects in Los Angeles, was elected to the board of trustees for the International Council of Shopping Centers, Inc. • Dennis Gertmenian is founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Ready Pac Produce Inc., a fresh-cut produce supplier. He lives in Pasadena, Calif. • Norman “Don” Harmon MA ’69 recently retired after a long career in the Air Force and careers with the Air Force Academy, NASA at Kennedy Space Center, Harris Corporation in Melbourne, Fla., and Booz Allen Hamilton, Inc., a U.S. government consulting firm near Washington, D.C. He recently moved to New Bern, N.C. • Ken Krueger is a retired secondary school teacher and college instructor. He lives in Malibu, Calif., with his wife, Patricia Honey.

’70 Robert J. Dewar MBA recently pub-

lished A Savage Factory: An Eyewitness Account of the Auto Industry’s Self-Destruction, a book based on his experiences working in management at Ford Motor Company for many years. He lives in Cincinnati, Ohio.

We welcome news items from all USC alumni. Please include your name, street address, e-mail address, degree and year of graduation with each submission. Mail to: USC Trojan Family Magazine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-7790 or e-mail us at: magazines@usc.edu. Please note that, because of our long production schedule and the heavy volume of submissions, it might be several months before your notice appears

U S C T r o j a n Fa m i ly m a g a z i n e winter 2009

alumni profile

’71 Jeff Marsee was appointed president

Ellen Hunter Mai ’91, a political science major, lives an extra-

of College of the Redwoods in July 2008. He previously was vice president of administrative services at El Camino College in Torrance, Calif., and served for more than 21 years as a vice president and vice chancellor of academic affairs and fiscal services at community colleges in Texas, New York and California. • Jonathan Pell has been promoted to artistic director of the Dallas Opera. He has been with the opera for 24 years and previously served as its director of artistic administration.

’72 Joseph Aguerrebere MS ’75, EdD ’86

is president and chief executive officer of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. He lives in Falls Church, Va. • Prescott Muir was recently appointed director of the School of Architecture at the University of Utah’s College of Architecture and Planning. • D. D. “Don” Warrick DBA received an Outstanding Teacher of the Year award from the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs College of Business. He has received 15 outstanding teacher awards from the business college and holds the lifetime title of President’s Teaching Scholar awarded by the University of Colorado.

’73 Clarence Brown MA ’87, director of

photo by roger snider

Class of ’91

• Nancy Jones MA ’72 left her position as chief executive at the Community Foundation of Abilene, Texas, in March to become president of the Community Foundation of North Texas, based in Fort Worth.

marketing and communication at Mount San Antonio College in Walnut, Calif., was recently awarded the Gold Paragon Award by the National Council for Marketing and Public Relations for developing the best recruitment marketing campaign among community colleges in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. • Geoffrey A. Goodman has been appointed by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to a judgeship with the Sacramento County Superior Court. • Eugene Nordstrom DSW published his third novel, Reflections in Gold, which won both the Editors’ Choice and the Rising Star literary awards from his publisher, iUniverse, Inc. He is a retired clinical psychotherapist and lives in the Pacific Northwest. • Brian Settles MA recently published No Reason for Dying, a book about his life as a combat pilot and his experiences as one of the few black fighter pilots in the Vietnam War. A retired airline captain, he lives in Southern Georgia with his wife. • Miles Swarthout MA wrote a chapter on the making of The Shootist, John Wayne’s final film, for the book Duke: We’re Glad We Knew You. He also has a short story published in a new anthology from La Frontera Publishing, Roundup!

An A in Adventure ordinary life. She has hunted pirates in the Malacca Straits and toured the illegal diamond mines of Sierra Leone, reported from Afghani stan and chased down communist rebels in Peru. But the seeds for all these adventures were planted at USC, where she leapt free of her Orange County bubble into a wider, more dangerous world. While at USC, she took advantage of every opportunity, study ing a semester in Spain where she met her future husband, Evan, a U.S. Air Force pilot; interning a semester and working directly with former president Ronald Reagan in his Culver City office three days a week; and, finally, interning at the White House for president George H. W. Bush’s advance team in Washington, D.C. “All of those things were so fundamental to what I’m doing now, and all of them are because of USC,” she says. “USC laid such a great foundation and gives you the tools and the confidence that you can go out and do whatever you want to do.” After graduating, she moved with her husband to his military assignments in Japan, Las Vegas and Virginia. During that time, she earned two master’s degrees (in international studies and public admin istration) and finished all classwork toward a Ph.D. in international studies. During her Ph.D. studies, she also worked as an intelligence specialist on drug trafficking for the Coast Guard. The Colombian cocaine trade fascinated her, but because she was a student analyst, nobody was eager to let her travel there to finish her research. Back in Southern California, a friend introduced Mai to Robert Young Pelton, an adventurer and journalist who was heading to Peru to follow the Shining Path Rebels and investigate the cocaine trade. She asked to come along, and off they went. On their way to a rebel camp, a car crashed into the duo’s motorcycle, and Pelton was rushed to a jungle clinic. There, he handed Mai the camera. Go film the cocaine-smuggling rebels and figure out how the trade works, he told her. She jumped at the opportunity – her first real experience in field producing – and in the jungles of Peru, she learned everything: how to shoot, conduct interviews and manage locations. Immediately, she was hooked, and the last few years have been a whirlwind of world travel, television producing and wild adventures. She covered the war in Afghanistan for CNN and the Discovery Channel, working as a producer and camera operator for major stories such as the American Taliban and the prisoner uprising in Qala-i-Jangi. She produced specials for the History Chan nel on modern-day piracy, child soldiers and the international mercenary trade. Her most important work, she says, is with Developing Opportunity, the nonprofit she founded with her husband to bring education and vocational training to countries such as Afghanistan, Colombia and Nepal. Among other projects, the organization built and maintains two schools in northern Afghanistan. It’s all volunteer work, inspired by what Mai saw overseas, and funded by the generosity of friends, family and private donors. The most amazing part is how she does all this, tromping about these global hot-zones with fear less self-confidence, keeping the camera rolling no matter what. “I don’t have a great sense of trepida tion about things,” she says. “I jump in and just get on with it.” And that’s what she recommends all USC students to do, too: Travel. Explore. Act. Don’t talk about it; do it. “Every time you go to another country, it’s just a whole other world, it’s a whole oth er group of people, another way of thinking, and it’s just wonderful. I would encourage everybody to travel. You don’t have to go to the places I like to go, but just get out of your comfort zone. It’s so good for you.” – Blaise Nutter

U S C T r o j a n Fa m i ly m a g a z i n e winter 2009

’74 Eugene J. Muscat EdD was appointed

to the City of San Francisco Market Corp., a nonprofit board and one of the two governing bodies that oversee the management of San Francisco’s wholesale produce market. He is a professor of management at the University of San Francisco School of Business and Professional Studies and a member of the board of trustees of Archbishop Riordan High School in San Francisco.

