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NO BO UNDARIES Enterprising Trojans take a global approach to business education.
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scene More than a year after closing for a seismic retrofit, the USC Pacific Asia Museum is back. And it has reopened with a flourish, hosting “Winds from Fusang: Mexico and China in the 20th Century� as part of the Los Angeleswide Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA exhibition. Open through June, the exhibit is one of the special events made possible through renovation of the 1924 space in Pasadena, California.
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Editor’s Note How do you explain what it means to be part of the Trojan Family? Jan Moser Dyer’s story says it all.
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President’s Page An extensive renovation and new sponsor promise to both preserve and elevate the Coliseum.
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Seen and Heard Your take on USC stories from our magazine and the social web.
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News Women’s soccer scores a scholarship, a student startup augments reality, and go behind the scenes with long snapper Jake Olson.
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Policy Change By Eric Lindberg A USC Price graduate student champions the community’s most vulnerable.
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Calming the Electrical Storm By Daniel Druhora Doctors said he’d never be able to walk. But a boy found a new life after receiving a breakthrough treatment.
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The Gamechanger By Mike Piellucci Jordan McLaughlin took a leap of faith when he joined the USC basketball team. Now, the team puts its faith in him.
inside
Milton Curry, dean of the USC School of Architecture, believes architects should create urban environments with ethics, not just aesthetics.
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Digital tools help match patients to clinical trials, smoothing the way for promising drugs and treatments. By Hope Hamashige
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PHOTO BY CODY PICKENS
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It’s been moved four times, but USC’s first building still stands tall.
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Citizen Architects Could architects hold answers to social challenges like poverty, sustainability and inequality? Milton Curry believes they should play a big part. By Lisa Butterworth
Class Notes Who’s doing what and where?
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Business Without Boundaries Experience abroad prepares USC Marshall graduates for the business world, no matter which corner of it they’re in. By Greg Hardesty
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Meet a big-hearted mentor, a risk-taker receives USC’s highest alumni honor, and Song Girls celebrate 50 years.
Tried and True
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Growing Hope They can’t make a whole new kidney or heart—yet. But USC stem cell scientists are moving closer to growing life-saving organs and tissue. By Cristy Lytal usc trojan family
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e d i t o r’ s n o t e When alumna Jan Moser Dyer lost her husband, John (pictured with her below), she leaned on her beloved USC Trojans.
A Family That Transcends Football We receive a lot of email, but this one was different. Jan Moser Dyer ’68 had reached out to us to share her story about a Trojan Family that embraces its own. It began last fall, when Dyer boarded a plane to Chicago to watch the Trojans take on Notre Dame. With a long flight ahead, she started a conversation with a man seated beside her. In the last 30 years, she told him, she had missed only 10 USC football games. And she managed that despite being in treatment for breast cancer for more than two years. Football had already given Dyer something to cling to after her husband, John, died in 2002. Now it was also giving her joy and a sense of belonging during treatment for a cancer that had metastasized and left her weak. In part, she had Coach Clay Helton to thank. After meeting her at an event, Helton had become a friend. He offered encouraging texts, urging her to get better so she could attend games again. When she was ill and struggling, he invited her to watch from his stadium suite. All of this was done quietly, with no headlines. That is, until Dyer’s flight. It turns out the man beside her on the plane was a Sports Illustrated writer, and he would share the touching story in that magazine weeks later. I won’t give away the details, because the story is well worth reading. (Visit bit.ly/TrojanLoyalty online to see it.) It’s about more than sports—it’s about the Trojan spirit—and it sums up the faithfulness and friendship we seek to share in the pages of our own magazine. “I am so glad to have Coach in my life, and he truly represents what the Trojan Family is about,” Dyer recently told me. I couldn’t have put it better.
The quarterly magazine of the University of Southern California E DI TO R-I N- CHI EF
Alicia Di Rado M ANAGI NG E DI TOR
Elisa Huang PRO DUCT I O N M ANAG ER
Mary Modina I NT E RACT I VE CO NT E NT MANAG ER
Patricia Lapadula STAF F PHOTO GRAP HER
Gus Ruelas
ART DI RE CTO R
Sheharazad P. Fleming DE SI GN AND PRO DUCTION
Julie Savasky
CO NT RI BUTO RS
Daphne Areta Emily Gersema Elizabeth Held Judith Lipsett
Russ Ono Jeff Pendley Susanica Tam Claude Zachary
Alicia Di Rado Editor-In-Chief, USC Trojan Family Magazine PUBLI SHE R
Minne Ho M ARKE T I NG M ANAG ER
Rod Yabut ADVE RT I SI NG I NQ UIRIES
Mali Mochow | mmochow@lamag.com
USC Trojan Family Magazine 3434 S. Grand Ave., CAL 140 Los Angeles, CA 90089-2818 magazines@usc.edu | (213) 740-2684
PHOTO COURTESY OF JAN MOSER DYER
USC Trojan Family Magazine (ISSN 8750-7927) is published in March, June, September and December by USC University Communications.
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p r e s i d e n t’ s p a g e
A Renewed Coliseum
b y c. l. m a x n i k i a s
the coliseum has a special place in the hearts of all Trojans—and in the minds of people all over the world. Given its historic significance and emotional resonance, USC—as its longest enduring tenant—takes its stewardship role particularly seriously. This point remained at the fore of our discussions in 2013, when we signed our 98-year lease with the Coliseum’s governing body. As part of that operating agreement, USC committed to finding a sponsor whose support would help preserve this historic landmark. But we didn’t want to find just any sponsor; we wanted one that shared our commitment to the local community, as well as our commitment to enhancing this structure’s legacy. We found this with United Airlines. The landmark—to be renamed the United Airlines Memorial Coliseum in 2019—still includes the structure’s original core name: Memorial Coliseum. It still remains the home of Trojan football, as well as a state and national historic landmark. And in 2028, it will become the first venue in the world to welcome athletes for a third Olympic Games. But, thanks to our new partnership, it will soon receive a range of much-needed upgrades. The $270 million renovation will restore the stadium’s rich architectural style, generate thousands of jobs and give fans modern amenities including dramatically improved seating, expanded concession stands and cutting-edge audiovisual systems. Every Trojan will see and feel the difference when they set foot in the Coliseum. As part of the renovation, the iconic peristyle will also be restored, remaining true to its original design, thanks to a generous gift from two Trojan parents and grandparents, Julia and George Argyros. This is the most immediately recognizable portion of the Coliseum and we are so pleased that its refurbishment will be funded by a family with such deep ties to our university. The Coliseum’s renovation complements a renaissance throughout Exposition Park. Plans for the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art—driven by alumnus George Lucas and Mellody Hobson—are well underway. This new, highly imaginative structure will house tfm.usc.edu
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Mr. Lucas’ extensive collection of fine and popular art, and the museum will collaborate closely with other organizations to bring creative educational programs to the local community. This addition happens alongside the expansion of the Natural History Museum, renovations to the California African American Museum, and the new Los Angeles Football Club stadium. Indeed, the entire park promises to be a revitalized hub for residents and visitors to south Los Angeles. All of these changes add to the broader revitalization of downtown Los Angeles, which seems to transform with each passing week. USC is proud to play a significant role in this growth, as USC Village has brought a renewed sense of community to our campus and neighborhood. For those of us who spend our days at USC, it is so gratifying to watch this transformation—and to see the pride it inspires among our alumni. Fight On!
USC President C. L. Max Nikias, center, at a Jan. 29 ceremonial groundbreaking for the $270 million Coliseum renovation
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Musings about Trojan life and USC Trojan Family Magazine from mail, email and the online world.
Other Trojan Family Icons
George Tirebiter
Voted USC’s mascot in 1947 by the student body, the feisty stray dog was succeeded by several other Tirebiters before being officially replaced by Traveler.
Tommy Trojan
Traveler Tales In the Winter 2017 issue, we announced the debut of Traveler IX, the latest in a beloved mascot tradition (“Ride On, Traveler!” p. 51). Faithful fans wrote in to say that the horse tradition began before 1961’s introduction of Traveler I. Willie Chong ’59 remembered a horse from the mid-to-late ’50s—and shared memories of the Trojan Knights protecting the equine from rowdy Bruins who wanted to douse him with blue dye. Barney Rosenzweig ’59 recalled the white mascot riding out to “Conquest.” Rosenzweig shared that he also secured a warrior costume from the set of Ben-Hur (he was a junior publicist at MGM) for the Trojan rider to wear in 1959. USC University Archivist Claude Zachary combed through the Daily Trojan, USC Trojan Family Magazine and alumni archives to provide this early history of the horse mascots at USC: A GALLOPING DEBUT When the Trojan Knights decided that Tommy Trojan needed an upgrade at football games, they hatched a plan to put him astride
STAY
IN
Hecuba
The latest addition to the Trojan Family is a statue of the legendary wife of King Priam. It embodies the strength of Trojan women.
A RIDE TO REMEMBER It was a memorable halftime stunt—but not for the reasons they hoped. When the hired rider backed out at the last minute, Trojan Knight Arthur Gontier III ’58 stepped in. Gontier, an inexperienced rider, later recounted how he “could hardly keep the horse on the track,” much to the amusement of the crowd. ROCKAZOR TO THE RESCUE Witnessing the debacle, Bob Caswell ’42 came down to the field and offered his services and his white horse, Rockazor. They rode at home games and garnered national recognition for Tommy Trojan until they retired in 1959. HI-YO SILVER Two years later, USC’s director of special events invited horse trainer Richard Saukko and his white horse, Traveler, to appear at games. The half-Arabian, half-Tennessee Walker gelding, one of the horses that appeared as Silver in The Lone Ranger series, launched the legacy of mascots named Traveler. WE LOVE L . A . The USC Trojan Marching Band hosts High School Band Day every year to give thousands of students the chance to play in front of a stadium crowd. During the most recent show, posts on Instagram, Twitter and YouTube captured a special guest conductor: L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti. The mayor—a jazz pianist—led The Spirit of Troy and 1,400 high school students as they performed Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.” in honor of the city’s successful Olympic bid. Watch the enthusiastic performance at bit.ly/TMBWeLoveLA.
TOUCH
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The bronze Trojan Shrine sits at the heart of the University Park Campus and has made the Trojan warrior one of the most recognizable icons of USC.
a horse. They found a rider to take the field on a rented “whitish”-colored horse during halftime on Sept. 25, 1954.
HORSE PHOTO COURTESY OF USC UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES; BAND PHOTO BY BEN CHUA
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As any Trojan knows, it’s all about tradition, family and legacy. Suc c e s s i s ab o ut h ar d wor k, de t e r minat ion and surrounding yourself with those you trust and respect. At Whittier Trust, we understand this because we’ve been supporting affluent families for generations. We’ve helped guide and manage the financial lives of some of the West’s most successful families—in fact, our firm’s roots date back to the Family Office of one of Southern California’s founding families. Today, more than five generations later, we continue to provide a wide array of Wealth Management and Family Office services, customized to meet the needs of affluent families and their legacy. To learn more about Whittier Trust’s services please call Tim McCarthy at 800.971.3660 or visit us at WhittierTrust.com
To us, your legacy is everything.™ $ 1 0 M I L L I O N M A R K E T A B L E S E C U R I T I E S A N D / O R L I Q U I D A S S E T S R E Q U I R E D . Investment and Wealth Management Services are provided by Whittier Trust Company and The Whittier Trust Company of Nevada, Inc. (referred to herein individually and collectively as “WTC”), state-chartered trust companies wholly owned by Whittier Holdings, Inc. (“WHI”), a closely held holding company. This document is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended, and should not be construed, as investment, tax or legal advice. Past performance is no guarantee of future results and no investment or financial planning strategy can guarantee profit or protection against losses.
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TROJAN
PHOTO BY SHEHARAZAD FLEMING
SEIZE THE DAY Artist James hd Brown and his wife, Alexandra, started Carpe Diem Press to merge the crafts of Oaxaca, Mexico, with a contemporary vision. Pages from their limitededition books recently were shown at the USC Fisher Museum as part of the citywide Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA exhibition. Elements of the books, which highlight the work of Oaxacan weavers, are now part of USC Libraries Special Collections.
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trojan news
Hidden Figures
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Quiz: Can you match these photos to the USC campus sculptures they correspond to? Answers at right. A) The “Youth Triumphant” fountain, unveiled in 1935, honors the cornerstones of democracy. B) “Evelia de Pie,” a figurative bronze by artist Francisco Zuniga, was a gift from a USC School of Cinematic Arts alumna. C) George Tirebiter, a beloved mutt who chased cars, was the university’s first mascot. D) Astronaut Neil Armstrong MS ’70 inspired a generation to see beyond the stars. E) “The Wild Bunch” statue pays homage to USC football’s fearless 1969 defensive line unit. F) Female figures on the Hecuba statue at USC Village reflect USC’s range of academic disciplines and ethnic diversity. G) Legendary coach John McKay ushered in a golden era of USC football from 1960-1975.
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USC GROUNDBREAKERS
Stephen Maeker Independent Franchise Consultant with FranChoice Franchise Consulting
Entrepreneurial Lifestyle Maeker As one of the country’s top franchise consultants, Stephen Maeker works with potential entrepreneurs as a partner in franchise exploration, providing free expert guidance to find the perfect business fit. Finding the right franchise requires detailed exploration, a process that can be daunting without skilled help. Franchise ownership can lead to financial freedom, lifestyle enhancement, financial diversification and nonreliance on corporate employment while providing the security of a proven business model, but investigation is critical. “There are thousands of franchises. It’s a science to find the right match. Matching the right candidate with the right franchisor maximizes success potential.” Stephen builds strong, trusting relationships, investing time to truly know his candidates, and uses an educationbased approach in offering guidance. “The key is identifying what characteristics are most important to the candidates, then pairing them with a franchisor’s business model that has those same characteristics.” Stephen’s consultations are always free.
Stephen Maeker MBA ’96 (BUS) Office: 281.395.3509 Cell: 713.397.4615 smaeker@franchoice.com
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The women’s soccer team celebrates after capturing the 2016 national championship.
trojan news
Scholarship Kickstarters USC innovators now have a new home in Boston. The USC Information Sciences Institute chose the startup hotspot as the site for its third office. It’s just the latest sign of USC’s growth and influence in the tech world. USC faculty and alumni have long made big advances in computing. Here are three ways Trojan techies changed the field.
ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
USC engineering grad student Fred Cohen first defined the oncoming threats from computer viruses in 1983. He is credited with inventing the major virus defense techniques in use today.
THE .JPG
Researchers at USC’s Signal and Imaging Processing Institute came up with a way to digitize and compress images in the mid-1970s. Today called .jpg, it has made the selfie ubiquitous.
INTERNET DOMAIN NAME SYSTEM
Actor and comedian Will Ferrell ’90 is known around the world for his memorable—and oftenquoted—characters on Saturday Night Live and in movies like Old School, Elf and Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. But out of the spotlight, the Trojan has also quietly taken on a role as steadfast supporter of several causes. He and his wife, Viveca Paulin, have given generously for years to groups including Cancer for College, an organization started by fraternity brother Craig Pollard ’90 that offers college scholarships to cancer survivors, and USC’s Swim with Mike, which grants college scholarships to physically challenged athletes. Their most recent gift has endowed the firstever full scholarship for USC women’s soccer. In creating the Viveca Paulin and Will Ferrell Scholarship Fund, the couple’s gift supports an area of deep need: scholarships that enable USC to attract more exceptional student-athletes. The couple has a special interest in soccer. Paulin, an auctioneer and native of Sweden, formerly played soccer at Pomona College and remains a fan of the sport. Ferrell and Paulin have three sons—
Reality Check Tucked in a building in downtown L.A., Mira has all the trappings of a startup—cramped quarters, 16-hour days, late-night conference calls with Chinese manufacturers and a mosaic of Post-It notes covering the white walls. But this startup has a Trojan feel: It grew out of a college project created by three USC seniors. It’s also the first to come out of the USC Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy for Arts, Technology and the Business of Innovation since the undergraduate program started in 2014. Mira co-founders Matt Stern, Ben Taft and Montana Reed launched their first product in summer 2017: an augmented reality headset dubbed Prism that retails for $99. An iPhone snaps on the front, and once the app
Magnus, Mattias and Axel—who also play. The gift supporting the Viveca Paulin and Will Ferrell Scholarship Fund brings USC Athletics closer to its goal to raise $283 million, or $1 million for each of the 283 scholarships provided across USC’s 21 varsity sports. The gift also advances the Campaign for USC, an unprecedented fundraising effort to expand USC’s positive impact on the community and world. After exceeding its goal nearly 18 months ahead of schedule, the campaign has been extended through 2021. ALEXANDRA BIT TERLIN
is engaged, content will stream onto the lens, bringing hologram-like images into the user’s surroundings. Winning a $10,000 Iovine and Young prize allowed the students to build their first prototypes. Mira has since raised $1.5 million in funding and has a dozen employees, half of whom are Trojans. “We’ve literally been working in a closet on this for so long and we’re just like, ‘Here it is,’” Reed says. “It’s good to be able to be out in the community.” JOANNA CLAY
SOCCER PHOTO BY JOHN MCGILLEN; HEADSET PHOTO COURTESY OF MIRA
Tech Talk
USC’s women’s soccer team gets a big boost of support from Will Ferrell and Viveca Paulin.