’75 Helia Corral PhD, professor of

modern languages and literatures, received the 2008-2009 Faculty Leadership and Service Award from Cal State Bakersfield.

’76 Celia Ayala PhD ’94 has been

appointed by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to the Early Learning Quality Improvement Systems Advisory Committee. Since 2007, she has served as the chief operating officer of Los Angeles Universal Preschool. • Robert M. A. Wilson MPA of Las Vegas has contracted with McFarland Publishing Company, Inc., for two encyclopedias to be released in 2010 under his pen name R. Michael Wilson. He was recently interviewed by Warner Bros. for the remastered DVD of Mad Max.

’77 Virnell Bruce MA received a special

citation from the Colonial Dames of America for his recently published one-woman play, Shells: A Cameo of Anne Morrow Lindbergh. He has spent 36 years in the aerospace industry, with the last 25 in corporate communications, and now gives presentations on Anne Morrow Lindbergh. • David S. Cunningham III has been appointed by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to a judgeship in the Los Angeles County Superior Court. • Heidrun Mumper-Drumm, a designer and an associate professor at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif., was recently named the school’s director of sustainability initiatives. As a former environmental engineer for Bechtel and Parsons Engineering, she will now help Art Center meet its goal of leadership in comprehensive design education. • Michael Orman recently joined County Commerce Bank in Ventura, Calif., as executive vice president and chief operating officer. He also serves on the boards of the Ventura Marina Rotary Club and the TriCounties Chapter of the Risk Management Association. • Robert G. Popovich MBT, professor of law at Pepperdine University School of Law in Malibu, Calif., is a visiting professor for the 2009-2010 school year at

Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles where he is teaching community property and contracts. • Penny Pence Smith MA was recently named chair of the Department of Management and Marketing in the College of Business Administration at Hawaii Pacific University, where she has taught for the past five years. • Dora Summers-Ewing of Minneapolis has been named chief people officer of Coinstar, Inc., a global company with multiple business lines, including coin counting, electronic payment solutions and entertainment services.

’78 Wendy Naiditch Brickman MA, owner

of Brickman Marketing, a publicity and marketing firm based in Monterey, Calif., has been named a 2009 Outstanding Woman by the Monterey County Commission on the Status of Women. She also received a Woman of the Year award from the Professional Women’s Network of the Monterey Peninsula. • Neil Stipp MM of Glendora, Calif., won the 2010 American Guild of Organists/ECS Publishing Award in Choral Composition for his work “May Your Life Be Filled with Gladness,” a piece for choir, organ and oboe.

’79 Peter Walsh was hired as vice president of medical affairs at St. Francis Medical Center in Colorado Springs, Colo.

’80 Ramsey Ezaki DDS of Ezaki Dental

Practice in Walnut, Calif., was honored with the 2009 Small Business of the Year award from California Assemblyman Curt Hagman. Ezaki’s business has been in operation for 29 years. • Owen Newcomer PhD was recently installed as president of the Los Angeles County Division of the California League of California Cities, an association of California city officials that advocates for cities at the state level so local governments can better serve their residents.

’81 Colleen Aycock PhD ’85 of Albuquer-

que, N.M., is the co-author of the book Joe Gans: A Biography of the First African American World Boxing Champion and was present for a book signing in June at the International Boxing Hall of Fame in Canastota, N.Y. • William Garr JD ’84 of Scottsdale, Ariz., was named the general counsel of 944 Media, LLC, a publishing company focused on online and print lifestyle publications. • Paul W. Jones MPA ’84, a physician and anesthesiologist, recently concluded his term as president of the American Osteopathic College of Anesthesiologists for 2008. He serves as chairman of the Department of Anesthesiology and director of anesthesia services at Robinson Memorial Hospital in Ravenna, Ohio. • Omar M. Kader PhD delivered a keynote

U S C T r o j a n Fa m i ly m a g a z i n e winter 2009

speech titled “The National Interest of the U.S. in the Middle East” as part of Southern Illinois University Carbondale’s Asian American Heritage Month activities in April. He lives in Vienna, Va. • Graeme Wilson MA has been appointed special coordinator of the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands, a partnership between the people and government of Solomon Islands and 15 contributing countries in the Pacific region.

’82 Linda Bannister PhD co-wrote the

play Turpentine Jake, which tells the story of turpentine laborers in the pine forests of Florida and Georgia in the 1930s. The play was nominated for two 2009 NAACP Theatre Awards. She is an English professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. • Brian D. Dailey MA ’84, PhD ’87 retired from his position as senior vice president of Washington operations at Lockheed Martin Corporation in April. He lives in Arlington, Va. • Denise L. Eger was recently elected president of the Board of Rabbis of Southern California. She is the spiritual leader of the Congregation Kol Ami in West Hollywood, Calif.

’83 Jim Jimenez was recently appointed

partner at Windes & McClaughry Account

ancy Corporation’s internal audit and business advisory services practice. He lives in Orange, Calif. • Refugio Reynoso was recently named chief financial officer and vice president of finance at BakeMark USA and Canada, a global bakery supplies and food ingredients company. He lives in Pasadena, Calif. • James D. Williams PhD, professor of rhetoric and linguistics at Soka University in Aliso Viejo, Calif., published his latest book, An Introduction to Classical Rhetoric.

’84 Dan Dunmoyer of Carmichael, Calif.,

recently accepted a national executive position as head of state legislative and regulatory affairs for Farmers Insurance and Zurich Financial Services in the United States. He previously served as chief cabinet secretary and deputy chief of staff for California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. • Jim Sitterly DMA is completing his final season as concertmaster of the orchestra for the ABC television series Lost. • Charles Smith MPL ’90 has been promoted to regional leader of Southern California operations with ICF International, a global environmental consulting firm with services in environmental planning and infrastructure, energy, transportation and climate change. He lives in Ladera Ranch, Calif.

’86 Jo Javier is vice president of sales at

Sendio Inc., an e-mail security company. He lives in Irvine, Calif. • Albert Lopez is the vice president of strategic communications for Ticketmaster Entertainment. He previously served as corporate director of strategic communications for Harrah’s Entertainment and as global director for überMedia at Motorola. • Jim Mahoney MA has been appointed chief executive officer of Novomer Inc., a materials company based in Ithaca, N.Y., which makes high-performance, biodegradable plastics, polymers and other chemicals from renewable substances. • Mark Schoenfield MPW, PhD ’90 is an associate professor of English at Vanderbilt University in Nashville and author of the recently published book British Periodicals and Romantic Identity: The Literary Lower Empire.

’87 Pamela McCrory PhD is a licensed

psychologist in private practice in Calabasas, Calif., providing individual, couple and family therapy. She serves on the board of directors of the Los Angeles County Psychological Association and the steering committee of the Soldiers Project, a nonprofit organization providing free mental health services to military

U S C T r o j a n Fa m i ly m a g a z i n e winter 2009

alumni profile

Economy Class When Lukas Petrash ’06 was growing up in Texas, he learned to do a lot with very little. He made his own toys, fashioning a kite from a plastic bag and string, as well as a paintball gun from scraps of PVC, using wild berries for ammunition. Petrash’s early inventions were a preview of his promising architectural career, which focuses on ultra-low-cost sustainable housing. His first project, completed after his junior year at USC’s School of Architecture, was a transportable bedroom addition for his parents’ house. On a $550 budget, he designed and built a 48-square-foot room. This set the precedent for the project that brought him international attention from several shelter magazines – building a completely sustainable home for $12,000. That’s $9.88 per square foot. That project began in summer 2005, when Petrash returned to Huntsville, Texas, to work with the Sustainable Builders’ Guild of Huntsville, an organization that collects leftovers from lumberyards and contractors. Petrash took on the task of building a 484-square-foot two-bedroom house from scrap materials. The job required not only designing and building the structure, but also making sure it met all building codes. “Everyone told me it was impossible, and they were pretty close to right,” says Petrash. Despite others’ skepticism, the president of the guild, Dan Phillips, had confidence in Petrash. Phil lips says of Petrash: “He was a quick study, fast and relentless in everything he learned. I was riding in the shadows if he got in trouble or if he had any questions, but he carried it on completely.” Work ing only during the summers, Petrash completed the project in 13 months. The house was built for Petrash’s aunt, an artist, and he named the house the MCD House, using her initials. Early in the design process, Petrash sought assistance from his mentor, USC architecture professor Goetz Schierle. Schierle teaches a class on structures that Petrash credits as significantly influencing his current career path. “Unless we know how things work structurally, it will limit how we can dream,” says Petrash. Schierle offered Petrash feedback on his drawings for the MCD House and was very pleased at the result. “Lukas’ house is much more unique than a typical design,” says Schierle. “It is very artistic. Students like Lukas really only come along once in a while.” Petrash is quick to credit the school. “Before I came to USC, I knew nothing about architecture. It is wonderful to think that I have a lifetime ahead of me to practice all that I had the privilege to learn. I enjoyed USC so much that my younger brother, John-Paul ’07, chose to come, and now my younger sister, Grace Anna ’11, is at USC as well.” After graduation, Petrash headed to Harvard’s Graduate School of Design for a master’s in housing and urbanization. While there, Petrash did extensive research on the history of prefabricated housing, seeking to understand why houses are produced so differently than cars and why hundreds of attempts to massproduce houses in the United States have failed. He is currently completing a book on the subject. “With this economy, people are going to start thinking about how can we build housing more af fordably,” says Petrash. “I think they are going to start making the same mistakes that they have been making for the last 100 years; this book is to help prevent that.” Petrash is now prefabricating eco-friendly houses that can be shipped internationally. He recently finished construction on the first set of houses, which will be erected near Milan, Italy. All the prefabricated pieces (including furniture) for two small houses fit into one 40-foot shipping container, which means, Petrash says, “a person can have a sustainable home anywhere in the world for as little as $30,000.” – Miya Williams

U S C T r o j a n Fa m i ly m a g a z i n e winter 2009

service members and their families. She also teaches part-time in the Department of Educational Psychology and Counseling at Cal State Northridge. • Douglas Schenck recently opened his law firm, the Law Offices of Douglas A. Schenck, in San Juan Capistrano, Calif., which focuses on matters involving serious personal injuries and wrongful death. Prior to founding his firm, he spent 10 years as a civil litigation defense attorney at various law firms in downtown Los Angeles and Orange County, Calif. • Thomas Woodall MS ’93 was recently promoted to principal engineering fellow at Raytheon in El Segundo, Calif. He also was recently honored as an associate fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and currently serves as chairman of the institute’s computer system technical committees.

’89 Robert Hobbs MS has been appointed

chief executive officer of TGS-NOPEC Geophysical Company, a provider of geoscientific data products and services to the oil and gas production industries worldwide. He joined TGS in January 2008 as chief operating officer.

’91 Rei Hotoda MM, DMA ’95 was

recently appointed assistant conductor of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.

’92 Michael Herron of Burbank, Calif.,

recently accepted the position of senior vice president, national sales leader, at Marsh, an insurance broker and risk adviser.

’93 Millicent Borges Accardi MPW recently had her poetry published in several literary journals, including Salt River Review, Folio and Room of One’s Own. In September 2008, she was a poet-in-residence at Fundación Valparaíso, an international arts residency organization located on the Mediterranean coast of Andalucía, Spain. • Jordan Charnofsky MM, DMA ’97, a guitarist in Encino, Calif., appears on a new CD from Crystal Records of Brahms’ clarinet sonatas. • Lisa Gilford JD, a partner in the Los Angeles law office of Alston & Bird LLP, was installed as the new president of the National Association of Women Lawyers at its annual awards luncheon in New York City.

’94 Edward J. McCaffery has joined the Los Angeles office of the law firm Seyfarth Shaw LLP. He practices in the areas of trusts and estates, taxation, and intellectual property. He also holds the Robert C. Packard Trustee Chair in Law and is professor of law, economics and political science at the USC Gould School of Law. • Natalie Pace is the author of the book Put Your Money Where Your Heart Is: Investment Strategies for

photo courtesy of lu k as petrash

Class of ’06

Lifetime Wealth. She lives in Santa Monica, Calif. • Neil Rotter MSW/MS ’96 received H2 Marketing’s Sales/Marketing Manager of the Year award, an award that recognizes exemplary achievements of organizations and professionals in the field of home-care sales and marketing. He is vice president of business development for Accredited Home Health Services in Woodland Hills, Calif.