You take .com, .edu, .net and the other internet suffixes for granted. But it was Paul Mockapetris at the USC Information Sciences Institute who invented the Domain Name System, or DNS, in 1983. ALICIA DI RADO
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USC GROUNDBREAKERS
Javier F. Gutierrez, Esq. Partner with Stuart Kane LLP Real Estate Transactional Law
Building Better Places Specializing in commercial real estate transactions, Javier F. Gutierrez is known for his optimistic attitude. “I was raised in an environment that promoted grit, tenacity and perseverance, which are critical factors for success,” he says. This “can do, no quit” outlook helps him create innovative solutions for his clients, advising them on real estate acquisitions and dispositions, site development, commercial leasing, joint ventures, and real estate financing. A graduate of the USC Gould School of Law in 2007, Javier performs pro bono work including an award winning approach to addressing the homelessness crisis. Whether it is a 20-story office tower, a shopping center or a 200-acre housing development, Javier takes tremendous pride in his work and says, “One of the great things about being a real estate lawyer is that I can drive my kids by real estate projects that I have worked on and say to them, ‘Look what I helped build.’ ”
Javier F. Gutierrez JD ’07 (LAW) Stuart Kane LLP 620 Newport Center Drive, Suite 200 Newport Beach, CA 92660 (949) 791-5191 stuartkane.com
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P R O F I L E
C H R I S
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Policy Change To help the community’s most vulnerable, a USC Price graduate student goes behind the scenes of the complex world of policymaking and governance. California’s wine country inspires visions of elegant estates and gourmet food, but it has another side. Like many communities, it has its share of struggling low-income families. Some parents work multiple jobs in the service industry to make ends meet, leaving their kids to fend for themselves when classes let out. Many of these children fall behind in school, and others don’t have enough to eat. A few end up on the wrong side of the law. Sonoma native Chris Ah San, today a master’s student at the USC Price School of Public Policy, saw this troubling pattern firsthand when he volunteered with children and teens in his community. The experience set the course for his career. Insufficient funding and
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political barriers to raising taxes meant that local institutions like libraries could offer few afterschool programs. So Ah San tried to tackle social issues through politics, joining campaigns as a grassroots organizer for candidates who stuck up for the working class. “These kids really need allies,” he says. “We need to elect the right people to make sure these issues get some attention.” But he realized that to change the system, he had to understand it, so he headed to USC Price. Now, thanks to a fellowship funded by USC Trustee David C. Bohnett ’78, he is getting a crash course in policymaking at one of the state’s most complex government entities: the Los Angeles County Board of Super-
visors. As the first recipient of the fellowship, Ah San works with Supervisor Mark RidleyThomas and his staff. Among his responsibilities is assisting with a county initiative to promote access and diversity in the arts, including drafting a proposal to place artists and creative workers in county departments to encourage innovative solutions to problems. He also helped RidleyThomas’ office develop communication plans for Measure H, a sales tax that will be used to fight homelessness. Affordable housing is an issue Ah San feels passionate about, having dealt with expensive rents as a UCLA undergrad and seeing friends forced to sleep in cars. He also scours agreements that come before the board to ensure that any deals involving the county are in the public’s interest. He views California as a unique context for governance, given voters’ deep involvement
in controlling policy changes at the ballot box through propositions and the high threshold to levy new taxes. “I want that process to be good so the work we do is not just responsive to constituents and their needs, but is also long-lasting,” Ah San says. He aims to continue working behind the scenes for local elected officials, and he’s grateful for the opportunity the fellowship has given him. Funded by a $2.5 million endowment to USC Price, the fellowship mirrors similar initiatives of the David Bohnett Foundation at New York University, UCLA, the University of Michigan and Harvard University to develop the next generation of municipal leaders. “It’s been a lot to juggle, but it’s been very fulfilling,” Ah San says. “They give me real responsibilities, so I go there every day knowing I have to take it seriously.”
ILLUSTRATION BY JACQUI OAKLEY
S T U D E N T
ERIC LINDBERG
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trojan news Read more about Sanger’s work at bit.ly/TFMDystonia.
Partners with Police Lessons from social work and public policy can help law enforcement officers build bridges with their communities.
MAT THEW KREDELL
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Calming the Electrical Storm For a boy locked in his own body, USC doctors brought hope. It’s practically a miracle that Rafael Hernandez is alive, much less playing baseball. When he was 4 months old, his parents’ car collided with a semi truck. He survived, but a brain injury spurred what’s called dystonia—a neurological movement disorder that would lock him inside his body. It caused involuntary muscle spasms and painful, twisting movements. “They told me he’ll never learn to sit or walk, feed himself or reach for objects,” says his mother, Mariza. But she refused to believe it. And neither did Terence “Terry” Sanger and his colleagues at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and the Keck School of Medicine of USC. Sanger is a physician, engineer and computational scientist who tries to find answers to children’s movement disorders. Today, at age 23, Hernandez dances, sings and plays baseball. It’s all thanks to an emerging medical procedure called deep brain stimulation, or DBS. It calms the brain’s electrical malfunction that prompts dystonia. Dystonia is one of Sanger’s most frustrating puzzles. In many cases, patients can think and reason just fine. Yet “they want to communicate, they want to move, but their bodies won’t let them,” says Sanger, David
L. Lee and Simon Ramo Chair in Health Science and Technology. Some children with dystonia have their arms tied down to their wheelchairs so they don’t hurt themselves involuntarily. Others crawl crablike on the floor. At Sanger’s lab, researchers developed a targeted way to use DBS to treat dystonia. Neurosurgeons implant electrodes that stimulate structures in the brain and measure brain activity. Combine that with Sanger’s testing procedures and data analysis, and the team now has helped many patients like Hernandez, while also amassing what’s believed to be the largest-ever data set on the brains of children with dystonia. The voluminous data may help other researchers make their own discoveries. Hernandez now has two thin wires threaded through his skull that send finely tuned electrical pulses deep into his brain. Researchers believe the impulses may override the brain’s abnormal signals. The procedure has been life-affirming for Hernandez, and also for Sanger. Four years after the procedure, Sanger played a game of catch with a young man who was once unable to walk or sit upright. Says Sanger: “This is why I do this.” DANIEL DRUHORA
BASEBALL PHOTO BY DANIEL DRUHORA; LEAD PHOTO COURTESY OF LOS ANGELES POLICE DEPARTMENT
The job of police officer has changed dramatically in the last few decades. Police today face the fallout from high rates of mental illness and increasing homelessness in their communities, and they’ve got to be on the lookout for human trafficking and domestic violence. That’s in part why the Los Angeles Police Department partnered with the USC Price School of Public Policy and the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work to train officers to deal with some of the biggest problems facing 21st-century society. USC now offers a new certificate program that trains officers in community policing and boosts officers’ understanding of vulnerable populations. Through the Law Enforcement Advanced Development program, or LEAD, officers gain human relations skills and learn evidence-based techniques that reduce the need for force. The program combines online classroom sessions and daylong group meetings that tackle topics such as civil rights, extremism and human trafficking. USC Price Professor Erroll Southers, who helped develop the program and directs the Safe Communities Institute, expects LEAD to expand to other agencies in Los Angeles and—through an online component— across the country.
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trojan news
Jordan McLaughlin runs the Trojans’ offense and is one of the team’s captains.
The Gamechanger For the last three years, Jordan McLaughlin ’17 started the school year with a pair of lists. He wrote one; his father penned the other. Together, they comprised the goals that USC’s 6-foot-1 point guard would carry into the upcoming season. This year, however, McLaughlin decided to forgo writing his half. His father’s was lofty enough. Among the benchmarks: First Team All-Pac-12. Pac-12 All-Defensive Team. Multiple triple-doubles. Lead the conference in assists. Lead the nation in assists. “He gave me some good goals and some stretch goals to push myself to that limit,” says McLaughlin, a team co-captain. Some of those seem implausible, but McLaughlin’s legacy at USC is marked by a drive to achieve what conventional wisdom
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says cannot be done. It’s how he wound up at Troy in the first place. Raised in Rancho Cucamonga, California, McLaughlin committed to USC just prior to the arrival of head coach Andy Enfield. It did not deter him that the Trojans finished the 2013-2014 season dead last in the Pac-12. “I believed in the coaches’ vision,” McLaughlin says. And he wasn’t the only one. His backcourt-mate Elijah Stewart joined up that spring, along with since-transferred forwards Malik Marquetti and Malik Martin. Each one was highly regarded. But McLaughlin was something else entirely: a top point guard on the West Coast with offers from storied basketball stalwarts including Kansas, Indiana and UCLA.
“Those are the guys that change your program around,” says Jason Hart, the team’s assistant coach. The prospect of someone of McLaughlin’s caliber signing on at the program’s nadir was so significant that the late Bill Sharman ’63, a legendary shooting guard for the Trojans and Boston Celtics, volunteered to un-retire his number 11 jersey as an extra inducement. And gradually, changes started— though it was slow going at first. The Trojans only improved their record by one win in 2014-15. That offseason, McLaughlin underwent surgery on both shoulders. There were murmurs that, after back-toback finishes in the Pac-12 basement, perhaps the Trojans were going backward instead of forward.
PHOTO BY JOHN MCGILLEN
A catalyst for USC basketball’s turnaround, Jordan McLaughlin saw potential when few others did.