’95 Michelle M. Bailey MBA was selected

as a Women in Cable Television fellow within the Betsy Magness Leadership Institute, an organization designed to elevate women leaders in the cable and telecommunications industry. She is vice president of corporate market research for BET Networks in Washington, D.C. • Thelma Melendez de Santa Ana PhD is assistant secretary of elementary and secondary education for the U.S. Department of Education, a position that was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in July. • Margaret E. Kosal published her first book, Nanotechnology for Chemical and Biological Defense. She is an assistant professor at the Center for International Strategy, Technology, and Policy at Georgia Institute of Technology. • Kevin O’Connor PhD, dean of Saddleback College’s Liberal Arts and Learning Resources, has been named Administrator of the Year for the South Orange County (Calif.) Community College District. He has worked at the Mission Viejo, Calif., college for nine years.

’96 John Hreno, founder and president of

the landscape design company the Garden Studio, was profiled in an August issue of Pasadena Weekly.

’97 Jonathan Himebauch joined the Mon-

treal Alouettes football team as offensive line coach. He is a former offensive lineman and long snapper who played in the Canadian Football League and the NFL. He began his professional coaching career in 2003 with Calgary, where he was the offensive line coach. • Nita Song is president and chief operating officer of IW Group, a company specializing in connecting companies with the United States’ growing Asian-American market. She lives in Los Angeles.

’98 Juli Berwald PhD blogged for Wired

Science about her testimony before the Texas State Board of Education in its final public hearing regarding revisions to the state science education standards. She is a freelance science writer living in Austin, Texas. • Kyle Mathews JD ’01 was elevated from attorney to partner at Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP, where he works in the finance and bankruptcy practice group in the firm’s Los Angeles office.

’99 Kyle Barisich recently played the lead-

ing role of Raoul in The Phantom of the Opera at the Pantages Theatre in Los Angeles. • Ryan Hollis of Corona del Mar, Calif., was appointed both senior vice president of Quiksilver Inc., an apparel and accessories company, and general manager of Mervin Manufacturing, a snowboard manufacturer. He previously served as vice president of business development for Quiksilver and as a marketing director of Quiksilver Glorious Sun in Shanghai and Hong Kong. • Nicholas Lawrence GRCT composed the music for the film The Importance of Flossing, which won the World Vision-Sojourners Filmmakers Challenge. He lives in Los Angeles. • Alexandra Leung MBT was promoted to partner at the Los Angeles office of Ernst & Young. She has more than 14 years of public accounting experience.

’01 Christina Almeida has been named the

Associated Press’ news editor in Atlanta. She previously oversaw news coverage for the AP in Montana and Wyoming. • Carrie Ellis MA is the director of project management for KaBOOM!, a national nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., dedicated to building play spaces for children. She recently led a group of volunteers to build a playground in one day with first lady Michelle Obama and California first lady Maria Shriver. • Catie Mihalopoulos PhD is an assistant professor of art history at Cal State Channel Islands. • Dan Siegel MM recently released his 19th solo album, Sphere. He is a pianist, composer and producer living in Irvine, Calif. • Tim Woodward was a contestant on the television game show Who Wants to be a Millionaire in March. He develops trivia questions for an African television show, The Zain Africa Challenge, based in Nairobi, Kenya.

’02 Courtlan (McClintock) Budman is the

founder of Cazza, a food company based in Los Angeles specializing in healthy, gourmet frozen foods. • Alysia Michelle Piffero is director of operations and human resources for the greater Irving-Las Colinas Chamber of Commerce in Irving, Texas. • Jared Yeager of Los Angeles is the associate producer for Activision’s DJ Hero video game, which was released this autumn. He also produced and designed his first independent iPhone game, Zombonie.

’03 Priya David MA is a CBS News cor-

respondent for The Early Show and the CBS Evening News weekend editions, based in New York. She previously reported for KTVU-TV in San Francisco and was a reporter for MSNBC. • Norm Katnik recently joined the sales team at Sendio Inc., an e-mail security company. He lives

in Tustin, Calif. • Paul Kwo released two CDs this year: Blue, an album of piano music, and Ocean of Thoughts, an album inspired by 15 art photographs he took, which are printed on the insert of the CD. He lives in San Gabriel, Calif.

’05 Robert Garcia MA was elected to the

city council of Long Beach, Calif. • Jonathan Lynn is a public defender at the Palm Beach County Public Defender’s Office in West Palm Beach, Fla. • Michael Rasalan Odoca works with the U.S. Department of Labor in Pasadena, Calif., as a federal investigator for the Employee Benefits Security Administration. • Nick Valencia is a national news desk assignment editor at CNN in Atlanta.

’06 Chris Abani PhD was named a 2009

Guggenheim Fellow in fiction. An awardwinning poet, novelist and playwright, he is a professor of creative writing at UC Riverside. • Margarita Aibkhanova graduated with a master of public administration at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. She lives in Los Angeles and is an intern at Spirituality for Kids, an international nonprofit organization focused on youth empowerment. • Amy Chiang MAcc ’07 was recently promoted from experienced associate to senor associate at Macias Gini & O’Connell LLP, a statewide certified public accounting, management consulting and personnel services firm. She has been with the firm’s downtown Los Angeles office since 2007. • Mathius Mack Gertz of Santa Monica, Calif., was recently appointed vice president of acquisitions and development for Seminal Films. He writes film criticism for www.filmarcade.net and www.reelgrok.com and has developed and produced film projects independently through his own company, M. M. Gertz Entertainment. • Whitney Mares MA is the youngest person on this year’s “40 Under 40” list, which appeared in the August issue of PRWeek, a magazine for public relations professionals. She is the account supervisor at the public relations and marketing firm Padilla Speer Beardsley in Minneapolis, and has established the first internal and external public relations committees for the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, Upper Midwest Chapter.

’07 Courtney Huffman MM of Lawrence, Mass., appeared in the Santa Maria (Calif.) Philharmonic’s recent production of La Traviata, where she sang the principal role of Violetta. She made her New York solo recital debut at Carnegie Hall in June. • Alexandru Iftimie was named a 2009 Paul and Daisy Soros New American Fellow, an award to support graduate study by

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naturalized citizens, resident aliens or the children of naturalized citizens. He attends Yale Law School. • Michael Khandelwal MPW teaches poetry and fiction at the Muse Writers Center in Norfolk, Va. • Josue A. Torres is a corporate research analyst in the Fresno, Calif., offices of Univision, a Spanish-language television network. • Courtney Wise of Sarasota, Fla., was listed on Biz941 Magazine’s annual “People to Watch” list. She is the manager of Take Care Advisor, a company that helps older adults and their families manage their health care.