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DONALD WEBBER PHOTO BY JOAN MARCUS
Yet the point guard never lost faith. He notes that of the Trojans’ 20 losses during his freshman year, seven were decided by two possessions or fewer. Once again, he saw what others didn’t. “I tell everybody, ‘When you look at it, we weren’t getting blown out,’” McLaughlin says. “We learned from it. That’s what we’re supposed to do, learn from mistakes and losses and turn them into wins.” The next season, USC vaulted to 21-13 and made the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2011. Last year, the Trojans took an even bigger step, posting 26 wins— a program record—and advancing to the second round of the tournament for the first time since 2009. McLaughlin has become the team’s heartbeat, its steadfast leader. He’s the one who shows up early and stays late. The one who never complains about extra work. The one who graduated in three years with his sociology degree and is earning a master’s in communication management. “He’s a great individual,” Hart says. “His mom and dad should be proud, because they raised a tremendous young man. Hopefully my wife and I can raise our kids exactly how they did theirs. I wouldn’t change one thing.” McLaughlin is quick to point out that all of this is bigger than him. Revitalizing Trojan basketball, he says, comes from “the hard work that’s been put into the program by the coaches and the players.” Yet those same coaches and players credit him with helping USC become a basketball destination once again. “For him to believe in us and really come when our program was below sea level was really, really huge for us,” Hart says. “He is the reason why we are who we are today.” “He was the first big recruit,” echoes junior forward Bennie Boatwright, a fellow co-captain. “Knowing that he was here influenced my decision to come here. …He started it all.” Meanwhile, McLaughlin is working on checking items off his list. If he’s lucky, the school might even re-retire his number 11 jersey, sliding his name into the rafters alongside Sharman’s. But he’ll settle for being regarded as someone who helped make things better in his own backyard. “Just being a hometown hero right down the street,” he says, “and building something special.” MIKE PIELLUCCI
B I O S C I E N C E
A N D
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Chemistry, biology, medicine, math and engineering come together at the USC Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience on the University Park Campus. USC’s largest research building was made possible through a $50 million naming gift from retired surgeon Gary K. Michelson, center, and his wife, Alya, right. USC President C. L. Max Nikias honored the USC supporters at the grand opening of the building in late 2017. The center aims to develop diagnostics, therapies and biomedical devices.
Center Stage Make way for a new golden age of musical theater at USC. The ways we enjoy storytelling have changed. (Think Netflix binge watching, streaming podcasts and even virtual reality right on our smartphones.) But there’s still no app that replicates the sights, sounds or emotions of live theater. And thanks to shows like Broadway’s smash hit Hamilton—currently —currently starring USC School of Dramatic Arts’ Donald Webber Jr. ’08—audiences are embracing the next chapter of musical theater. At USC, theater acting and stagecraft continue to be the cornerstones of its dramatic arts programs, but there’s a wealth of other opportunities as well. Here’s some of what’s new under the lights: THE TRIPLE T H R E ATS
GOING BACKSTAGE
TO N I G H T, TO N I G H T
An undergraduate degree in contemporary musical theater—a conservatory-style program with training in acting, voice and dance for stage and screen—launches in fall 2019.
Scott Faris, a veteran director and stage manager for shows like Cats and Cabaret, teaches creative and technical production and holds the newly established Alice M. Pollitt Professorship in Stage Management.
Students at the USC School of Dramatic Arts, USC Thornton School of Music and USC Kaufman School of Dance partner for the first time to present West Side Story this spring.
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trojan news This interview has been edited for style and length. Read more at bit.ly/OlsonQA.
A Multi-Talented Trojan Despite losing his sight at age 12 due to a rare form of retinal cancer, Jake Olson followed through on his childhood dream of attending USC and joining the Trojan football team. The long snapper from Orange County, California, made headlines after taking the field to snap an extra point in the first game of the 2017 season. USC writer Eric Lindberg caught up with the business major about his interests on and off the gridiron. WHAT WAS IT LIKE TO LEAD THE TROJAN MARCHING BAND AF TER THE GAME AGAINST WESTERN MICHIGAN? That was an incredibly special experience. The first time I did it was when I was going blind at age 12, and it was really emotional for me to be back on top of that ladder again. It really felt like my life had come full circle. I definitely did not ever think as a 12-year-old going blind that I would one day be leading the band as a player. DO YOU EVER PLAY PRACTICAL JOKES ON YOUR TEAMMATES OR CLASSMATES? Of course. What I enjoy the most is doing things that people don’t think I can do because I’m blind. I love arguing with people about what I see, throwing a ball at someone, or
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calling out their name when they don’t think I know they are in the room. WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR FAVORITE CLASS AT USC? Finance has been my favorite subject so far. Every class is entertaining, plus we are learning a ton about how to calculate the value of stocks and bonds, which is valuable in the long term. WHAT ARE SOME OF YOUR OTHER PASSIONS OUTSIDE OF SPORTS? One of my roommates and I are involved with a tech startup called Engage. It’s a platform that helps athletes organize speaking engagements and other events. We are currently in the process of building out the platform, and we have a solid group of athletes signed and ready when we do launch.
Judge Judy Sheindlin always got the final word in her eponymous television courtroom show. But in real life, she’s firmly behind the value of public debate. In her eyes, it’s absolutely essential for new ideas and civil discourse. A generous naming gift from Judy Sheindlin and her husband, Jerry Sheindlin, will ensure that lively debate has a home at USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. The Sheindlin Forum is an ample room inside Wallis Annenberg Hall outfitted with the latest technology. It will host the USC Annenberg Debate Series, which brings divergent viewpoints together from high-profile thought leaders, USC students and local high school students. “USC Annenberg should set the example of how civilized debate and the free exchange of ideas by wellmeaning people must be honored on college campuses,” Judy Sheindlin says. “When one searches for the truth, one should be armed with all available information. A closed mind is a dangerous thing.” A New York Family Court judge for 25 years, Judy Sheindlin retired from the bench in 1996 to launch the syndicated TV program Judge Judy, one of the most-watched shows in daytime television. Jerry Sheindlin was a judge who presided in the New York State Supreme Court. In addition to backing capital improvements, their gift funds an endowment that supports Sheindlin Debate Fellows—graduate students who will oversee campus debate programming—and provides a venue for the Trojan Debate Squad, one of the oldest and most successful college debate programs in the country. GRETCHEN PARKER MCCARTNEY
WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS AFTER GRADUATION? I love motivational speaking, and I definitely want to continue to do that. I’d also like to golf more and see how far I can go with golf. A couple of dream jobs for me would be general manager of an NFL team or host of my own sports talk show. I really want to stay involved with sports in some way.
JAKE OLSON PHOTO BY JOHN MCGILLEN; SHEINDLIN PHOTO COURTESY OF JUDY SHEINDLIN
Room for Debate
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THE FESTIVAL IS APRIL 21 - 22
It’s the best answer ever to: What did you do this weekend?
You’ll get up close and personal with famous authors, actors, chefs, musicians and many more creative trailblazers. So save the date for our incredible storytellers to inspire while your imagination steals the show. Presented by
LOOK FOR THE LINEUP ON MARCH 15
latimes.com/festivalofbooks tfm.usc.edu
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trojan news Learn more USC’s international outreach at global.usc.edu and follow the office on Twitter at @USCLondonOffice.
London Calling Add England to the growing list of nations hosting a USC overseas office. USC just got a little closer for Trojans based in Europe: The university’s newest international office is now open in London. The office serves as headquarters for USC’s efforts to attract talented prospective Trojans from across the United Kingdom and the continent. Located in Bedford Square in London’s Bloomsbury neighborhood, it is a center for recruiting, alumni relations, partnerships and more. Led by Priya Rana Kapoor ’93, MFT ’06, the London office hosted a visit from a USC delegation including President C. L. Max Nikias in February. “It’s been wonderful to introduce USC to people who have never heard of us,” says Kapoor, a third-generation Trojan. “They think we’re a small school in California, but then I start giving the numbers for our research and academics, student enrollment and contribution to L.A.’s economy, and you see jaws drop.” USC is one of the United States’ top universities for attracting international students, and it welcomed more than 11,380 foreign students for the fall 2017 semester. Its nine international offices stretch from São Paulo to Seoul.
“The best way to understand the role of USC’s overseas offices is to think of them as ‘embassies’ located in areas important for the university,” says Paulo Rodrigues, associate vice provost for global engagement. The offices have a broad mission, “but it comes down to helping USC faculty, students and administrators be successful in whatever they are set to accomplish in different regions of the world.” International offices not only work with USC Admission to recruit prospective students, but also support student study-abroad programs, facilitate research and academic partnerships and forge relationships with alumni. USC has a strong alumni community in London thanks to graduates such as Walter ’98 and Jen Ladwig ’99, who have long galvanized Britain-based Trojans through the USC Alumni Club of London. A volunteer group run by USC graduates, the club has been an invaluable resource for students and alumni. Now, through the university’s newest outpost, Kapoor hopes to build student internship, mentoring and networking opportunities through relationships with alumni and corporations. ELISA HUANG
Health Files Detecting heart attacks before they strike? There’s an app for that. Patients could monitor their heart health by pressing a smartphone camera next to the carotid artery in the neck. The app in development by USC Viterbi and Keck School of Medicine researchers would measure signs of heart failure over time. Women who undergo hormone replacement therapy may receive an extra layer of protection against the loss of “working memory,” which helps the brain remember lists and directions. USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology scientists’ work suggests that taking estrogen protects memory against the effects of stress. “Baby fat” isn’t always just a phase. If obese children can’t drop extra weight by third grade, the pounds are likely to stay on through adolescence, according to USC Dornsife researchers and their colleagues at Emory University.