’08 Chris Becker of Thousand Oaks, Calif., completed his 10 months of service with AmeriCorps’ National Civilian Community Corps. Through this program, he undertook a series of six- to eight-week-long projects in various communities across the country. • Jessica Kehinde Ngo MPW is a Los Angeles-based writer and English instruc-

[ in memoriam ]

tor. She recently published her first book, a memoir titled Second Twin, First Twin.

Marriages Marlene Baerg ’87, MBA/MS ’89 and Duncan Oddie • Joseph William Andolino ’95 and Alissa Cucci • Teresa A. Flanigan MFA ’95 and Trenton Brian Jones • Lauretta Minh-Lee Teoh-Lim ’97 and Michael John Boulton • Wendy Welch ’99 and Justin Platukas • Jenny Keens ’01 and Bill Franz • Bryan R. Weaver ’01 and Jennifer P. Shoucair ’03 • Alysia Michelle Piffero ’02 and Matthew Scott Bell • Christie Jade Rizzo

MA ’02, PhD ’05 and John Gregory Martin Jr. • Neal S. Salisian II JD ’02 and Stephanie L. Petroni • Reyna-Athena Samalea ’03, DPT ’06 and Edison L. David • Samantha Alexis Chan ’05 and Adrian Hillyer • Jonathan Lynn ’05 and Mallory Shipman.

Virginia Ramo

Virginia Ramo ’37, a USC life trustee and 2002 recipient of the university’s highest honor, the Presiden tial Medallion, died Aug. 19. She was 93. A prominent patron of the arts, education and medicine, Ramo extended her support – both intel lectual and financial – to institutions throughout Southern California and beyond. As co-founder of the Ramo Foundation, she helped create the Virginia Ramo Hall of Music on USC’s University Park campus, which was dedicated in 1974, and the Ramo Auditorium at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, as well as endowed chairs, awards and scholarship funds at several other universities. Elected to the USC Board of Trustees in 1971, Ramo served as vice chairman of the board from 1986 to 1991. Her husband, Simon (the “R” in TRW and a recipient of the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom), advises USC’s senior administration. While at USC, she joined Alpha Epsilon Phi sorority and played saxophone in the Trojan band and a woman’s orchestra. She later taught high school in New York for eight years. Ramo’s initial involvement as an alumna was with a support group of USC College. She later cochaired the university’s annual fund program for 1969-70 and 1970-71. From 1976 to 1980, she was co-chair of the university-wide Toward Century II fund-raising campaign, which brought in a thenrecord $309 million. She also was a member of the boards of the USC Davis School of Gerontology, the Doheny Eye Institute and Friends of the USC Libraries. Outside the university, Ramo participated on numerous boards, including those of the LA Opera and United Way. She served as vice president of the Founders and the Blue Ribbon of the Music Cen ter and served as national president of the Achievement Rewards for College Scientists Foundation. Ramo received USC’s Alumni Service Award in 1971 and the Asa V. Call Achievement Award in 1986. The university granted her an honorary doctor of humane letters degree in 1978. Together with her husband, she received USC Thornton’s Founders Award in 1979. Ramo is survived by her husband, Simon, sons James and Alan and four grandchildren. l

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Births Lisa Tan Milstein ’85 and Hugh Milstein ’87,

a daughter, Elise Kamala. She is the niece of Alec Milstein MA ’86 and George Milstein ’88 • Hector A. Martinez ’94 and Claudia (Gomez) Martinez MSW ’05, a son, Quetzal. He is the nephew of Lilia Martinez DDS ’93 and Rocio Martinez ’96 • Tameron (Hulbert) Ricker ’94 and Todd Ricker ’94, a daughter, Quincy Grace. She joins sister Reagan Jill • Jason Angelos ’97 and Stephanie Zambukos Angelos ’98, a son, George Reese. He joins sister Sophia • Jessica (Helfrich) Etezady ’98, MPA ’99 and Cameron Etezady ’98, JD ’01, a son, Hudson James • Thomas Fisher ’99 and Schevaun (Stinson) Fisher, a son, Jackson Matthew.

Deaths Eleanor M. (Marks) Stadler DDS

’30, of Gig Harbor, Wash.; June 14, at the age of 101. She came to Los Angeles with her family in 1911 and attended UCLA prior to studying dentistry at USC. She worked as a dentist for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health and private dental practices. She also worked on early dental fluoride research projects. In 1938, she and her husband, Albert Carlson, moved to Seattle and later to Roseburg, Oregon, where she worked part-time sharing a dental office. She later set up her own practice and organized and taught workshops for dental assistants to increase their skill level. She was a leader in various dental associations and the women’s advocacy group Zonta. After retiring, she was active in several volunteer organizations. She was preceded in death by her first husband and her second husband, Joe Stadler. She is survived by her children Stephen Carlson, Margaret Callahan and Judy Stadler Wright, daughter-in-law Dianna, son-in-law Tom, six grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren. ’41, of West Chester, Penn.; May 27, at the age of 91. He was a pilot for Pan American Airlines for the Lend-Lease Program at the beginning of World War II, flying aircraft to the Philippines. While in Manila, he was captured by the Japanese and was a civilian POW for three and a half years at Santo Tomas. He later worked as a construction supervisor in Upper Saddle River, N.J. There, he was instrumental in establishing that city’s first public library and was active in the community. For 14 years, until the age of 90, he was shop manager at Nordic Hardwood Flooring, a family-owned business in West Chester. An avid runner, he Edward J. Powers

won silver medals at the National Senior Olympics at the ages of 85 and 87. He was preceded in death by his first wife, Florence Frey Powers, second wife Alice Hahn Powers, sister Ruth and brother Walter. He is survived by his children Anne Bosch, Barbara Sue Godwin, Patricia Eder, James E. G. Powers, Jeanne Walcher, Joan Ryan, Dorothy Powers Ray and Edward J. Powers Jr., 19 grandchildren, 11 greatgrandchildren, one great-great-granddaughter, sister Glorianne Sibold Eiss, and longtime companion Jeanne Overton. ’41, of Irvine, Calif.; June 24, at the age of 90. He was president of the USC chapter of the professional foreign service fraternity Delta Phi Epsilon. After graduating from USC, he received a public service fellowship with the U.S. Department of Commerce, compiling a handbook on Latin America for the U.S. Board of Education. He later spent 30 years in the Los Angeles steel industry, including foundry ownership and steel importing. Later in his career, he transitioned to working in real estate investments. He is survived by his wife of 60 years, Renette ’46, sons Gary, Ron ’78 and Steve PharmD ’91, and grandchildren Lauren and Greg ’12. Ray Franklin Taylor