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Using an intrauterine device—a type of birth control— may drop women’s risk of cervical cancer by a third. No one yet knows why, Keck School of Medicine researchers say, but one theory is that the device stimulates the immune system to fight a cancercausing virus.
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heart to heart by
THE KECK EFFECT
FEEL BETTER. LIVE WELL. EVERY DAY. At Keck Medicine of USC, we believe life is best lived to the fullest. And we’ve made it our mission to help patients get the most out of every moment. That’s what we call The Keck Effect. Our world-renowned physicians and personalized care can help you feel your best — so you can enjoy everything life has to offer.
Read patient stories and share yours at KeckMedicine.org/KeckEffect
For appointments, call (800) USC-CARE
© 2018 Keck Medicine of USC
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trojan health
BY HOPE HAMASHIGE I L LUS T R AT I O N BY C H R I S G A S H
Clinical trials need patients to advance medical knowledge, but it’s tough to recruit volunteers. Technology might offer some answers.
Tried and True from memory preservation to early-stage lung cancer detection, researchers have hundreds of potentially life-changing medical advances waiting to reach the public. As an academic medical center, Keck Medicine of USC makes these medical discoveries happen through the rigorous testing of clinical trials. Yet testing new therapies for safety and effectiveness can take years. Across the nation, some clinical trials are never completed, for reasons that have nothing to do with the treatment itself. Some studies are slow to get started because finding and enrolling qualified participants can be challenging. With the number of U.S. clinical trials growing rapidly during the last decade, it can be tough to recruit enough patients to fill them. Likewise, patients drop out of trials, which can slow progress or derail the trial completely. It’s a problem that vexes health advocates and drug companies. But researchers are trying to overcome these hurdles by going digital. “By developing new technology, we are making our clinical trials faster, more efficient,” says Thomas A. Buchanan, vice dean for research at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and director of the Southern California Clinical and Translational Science Institute (SC CTSI). Much of the new technology being developed at SC CTSI is aimed at finding qualified candidates and filling clinical trials as quickly and efficiently as possible. The ultimate aim is to speed promising and safe treatments to more patients sooner. MAKING A MATCH It can take a long time to sift through thousands of medical records looking for patients who are right for a clinical trial. Each study of a new tfm.usc.edu
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trojan health drug or device has its own set of specific requirements. To join a trial for a new chemotherapy drug, for example, patients might need to have tried a list of other medications first. Or to take part in a study on a new breast cancer detection technology, participants may have to have dense breast tissue. Matching patients to trials can be a painstaking process. But USC’s Daniella Meeker may have a shortcut. The director of the Clinical Research Informatics program at SC CTSI
THREE CLINICAL TRIALS THAT MAY SURPRISE YOU Not every clinical trial evaluates a new drug for people with serious illnesses. Some trials test old drugs for new uses while others test whether a new device improves on an older one. Here are three clinical trials at Keck Medicine of USC that shed light on how academic medicine can evolve the practice of health care. Breast Cancer Detection
USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center is testing SoftVue, a new way to potentially find breast cancer early. Among women with dense breast tissue, mammograms sometimes fail to spot small breast tumors. But SoftVue technology looks at the breast with ultrasound, rather than the X-rays used in mammography. SoftVue exams take a picture of the entire breast using sound waves and water. The technology images the breast in a single pass without radiation or compression and can differentiate tissue qualities to better identify possible cancers. In this trial, participants have both a mammogram and a SoftVue exam to compare the two techniques. Learn more at bit.ly/SoftVueTrial. Memory Protection Through Nicotine?
Smoking is by no means recommended for people with dementia, but nicotine, when it is delivered by transdermal patch, might slow down the progression of memory loss. Nicotine is known to activate certain receptors in the brain associated with memory function. Now Keck Medicine researchers are testing whether nicotine can slow the progression from mild cognitive impairment to Alzheimer’s disease. In this research study, participants with mild cognitive impairment (signs include confusion and poor judgment) are given increasing doses of nicotine for two years. Researchers monitor patients’ memory and other cognitive functions during the study. Learn more at bit.ly/NicotineTrial. Sleep Apnea Testing Before Surgery
One option for sleep apnea is surgery, but that doesn’t always fix the problem. Surgery focuses on removing part of the soft palate, the primary region of the throat responsible for sleep apnea. In other people, though, snoring comes from the area of the tongue. Keck Medicine researchers are evaluating whether a test called drug-induced sleep endoscopy can refine treatment strategy before patients head to surgery. In this procedure, patients are sedated, and when they start snoring, doctors insert a flexible scope into the nose to find the exact source of the blockages. Physicians hope the evaluation will improve outcomes for sleep apnea patients undergoing their first surgery, as well as those who have undergone unsuccessful operations. Learn more at bit.ly/SleepApneaTrial.
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works with researchers to develop search tools that can quickly scan electronic medical records to see how many Keck Medicine and Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) patients meet the trials’ criteria. Researchers can screen for patients with a specific diagnosis, procedure, age range and results on blood tests. Knowing the number of patients in the area that meet the criteria can determine whether and how quickly a trial can be filled, says Meeker, who is also an assistant professor of preventive medicine. If a trial is launched, the researcher may also be able to use those medical records, if approved by the Institutional Review Board, to reach out to patient volunteers who might be interested in participating. “Finding volunteers for clinical trials is a critical need to help advance medical care, and we believe technology can help,” says Anthony El-Khoueiry, associate professor of clinical medicine and medical director of the clinical investigations support office at USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center. Why are volunteers for clinical trials hard to find? He and his colleagues have some ideas. One is the sheer size of USC’s medical enterprise. The number of clinical trials in progress or in development at Keck Medicine on any given day requires a huge number of volunteers. A recent tally counted more than 600 clinical studies underway at USC. With so many clinical trials taking place, some patients simply may not know how and where to find one. To spread the word, SC CTSI goes where they know patients are: social media. It has been well documented, notes Katja Reuter, assistant professor of clinical preventive medicine and director of digital innovation and communication at SC CTSI, that patients turn to social media to find support and a community that can share information about their disease. To help tap into these groups, Reuter and a team from the SC CTSI created Trial Promoter (trialpromoter.org), an opensource tool that sends out automated posts on social media such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram about new and ongoing clinical trials. It also collects data on how the messages are received and shared. Reuter also launched a project with USC Norris to use Twitter in a more targeted way in the Los Angeles area, locating and messaging users with any of six types of cancer—breast, colon, prostate, kidney and lung cancer, as well as lymphoma—to inform them about recruitment for clinical trials. Then there’s the challenge all academic health professionals face: countering widely held misconceptions about clinical trials. Some patients assume that clinical studies are only a last resort for terminal diseases. Or they fear that they might receive a placebo instead of real medication, potentially worsening their condition. In reality, clinical trials can be used in a variety of ways, and they draw upon a wide swath of patient volunteers. Some trials evaluate new devices. Others test drugs that are already used to treat other diseases. And sometimes, clinical trials evaluate whether therapies can prevent disease among healthy participants. Not every trial uses placebos, either. Patient volunteers typically receive either a standard treatment for their disease or the drug that’s under investigation—or both. Strict guidelines spring 2018
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established by organizations like the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Keck Medicine’s Institutional Review Board ensure that trials are safe and ethical. STAY THE COURSE In some ways, being in Los Angeles gives Keck Medicine a huge advantage in recruiting participants. The health system’s long history as a partner in communities across Los Angeles County has provided invaluable insight into the health needs and concerns of Angelenos from different cultures. This deep knowledge bank and cultural fluency is one reason Keck Medicine recruits a diverse cross section of patients into its studies, El-Khoueiry says. Recruiting patients from a variety of backgrounds is important because patients may have different side effects according to variations in their genetic makeup, which can be linked to race and gender. Yet researchers say they still must increase participation among certain groups to make sure that they can find treatments that will help them. African-American participation in clinical trials for Alzheimer’s disease is notably low, for example. Karen Lincoln, an associate professor at the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, aims to boost their participation in clinical trials through another piece of common technology: the smartphone. Lincoln’s strategy is to send daily text messages about brain health and clinical trials to older African-Americans in the Los Angeles area. She hopes that providing educational messages via text results in a greater comfort with clinical trials and increased participation in Alzheimer’s research. Smartphones and devices could also help with another challenge related to clinical trials: staying organized. Most clinical trials require some time commitment from each patient volunteer. That could include regular doctor visits, taking detailed notes and sometimes sticking to a strict medication schedule. The time commitment is a major reason that patients leave trials. But Jorge Nieva, associate professor of clinical medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, hopes to help simplify that process. Nieva and other USC researchers developed a Fitbit-like device to remotely collect data on patients, such as their heart rate. The monitor delivers a steady stream of information electronically so that patients no longer need to keep notes or travel as often to doctors’ offices. Devices like these also provide participants with added safety. Key information, like whether a patient is staying active or has weak vital signs, can signal that they’re doing well on the clinical trial or, alternately, that they need to see the doctor. Buchanan adds that technology is also going to play a role in patient education about clinical trials. The USC team has developed avatars—digital representations of real people, much like characters in video games. These avatars will soon “talk” on screen with CHLA’s young patients to answer questions about clinical trials in an unintimidating way. Doing a better job of educating patients should also help demystify clinical trials, which may result in more people volunteering. “We are trying a lot of new approaches because we want to speed up the pace of clinical trials,” Buchanan says. “All new drugs have to go through testing, and we are trying to find the fastest ways to get the most promising treatments to patients who need them.” • tfm.usc.edu
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SEVEN COMMON QUESTIONS ABOUT CLINICAL TRIALS Patients who are eligible to participate in a clinical trial always have a lot of questions before they sign on. Here are a few of the most common: Is this safe, or am I going to be a guinea pig?