Richard M. Gray ’49, of North Windham,

Conn.; July 17, at the age of 86. He joined the 168th Regiment of the National Guard in 1940 and in 1941 was part of the 34th Infantry Division. He was captured in the Battle of Sidi Bou Zid in Tunisia and spent two and a half years in Germany as a POW. He later attended USC, and upon graduation he spent a year teaching music at a public school in East Los Angeles before attending the University of Kansas. He worked at the VA Hospital in Topeka, Kan., for 15 years, and then founded music therapy degree programs at Ohio University in 1967 and at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh in 1972. The Richard M. Gray Award, granted by Duquesne University’s music school for outstanding students performing extraordinary service, is named in his honor. He taught at Duquesne University until he retired in 1982, and then he volunteered for many years at the VA hospital as a music therapist. He was preceded in death by two grandchildren. He is survived by his wife of 58 years, Corinne, children Jerry Gray, Jill Benedict, Janet Marciniak and Jonathan Gray, daughters-in-law Sharon and Tara, son-in-law Pete, 10 grandchildren, and one great-grandchild. Robert W. Somers ’49, of Encino, Calif.;

a pharmacist in the Los Angeles area and served as president of the San Fernando Valley Pharmacy Association. Jack Bernard Arnold ’55, MA ’58, of Ishpem-

ing, Mich.; April 21, from complications following surgery, at the age of 79. He was a member of Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity while at USC. At his time of death, he was a retired city manager, having served towns in Michigan, Montana and Minnesota as well as the cities of Carpinteria and Carlsbad in California. While on the faculty of the University of Tennessee, he served as a traveling city manager for 14 counties in the northeast portion of the state. He is survived by his wife, Diane, sons James and Robert, and five grandchildren. Susanne “Susie” Hoffmann Crosby ’55, of

Tucson, Ariz.; June 9, of breast cancer, at the age of 76. After graduating from USC, she

[ in memoriam ]

taught sixth grade in Temple City, Calif. She was active in the North Orange County (Calif.) Alumni Chapter of Delta Delta Delta sorority and served as its president. She was active in the PTA and was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution. In 1989, she completed her master’s degree and then worked as district librarian for the Fountain Valley (Calif.) School District and later for the Westminster (Calif.) School District. She retired in 1996. She is survived by her husband of 50 years, George, son Carter, daughters Marianne and Cay, and grandchildren Tyler and Robin. George Belotti ’56, of Arcadia, Calif.; June

15, of a stroke, at the age of 74. He played football at USC, lettering for three seasons. He was a member of the American Football League’s first championship team and was an eighth-round draft pick by the NFL’s Green Bay Packers, but instead played

Raymond A. Watt

Raymond A. Watt, a USC trustee and a prominent Southern California real estate developer whose involvement with USC spanned decades, died on July 7. He was 90. Watt was founder and chairman of the board of Watt Companies, one of the largest owners, devel opers and managers of commercial real estate in the Western United States. Founded in 1947, Watt Companies has developed more than 8 million square feet of commercial and retail properties and is responsible for more than 100,000 homes and apartments, 50 shopping centers, six planned communities and three major hotels. During the Nixon administration, Watt served as assistant secretary of Housing and Urban Development. He also was a former president of the National Corporation of Housing Partnerships, established to develop middle- and low-income housing. Watt was named one of the 100 foremost builders of the 20th century by Builder magazine and in 1985 was inducted into the National Association of Home Builders’ hall of fame. He was a former trustee of the Hugh O’Brian Youth Foundation and a director of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Youth Foundation. The Cushman Watt Scout Center – a Boy Scouts facility in Los Angeles – is named in honor of Watt and fellow contributor John C. Cushman III. Watt was a longtime member of the USC Associates and Friends of the USC Libraries, was elected to the USC Board of Trustees in 1968 and received an honorary doctor of laws degree from USC in 1974. His support for USC ranged from athletics to the USC School of Policy, Planning, and Development, to the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center. In 1969, he gave $1 million for construction of the Ray and Nadine Watt Hall of Architecture and Fine Arts. In 2005, he made a second $1 million gift sup porting the Robert H. Timme Architectural Research Center, a third-floor addition to Watt Hall. Watt’s name is also memorialized at USC in Watt Way, a major thoroughfare on the University Park campus. Watt is survived by his third wife, Gwendolyn, children Sally Oxley, Janet Van Huisen and J. Scott Watt ’68, and numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren. l

June 12, after a brief illness, at the age of 85. For more than 50 years, he practiced as

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center with the Houston Oilers in 1960. In 1961, he played briefly for both the Oilers and the San Diego Chargers. He later worked for Jorgensen Steel and Aluminum in Lynwood, Calif., and Pacific Clay Products in Lake Elsinore, Calif. He is survived by his wife, Marie, twin daughters Mara Spilker and Cristina Witham, and granddaughter Courtney Spilker. Joseph Didone ’57, of Sunnyvale, Calif.;

Feb. 16, at the age of 82. Born and raised in Italy, he came to California in 1953, obtained citizenship in 1957 and after graduating from USC earned an MBA from Santa Clara University in 1965. He worked his way up to the position of chief financial officer at Guardian Packaging Corporation and ran the company’s operation in Vitoria, Spain, for three years. After retiring, he spent much of his time at the Didone Ranch, his 84-acre property. He is survived

[ in memoriam ]

by his wife of 55 years, Verna, daughters Lisa Didone Rehm ’83 and Laura, sons Joseph and Michael, son-in-law Kurt, daughters-in-law Janet and Jennifer, 10 grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. Gerald Winter ’57, of Northridge, Calif.;

March 26. A trombonist, he was a member of the Glendale (Calif.) Symphony Orchestra. He was a longtime high school music teacher and band director in the Los Angeles Unified School District. He is survived by his wife, Shirley, daughters Karen and Christine, and three grandchildren. Richard Alan “Dick” Lewis DDS ’59, of

Torrance, Calif.; March 24, from respiratory failure, at the age of 83. After graduating from high school in Michigan, he worked at Mueller Brass Company in Port Huron, Mich., then moved to Colorado, Arizona and finally California.

Herbert G. Klein

Herbert G. Klein ’40, a veteran journalist and the White House’s first director of communications, died on July 2. He was 91, and was a life member of the USC Board of Trustees at his death. Klein served as vice president and editor in chief of Copley Newspapers from 1980 to 2003, and was associated with the Copley chain for more than five decades. A former Daily Trojan sports editor, Klein served on the USC Board of Trustees since 1982. He also was a past president of the USC Alumni Association. Klein began his news career as a copy boy for the Alhambra Post-Advocate, eventually rising to news editor. He later moved to the San Diego Evening Tribune and then to the San Diego Union, where he served as editor from 1959 to 1968. He resigned to join Richard M. Nixon’s presidential campaign. Klein met Nixon when he covered Nixon’s 1946 congressional bid. Klein played a role in all of Nixon’s political campaigns, serving as press secretary while Nixon was vice president and as manager of his 1968 presidential campaign. When Nixon assumed the presidency in 1969, Klein became the first White House director of com munications, where he oversaw information policies, served as the administration’s key spokesman for television broadcasts and accompanied Nixon on trips. Klein resigned in 1973, unscathed by the Watergate scandal, and joined Metromedia Inc., a national non-network broadcasting group, as vice president of corporate relations. In 1980, Klein was appointed editor in chief of the nine daily and 20 weekly newspapers that formed the Copley Press, headquartered in San Diego. He retired in 2003. In 1971, Klein received the USC Alumni Association’s Asa V. Call Achievement Award. He served as president of the Alumni Association from 1975 to 1976. Klein received the inaugural Half-Century Trojans Hall of Fame award in 2003 and an honorary doctor of humane letters from USC in 2006. Klein was preceded in death by his wife of more than 66 years, Marjorie Galbraith ’41, and his daughter Joanne Mayne ’67. He is survived by his daughter Patricia Root, three grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. l

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He enrolled in classes at Long Beach (Calif.) City College and later graduated from USC. He then established his dental practice in Long Beach, retiring in 2001. He served as president and held other offices within the Harbor Dental Society and the California Dental Association. He served the American Dental Association as second vice president and chairperson and was a member of several committees devoted to practice standards and dental education. He also was a member of the State Board of Dental Examiners and an ombudsman for nursing facilities. He was heavily involved in his community, providing children’s dental screenings, free dental services and cancer education. He is survived by his wife, Martha Dee Lewis, son Mark Lewis, brother Roger Lewis, and 11 nieces and nephews. Richard Flora ’66, MBA ’71, of Portland,

Ore.; April 28, of complications from Parkinson’s disease, at the age of 64. While at USC, he was a member of Alpha Tau Omega fraternity. He later founded Shur Medical Corporation and Biosyntec Inc., patenting wound-closure strips and numerous other medical products. He is survived by daughters Pam Flora Peace ’95 and Beth Flora Horton, and grandchildren Grace, Graham, Ellie, Logan, Kate, Holly and Kelvin. David Grossman ’66, of Malibu, Calif.; July 17. Roger V. Wetherington MA ’79, PhD ’86,

of Jamaica, N.Y.; July 26, after suffering a seizure, at the age of 67. He began his long career in journalism at the New York Daily News, first as a copy boy, then as a medical reporter and finally as the news editor for Manhattan, Bronx and Staten Island. He began his teaching career at Cal State Long Beach while earning his Ph.D. at USC. He then spent a year in Kazakhstan teaching as a Fulbright Scholar. He later was a journalism professor at St. John’s University in Queens, N.Y., and taught additional classes in Staten Island. He also continued working at the New York Daily News and served as a part-time weekend editor at The New York Times. He is survived by his wife, Andra Miller, son Brady Miller Wetherington, sister Janice Evans, cousins Ora Katherine Smith and Eleanor Chandler, nieces and nephews, and companions Claude Ashby and Mieczyslaw Pawlowski. Don O. DeWald MS ’89, of Goleta, Calif.;

July 4, from cancer, at the age of 79. He enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps and served in the Korean War. Having been introduced to electronics in the Marines, he attended the University of Nebraska to study engineering. After graduation,

he joined the AC Spark Plug Division of General Motors in Milwaukee as a technical writer. There, he worked on several configurations and modifications of the Bombing Navigational System. He then was assigned to the Titan II missile program. He worked as a field engineer on the Apollo Command Module and later transferred to the Carousel Navigation System, where he supported early test flights for Pan Am and worked on repairing the systems in support of domestic and international commercial airlines demonstrating the Carousel Navigation System to the Air Force. After retiring, he worked for the Bahá’í Faith, editing and publishing a monthly newsletter. He served on the Santa Barbara (Calif.) Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice and on the board of directors of Homes for People for Affordable Housing. He is survived by his wife, Mollie, son Mark, and stepchildren Edward and Carole Schlesinger.

major conferences and research programs. He earned the California Distinguished Humanist Award in 1979. He wrote more than a dozen scholarly books, including The Ethical Mysticism of Albert Schweitzer, The Church under Thatcher and Serenity, Courage, Wisdom: The Abiding Legacy of Reinhold Niebuhr. His book Ministries of Dialogue was awarded a Christopher Award in 1972. Prior to his career at USC, he graduated from Duke University and later earned his Ph.D. from Yale Divinity School. He then taught at Union Theological Seminary, Howard University and Duke University. After his retirement, he began writing novels, including Trophy Boy, an autobiographical story. He was preceded in death by his wife of more than 40 years, Lyn. He is survived by five children, eight grandchildren and one great-grandchild. Linda Clingerman of San Gabriel, Calif.; Aug.