Thomas A. Buchanan Founding Director, Southern California Clinical and Translational Science Institute
Clinical trials must meet strict guidelines established by organizations like the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the National Cancer Institute. Keck Medicine of USC also has an Institutional Review Board (IRB), which ensures that trials are safe and ethical. Doctors, nurses and other key staff members keep close tabs on clinical trial participants to ensure their safety. The IRB can stop a study if it appears to be causing unexpected harm or the risks outweigh the benefits. It can also stop a study early if the new treatment is clearly effective and should be offered to more patients who could benefit from it. I am not sure I understand this well enough to agree to it. Everyone considering participating
in a clinical trial will receive information about the study, including their rights and how the study will be conducted. Called “informed consent,” this process ensures that staff members address any concerns a patient might have before signing up. Patients are encouraged to ask questions and discuss the trial with their own health care team as well as the study investigators to weigh possible benefits and risks. Will I experience bad side effects?
Anthony El-Khoueiry Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine
All drugs, even approved ones, have potential side effects. But the Keck Medicine medical team closely monitors side effects and helps patients manage them. I’m worried I’ll get a placebo and won’t get the best treatment. Placebos are not used in
every clinical trial. Usually, patients either receive the standard treatment or the drug under investigation, or both. Placebos are used when testing a treatment for a disease for which there is no effective therapy. What is this going to cost?
Participating in a clinical trial doesn’t cost more than what patients already pay for health care. Visits that must be done as part of the research will not cost the patient anything. What are the benefits of participating in a clinical trial? Clinical trials can provide ag-
Go to clinicaltrials. keckmedicine.org to learn about the hundreds of trials underway at Keck Medicine of USC.
gressive options for patients who need it or early access to treatments that are not yet available. Patients may also benefit from the additional interactions with Keck Medicine’s medical professionals. In addition, volunteers have the satisfaction of knowing that they helped advance science and treatment for other patients. Can I stop participating once I join a trial?
Yes, participation is voluntary and participants can stop at any time.
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BY GREG HARDESTY PHOTOS BY MEIKO ARQUILLOS
As business becomes increasingly globalized, USC Marshall prepares students to find their place on the world stage.
Business Without Boundaries flames crackled from the backyard fire pit. The two professors sipped cocktails and ate tri-tip as they sat fireside, talking about old times. John Matsusaka, a professor at the USC Marshall School of Business, hosted the barbecue for his longtime friend, the dean of international studies at Bocconi University in Milan, Italy. Relaxed from a good meal, they could have spent hours sharing stories about their days in college. Instead, they started tackling the future. Matsusaka’s boss, USC Marshall Dean James Ellis, had long pushed for the school to become a leader in global business. It got the professors thinking about what globalization means for business students. Matsusaka pondered: What can USC Marshall do, academically, to prepare students like no other school? They discovered the answer right there—between the two of them. The next morning, Matsusaka walked into Ellis’ office. He had an idea—a “wow” that would come to transform the future of hundreds of aspiring young leaders in business. BUSINESS ON THE WORLD STAGE USC Marshall isn’t new to international
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business. It was the first business school in the U.S. to mandate that its first-year MBA students spend 10 days abroad. Two decades ago, USC Marshall set up management education programs in 28 international cities, from Buenos Aires to Bangkok and Tokyo to Taipei. Going back even further, in 1977 USC launched its International Business Education and Research MBA, a one-year, accelerated program for mid-career professionals aiming for senior global positions. But the conversation around Matsusaka’s firepit would reach out to students just beginning their college careers. It led to what’s called the World Bachelor in Business, which began in 2013. World Bachelor in Business students spend their freshman year at USC, their sophomore year at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and their junior year at Bocconi University. They complete their fourth year at one of the three schools—their choice—and receive degrees from all three. Since graduating last year, the program’s first alumni have landed jobs all over the world in consulting, investment banking and financial services. Lucrezia Villani, a native of Italy, is in
John Matsusaka Charles F. Sexton Chair in American Enterprise
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relations between the two countries. “That was my exposure to global business,” Ellis says. “Now, at USC Marshall, we’re sending students where the growth is. They go abroad and get internships. I feel it’s important to go somewhere where you’re out of your comfort zone, where you can’t read the signs and where you can’t tell the cab driver how to get back to your hotel. “When you’re uncomfortable, you operate better and start thinking more. You have to push yourself and get out of your box.” It’s a lesson he never forgot. In the 10 years since Ellis was appointed dean of USC Marshall, the former senior business executive and global commerce expert has
James Ellis Dean of the USC Marshall School of Business and Robert R. Dockson Dean’s Chair in Business Administration
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her second year of the program in Hong Kong. Villani, who is considering a career in consulting, says she learned about the importance of networking her freshman year at USC. “Going back to Europe after experiences in North America and Asia will make me able to see my own country with new eyes, and I am looking forward to seeing what those eyes will see,” Villani says. USC Marshall’s dean would understand that sentiment. Ellis was only 25 when his own eyes were opened to the bigger world. He went on a business trip to China in 1972, following President Richard Nixon’s landmark visit that normalized
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FIVE MUST-HAVE SKILLS FOR GLOBAL BUSINESS 1. Think beyond the bottom line. “The skill sets are still the same: business, finance, marketing, management, strategy. But students need to adapt to a new paradigm, which is understanding how business impacts problems beyond just financial ROI [return on investment]. Students need to look at being major participants in solving the world’s wicked problems, such as poverty, hunger, education, the environment, access to health care in developing countries and homelessness. If business students aren’t being trained to think that way—like they are at USC—they’re going to be left behind.” — Adlai Wertman
2. Speak several languages. “I believe that speaking two languages is not just a competitive advantage, it´s more like a must. Being able to effectively communicate in your own language is not as easy as it seems, and working in a global marketplace adds a level of difficulty. People need to be able to effectively communicate in different languages and across countries. It’s also critical to be able to adapt to different working styles that are mainly driven by cultural differences.” — Alejandra Revueltas MS ’17
3. Take a stand. “Millennials and post-millennials aren’t as attached [as prior generations] to a physical workplace, so as a leader you need to create a sense of belonging and ask yourself, ‘What does my organization stand for?’ You have to believe deeply not just in products, but also in the purpose of your organization. Your company needs to have a compelling mission. And giving back to the community should be part of that mission.” — Nandini Rajagopalan
4. Stay curious. “Self-awareness and emotional intelligence are critical—also, knowledge of and respect for different cultures, intellectual curiosity and a willingness to learn, as well as an understanding of financial analysis, strategy and analytics.” — Julia Plotts
5. Learn to talk tech. “In the old days, it was all about learning a foreign language. Now, everyone needs to learn the language of computers. You don’t need to be an expert programmer, but you need to be able to communicate.” — John Matsusaka
Adlai Wertman David C. Bohnett Professor of Social Entrepreneurship
made it a school priority to equip students for the international marketplace, where change is a constant. Among undergraduates, those outside the World Bachelor in Business program have international options too. For one, freshmen can take one-week trips abroad to learn about global business in countries including Argentina, Spain, Hungary, Japan and China through the Learning About International Commerce program. For students like sophomore Dumile Nkala, a business administration major from Zimbabwe, the program plunged him into the unknown. “It prepared me for the real world because it allowed me to learn how to network with people whom I had almost nothing in common with,” Nkala says. “And it gave me a real outlook on what certain careers entailed.” Nkala was among several students who visited an array of Australian businesses in 2017, including the Macquarie Group, a global investment banking firm; Aristocrat Technologies, which makes gaming machines; the Sydney Swans Football Club; and KPMG, Apple, Amazon and Costco. “The trip perfectly mixed global business and networking education with ample downtime to explore,” sophomore Mara Huberman adds. “By being in the business office of these global companies,” Huberman says, “it really helped me understand what type of company culture I want to be in when I enter the workforce.” LEARNING TOMORROW’S SKILLS TODAY The World Bachelor in Business program serves as a good example of the school’s desire to see what’s ahead. “We’re not just interested in seeing what everyone else is doing and what students need now,” Matsusaka says. “We’re trying to take the lead in business education and anticipate what students need 20 years in the future.” As an example, the school launched a master’s program in business analytics as huge volumes of financial data become increasingly available and vital in the marketplace. It teaches students how to understand big data to make effective business decisions. The explosion in big data has global implications, too. “People around the world are buying and selling information at a breathtaking usc trojan family