9, of a heart attack. She came to USC 25

years ago as director of university publications. She then moved into development communications and various communications positions in the admissions office, which grew to include online publishing. She became the director of policy development and communications in August 2000. Prior to joining USC, she was a graphic designer at a small manufacturing company. From there, she worked in graphic design, production layout, typesetting, photography, advertising copy, and design and editorial work for newspapers. She later worked for a start-up of one of the nation’s early taxdeferred retirement plans in Washington, D.C., a job that grew into developing and managing its communications program. She is survived by her husband of 39 years, Jerry, daughter Elizabeth, mother Jeane Cornelius Miller, sister Brenda Thompson, brother Tack Cornelius, and numerous nieces and nephews. l

Seh-Jik Park EdD ’91, of Seoul, Korea;

July 27. A distinguished educator, military officer, politician and statesman, he served as president of the organizing committee for the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul. In recognition of his longtime support of both the USC Korean Alumni Association and the USC Korean Heritage Library, he received the Alumni Merit Award in 1989. He also held top government posts, including senior presidential secretary for security affairs from 1976 to 1979; director of the Agency for National Security Planning, the predecessor of the National Intelligence Service; sports minister; and minister of government administration. He was the mayor of Seoul from 1990 to 1991. Robert Bau of Monterey Park, Calif.; Dec.

28, from pancreatic cancer, at the age of 64. He was a faculty member in USC College’s Department of Chemistry for nearly 40 years. An award-winning researcher in the field of X-ray and neutron diffraction crystallography, he was the recipient of fellowships from the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. He also earned Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, U.S. Senior Scientist and NIH Research Career Development awards. He received the USC Associate Award for Creativity in Research. In 2006, he was president of the American Crystallographic Association. Henry B. Clark II of Sacramento, Calif.; July

23, of a heart attack, at the age of 78. A professor emeritus of religion at USC College, he was an expert on social ethics, joining USC College in 1975 and retiring in 1994. In his role as associate director of the USC Center for the Humanities, he organized many

[ in memoriam ]

Montgomery Ross Fisher

Montgomery Ross Fisher ’43, former USC trustee and respected Southern California engineering and building contractor, died on June 10. He was 88. Fisher was founder and president of a construction business, with projects that include schools, hospitals, office buildings, the Beverly Hills Reservoir, Greater Los Angeles Zoo, Long Beach Civic Center and thousands of single-family dwellings. At USC, Fisher had been a member of the USC Board of Trustees since 1969 and a life trustee since 1984. In 1973, he was elected a vice chairman of the board. He also chaired the $309 million Toward Century II fund-raising campaign, launched in 1976. A building that bears his name, dedicated in 1974, now houses the School of Social Work. The plaza connecting Bovard Administration Building and Alumni Memorial Park was named Fisher Plaza in his honor. After graduating from USC, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy and served in the Pacific during World War II. He was discharged with the rank of lieutenant in 1946. He formed his own construction firm in 1947 and in 1951 incorporated the company under the name of Montgomery Ross Fisher Inc. The business grew to encompass some 50 subsidiary corporations. Fisher was a trustee of the Harvard School in North Hollywood and the Marlborough School for Girls in Los Angeles, and a benefactor of the City of Hope in Duarte, Calif. He and his wife Joanne (née McCor mick ’49) were supporters of the Doheny Eye Institute, for which he served on the board of directors. Fisher was active in the USC Associates, Cardinal and Gold, and Skull and Dagger. In 1976, he provided matching funds to help establish an endowed faculty chair named for the USC Associates. He received an honorary doctor of laws degree from USC and the business school’s alumni award for outstanding achievement in 1976. He received an Alumni Service Award in 1983. Fisher was preceded in death by Joanne, his wife of 53 years. He is survived by children Kathy Parazette ’72, Monty Jr., Allison Walker and Sarah Fisher, three sons-in-law, five grandchildren, two great-grandchildren, sister Mary Virginia Parham ’40, and brother William Fisher ’56. l

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Last Word

From Rin Tin Tin to Willy the orca, animal heroes are the stuff of legend (and terrific entertainment for the masses). But they’re fictional champions. History is rife, actually, with real-life heroes on four feet — or should we say paws, trotters and hooves? 1. Born in Cameroon, he was named (misnamed, really) for the New Mexico lab that prepared him for his historic mission into outer space. 2. This Scottish lassie was the first mammal ever to be cloned from an adult somatic cell, using the process of nuclear transfer. Because she was cloned from part of a mammary gland, her droll creators named her after a famously busty country western singer. 3. Featured on the covers of Time, Newsweek and Sports Illustrated in the same week, he was later ranked by ESPN among the 100 greatest athletes of the 20th century (well ahead of Joe Namath and Billie Jean King). When he died in 1989, a post-mortem revealed that his heart weighed 22 pounds. 4. Undersized, knobby-kneed and lazy, this unlikely hero became a symbol of hope to millions of down-and-out Americans during the Great Depression. A life-sized bronze statue of this four-legged celebrity stands at his old stomping grounds of Santa Anita Park.

›› contest rules

We are looking for the name of the famous animal referenced in each clue. Up to five $30 gift certificates from Borders Books and Music will be awarded to the best anthropomorphists among the Last Worders to respond. If more than five perfect entries are received, five winners will be drawn by lot.

5. Famous for his great endurance, this beast won the undying admiration and affection of the Civil War general he accompanied from the Second Battle of Bull Run to the surrender at Appomattox. Today, his remains lie a few feet from his master’s crypt, near the chapel of a venerable Southern university that bears the family name.

6. Born in French Sudan, this gentle giant took London, Paris and all America by storm, thanks to the marketing genius of his legendary owner. Though his remains – bequeathed to a New England college – were consumed by flames, his spirit lives on as that school’s official mascot. His name even entered the English language as a word closely associated with the fast-food industry. 7. A coronation gift from a Portuguese king to the newly installed pope, this exotic beast became the pontiff’s beloved pet. When it died in 1516, His Holiness commissioned a funeral monument by the great Raphael and himself composed a noble epitaph. 8. The first mammal to orbit the Earth, she was also the first to die in space. No return flight had been planned: She perished a few hours after launch, likely from stress and heat stroke. Her death, however, proved that a living passenger could survive a space launch and endure weightlessness, paving the way for manned spaceflight. 9. The most decorated quadruped of World War II, this American soldier served with the 3rd Infantry Division in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, France and Germany. He was awarded the Silver Star and Purple Heart; however, these awards were later revoked and the military reclassified his kind as “equipment.” 9. Orphaned in infancy, she was raised by a Kenyan gamekeeper and his wife. The couple eventually decided to restore their pet to the wild. After many months of training (she had never learned hunting or survival skills), this remarkable animal was the first of her kind to be released successfully, the first to have human contact after release and the first known to have young of her own. l

Send your answers no later than Dec. 15 to The Last Word c/o USC Trojan Family Magazine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-7790. Submissions by fax (213-821-1100) and e-mail <magazines@usc.edu> are welcome.

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i l l u s t r at i o n b y t i m b o w e r

Four-Legged Friends