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speed,” says Nandini Rajagopalan, professor of management and organization and vice dean for faculty and academic affairs. The master’s in business analytics— one of 11 specialty master’s degrees—has grown from an initial class of 32 students to a class of 100 from 13 countries in 2017, says Abbass Sharif, assistant professor of clinical data sciences and operations and program academic director. This year, the program attracted more than 2,600 applicants. USC Marshall hosts three major international conferences a year on business analytics, which Sharif predicts will become a staple of many academic disciplines. “With data analytics,” Sharif says, “organizations gain better insights that lead to better customer services, higher revenues and more efficiency.” Entrepreneurship, an area USC Marshall is widely known for, also is evolving. One growth segment is social entrepreneurship, which uses business principles to address some of the world’s most pressing social challenges. USC Marshall offers a master’s in social entrepreneurship—the only degree of its kind at a U.S. business school. To date, more than 200 students have enrolled in the specialized, one-year degree program, which is offered through the USC Marshall Brittingham Social Enterprise Lab. Alejandra Revueltas MS ’17 landed a position as a portfolio manager at Adobe Capital in her native Mexico City after earning her master’s in social entrepreneurship. The investment fund pumps money into early-growth social enterprises in sectors such as health care, affordable housing, education and renewable energy, among others. In one of Revueltas’ favorite courses, she learned how to be strategically competitive when expanding a business internationally. “Every session, we would analyze a different social enterprise from different parts of the world,” Revueltas says. “We analyzed cases from India, the U.S., Latin America and Africa, as well as cross-country social enterprises.” Adlai Wertman, the David C. Bohnett Professor of Social Entrepreneurship and founding director of the Brittingham Social Enterprise Lab, was one of Ellis’ first hires. The social enterprise role is a natural for Wertman: He has worked both as an investment banker and as president and CEO of Chrysalis, a nonprofit in Los Angeles
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that helps homeless and low-income individuals find jobs. His passion for social enterprise is obvious to anyone who hears him discuss his favorite topic: his students. He can rattle off seemingly endless stories about their creativity. “We had a student from Angola who came up with a financing model to get rid of mine fields in that country and turn the land into farmland using private investment that will eventually transfer over to local ownership by the farmers,” Wertman says. “Another student created a for-profit business in partnership with nonprofits to offer an alternative to predatory payday loan and check cashing, an industry that significantly overcharges people who aren’t attached to the traditional banking system,” he adds. It makes sense that the students come up with enterprising, global ideas. They’ve gravitated to an enterprising, global place. The spirit creates a virtuous circle.
A GLOBAL FAMILY About 20 percent of all USC students—more than 4,000 undergraduates and 2,000 graduates—are enrolled at USC Marshall. Its students are a veritable United Nations, with 92 countries represented. In the 2016-17 school year, USC Marshall sent 922 freshmen overseas through 10 different programs. “It’s unusual to have such a diverse population of students,” says Julia Plotts, associate professor of clinical finance and business economics. “It definitely enriches the experience of all our students.” Plotts, who oversees the Learning About International Commerce program, has taught executive MBA courses in China and Australia, and has led USC Marshall undergraduate case competition teams all over the world. USC Marshall alumni are international, too. The school’s nearly 90,000 alumni are spread across 120 countries. That makes for a huge international network, and USC Marshall Dean James Ellis regularly visits with many of them on his travels. “When you ask someone who is an alum to help, no one ever says no,” Ellis says. “That’s the Trojan Family at its best.” Jerry Won ’04, a senior strategy consultant at Accenture, can attest to that. Whenever he can, he swings by Ellis’ office to say hello and catch up. “It’s no secret how busy he is,” Won says, “but it always surprises me how available he makes himself.” For Won, that openness and willingness to give back resonates: “I can’t say I remember all the technical classroom material I learned from him, but I can proudly say that he has taught me not only to be a great leader, but also and more importantly to be a thoughtful and genuine person.”
Alejandra Revueltas Portfolio Manager at Adobe Capital in Mexico City
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“If we want to teach people to be entrepreneurs,” Ellis says, “then we better be entrepreneurs ourselves.” Sometimes these enterprising students surprise even Ellis, though. He thinks back to when he hosted a dinner party at his home for the first incoming class of World Bachelor in Business students in September 2013. One student, who came from Nigeria, showed up wearing a full-length gray ball gown. “Since I was 14 years old, I’ve been designing my own clothes, and this is one of my designs,” the young woman said during introductions. “You want to know why I’m in this program? It’s very simple. Fashion tfm.usc.edu
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is designed in Milan, the clothes are made in Hong Kong, and then they’re sold in America. “So right now,” she explained, “I will get to see my whole supply chain.” Her bold choice of outfit, and her explanation of how it encapsulated the global fashion industry, from manufacturing to retail, clicked with her classmates. And her recognition of the need for a global education symbolized what Matsusaka and Ellis have hoped: that USC Marshall would draw globally minded students and put them a step ahead of their competition. “That’s our goal,” Ellis says. “To do things nobody else does.” • usc trojan family
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The future is built on the third floor of Watt Hall, where USC architecture students have their studios.
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Citizen Architects For solutions to inequality, marginalization and divisiveness, Milton Curry wants to tap an unexpected resource: architects. BY LISA BUTTERWORTH PHOTOGRAPHY BY CODY PICKENS
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it can be easy to take architecture for granted. Sure, Los Angeles residents taking visitors on a tour might point out famous landmarks. The Walt Disney Concert Hall and its soaring curves—designed by Frank Gehry ’54—or the Stahl House, a modernist paragon in the Hollywood Hills by Pierre Koenig ’52, come to mind. But consider that many city dwellers spend every minute of urban existence in a space that someone imagined and designed. They could be forgiven for becoming numb to structure. Milton Curry isn’t one of them. The 52-year-old professor, who joined USC as dean of the USC School of Architecture in 2017, has spent much of his life thinking about built space. But the power—and responsibility—of an architect goes far beyond being simply a “designer of buildings.” Curry looks at architecture with a wide lens, where it’s clear that an edifce can have an enormous impact—not only on ease of living, but also on environment, economy, culture and race relations. This is the kind of provocative thinking that he plans to nurture at the helm of USC’s program. More than half of the people on the planet now live in cities, and that move toward urbanization is only expected to accelerate. Yet the same urbanization movement that can yank people out of poverty and spur innovation can also produce shantytowns and stifling pollution. As Curry sees it, architects are in a unique position to help address these problems. But frst, an architect’s role must expand. Under the dean’s watch, he hopes architects become not only masters of the practice, but also keen interpreters of the cultural context and ramifcations of their work. Graduates will make connections between disciplines, engage with the social issues of our time and shape society for the better in Los Angeles and beyond. BLUEPRINT FOR THE FUTURE On a quiet Monday in Watt Hall, home of the USC School of Architecture and the USC Roski School of Art and Design, morning sunshine falls through high windows. Architectural models in various stages
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of completion are scattered in the studio, with no students in sight. But the dean’s office is already open and Curry is ready for the day. Sitting at a translucent table, he’s wearing a tie and sneakers, and the sleeves of his blue dress shirt are rolled up to his forearms. It’s an apt visual metaphor for a man accustomed to getting down to business. With a warm demeanor and a measured manner of speaking, Curry can explain the complex underpinnings of our social fabric as easily and eloquently as he can toss out details of architectural history. “He must have been a 2-year-old phenom, I swear,” laughs Mack Scogin, who was chair of the architecture department at the Harvard Graduate School of Design when Curry was a master’s student there. “He has a natural way of talking about things that are theoretically and intellectually based and relating them to really hardcore practical challenges in urban culture and social issues. …Somebody raised him in a world where they dealt with reality straight on and dealt with it in smart ways.” Curry was raised in Fresno, California, by his father, a physician, and his mother, a community organizer and later a politician, which surely influenced his perspective. And while Curry doesn’t speak to his intellectual capacity as a toddler, he does pinpoint third grade as the genesis of his passion for architecture. “I used W H Y D O E S A R C H I T E CT U R E M AT T E R ? to write reports [for class], but I would spend a lot of time on “When you look at the National the images and cover,” he says. Museum of African American History, “That’s really what piqued my the interplay of light, materiality, interest in architecture, it was heaviness and lightness works as part through design and sketching.” of the storytelling mechanism. We There is a common epiphcould also look at a more poignant any among creative minds, and example and say, ‘Are prisons really the Curry experienced it. It’s the places that we’re proud of?’ That’s catharsis and reward that come architectural environment. Architects from thinking of an idea, turndesign that. So there are huge impacts— ing it into a design on paper, and psychological, emotional, physical—that then transforming that design come from being in spaces that are into a physical object. As Curry inspiring or demeaning.” explains it, “the ability to have something built based upon that M I LTO N CU R RY, D E A N , U S C S C H O O L O F A R C H I T E CT U R E was just really powerful.” But as his creative side grew and matured, so did his sense of social responsibility. He understood early on that a built environment can influence inhabitants, visitors and communities for generations to come. He has spent much of his career studying modern urbanism—the 20th-century migration of people from agrarian areas to densely populated cities—and its effects, another interest influenced by “growing up in a suburban context and seeing the post-war urban environment.” His exposure to urban environments expanded as he moved around the country during his initial schooling and teaching stints that included time in New York, Phoenix and Detroit. From the 1970s through the 2000s, these cities and others have been, as he puts it, “not very palatable for a lot of the population. “I think the worst invention of the United States has been suburbia,” he continues. “That really was a confluence of all of the negative forces that we are trying to undo today: racial segregation, a highway system that cut off neighborhoods of color from where a lot of the economic activity was happening, the Federal Home spring 2018
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PHOTO BY CHRISTOPHER DUGGAN
Milton Curry, center, visits with master’s student Yuliang Jiang and the members of professor Sarah Cowles’ landscape architecture studio class.
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Loan Mortgage program, the redlining of African-American communities, and the advantages of the GI bill and other financial advantages going to whites who were generating and capitalizing the suburban advancement.” Suburbia, he says, also fostered an attachment to the single-family home, both financially as well as emotionally. “When you look at climate change, when you look at landscape policy, when you look at urbanization, those are the most difficult impediments to moving toward more sustainable, more resilient places throughout the country. And L.A. is front and center in that.” SOLUTIONS BY DESIGN But if modern urbanism has helped exacerbate many of the social problems we’re dealing with today—racial and cultural divides, growing gaps in wealth, environmental havoc—Curry also believes that architects can play a major role in addressing those issues. And he hopes to make USC a leader in the discourse around them. This is just one of the reasons that Hadrian Predock, the USC School of Architecture’s director of undergraduate programs, feels the time was right for a leader like Curry at USC.
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“I am a strong believer that architecture is a social art and science and that it deeply involves people and social structures,” Predock says. Curry believes that architects in training must understand theory. They need to be immersed in a culture that asks big questions. “We have an ethical responsibility to ask foundational questions of ourselves, of our discipline, and of the projects that we choose to spend our time on,” Curry says, leaning forward in his chair, his gaze intent. “So if a client asks you to design something that is climatologically absurd, should you do it? If a client asks W H Y D O E S A R C H I T E CT U R E M AT T E R ? you to design a solitary confine“Everybody interacts with a built enviment cell, should you do it? I ronment continuously. And we all know want the answer for our students that a kind of thoughtfulness has been and our faculty to be, ‘Let me run brought to a project that really allows that through my own calculus of, us not to have friction with the world What are my ethical responsibilities?’ If the answer is no, the but actually work with it. If we live all answer is no.” day, every day, in environments, why Curry is the first to admit not expect more from them? Why let so that answers are not always clear, much of our world be uninspired?” not always black and white. A M Y M U R P H Y, A S S O C I AT E P R O F E S S O R That’s why exploring the quesAND DIVERSITY LIAISON, tions is so important. U S C S C H O O L O F A R C H I T E CT U R E Amy Murphy, a former vice dean who has been teaching at USC for more than 20 years and is now the USC School of Architecture’s diversity liaison, also sees a broader role for architects. “I think what makes a good architect is knowing that the capacity of architecture is larger than just aesthetics,” she says. For
PHOTO BY BUDDY BLECKLEY
USC architecture students will soon see their creativity come to life. They worked with ArtCenter College of Design students to reenvision a plaza and entrance to The Museum of Contemporary Art in L.A. Learn more at bit.ly/MOCAproject.
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Murphy, an architect’s design improves once it’s “burdened” with societal, environmental and even budgetary requirements and limits. True mastery shines when a design is able to break through and engage with complex, real-world challenges, she adds. In practical architecture, major social issues are often overlooked, Curry says, sacrificed for the demands of the client, or simply regarded as being outside the realm of the architect. But, as he points out, it’s time to shift that thinking. Architects need to examine their work critically. They must ask how historic issues of segregation, mobility, jobs, transportation and affordable housing weave their way into their work and the current public sphere. “If architects do not ask the foundational questions of our time, who do we expect to? Economists? Politicians? Corporations? Clients?” he says. “I don’t think we can wait any longer for someone else to ask the questions.” THE NEXT GENERATION OF CITIZEN ARCHITECTS With 760 students, USC’s School of Architecture is one of the largest in the country, and it’s consistently ranked as one of the best. It’s also one of the few schools to offer a professional degree in architecture at both the bachelor’s and master’s levels. With degrees available in architecture, building science, heritage conservation and landscape architecture and urbanism, it is also unique in its status as what Curry calls a “pure” architecture school—a program that doesn’t include urban planning or real estate and is at the forefront of educating practitioners. Since the USC School of Architecture’s establishment in 1925 (it began as a department in 1916), its graduates have not only shaped the landscape of Los Angeles, but also the field at large. It’s a foundation that Murphy believes sets a precedent for Curry’s vision. “We have, as a legacy of our school—whether it’s a connection to the Case Study movement or our Pritzker Prize winners like Frank Gehry and Thom Mayne—the issues that are activated through great design,” Murphy says. “Dean Curry could be at another school, but his ideas wouldn’t come to life as well as I think they’re going to at USC. Because we have a really strong design culture at the school right now, probably the strongest it’s been in a long time, I feel like we’re ready for this.” Blending the program’s renowned professionalism and theoretical foundation with an expansive worldview is no easy task, but Curry considers it essential. Predock mentions a phrase used by the dean that succinctly identifies the type of graduates the program strives to educate: citizen architects. “Anything that we would be thinking about within the sphere of society, we should be working on in architecture,” Predock explains. Curry points out that USC is uniquely set up to educate this kind of architect. About one third of USC’s 18 schools and colleges are dedicated to the arts, and architecture students can take classes and be exposed to other disciplines across the university. The student body also reflects the nation’s diversity. About one of every six USC freshmen is a first-generation college student, and 2017 data showed USC at the forefront of American universities when it comes to enrolling underrepresented minority students. It also attracts students internationally. “Architecture has to reflect the broader diversity of the citizenry itself. So when we have citizens that are first-generation, we should have architects that are first-generation. We have citizens who are Asian, black, Latino, transgender, gay, lesbian, queer. Architects should be those things as well,” Curry says. tfm.usc.edu
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Meet Milton Curry
Milton Curry now heads up the USC School of Architecture, where he holds the Della and Henry MacDonald Dean’s Chair. Get to know the man behind the school that has produced some of the nation’s most innovative architects. Most recent post Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Strategic Initiatives, University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning Notable creation Started Michigan Architecture Prep, an outreach program that introduces Detroit high school students to architecture Education Master’s in architecture, Harvard Bachelor’s in architecture, Cornell Hometown Fresno, California
“I think it’s even more crucial in our discipline than other disciplines because we’re deciding what the very discipline looks like,” he says. “We’re deciding everything you live in, what everything you go to looks like. [It’s] a lot of power.” That power is why Curry maintains that architects “should have the public good on their minds at all points in time.” It’s also why he intends to give students the means to see beyond the building, to advance their work through cultural understanding and to effect change by applying big-picture thinking to real-world practice. The future depends on it. •
Trailblazing Trojan Architects Paul Revere Williams ’19 The first licensed African-American architect west of the Mississippi, he designed thousands of homes and buildings over his career, including the L.A. County Courthouse, Westwood Medical Center and Beverly Hills Hotel. Zelma Wilson ’47 Wilson’s work ranged from houses to institutional buildings over a decades-long career. Principal of her own firm and a lecturer at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, she designed Ojai City Hall and the Simi Valley Community Center, among many other buildings. Pierre Koenig ’52 The California Modernist visionary focused on industrial and prefabricated materials to reimagine suburban living, creating some of the most iconic—and widely photographed—mid-century homes in L.A. He was a lecturer at USC for 40 years. Frank Gehry ’54 Known for fantastical buildings like L.A.’s Walt Disney Concert Hall, Chicago’s Pritzker Pavilion and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, the world-renowned, Pritzker Prize-winning designer has been called the most important architect of modern times. Thom Mayne ’68 Mayne received the Pritzker Prize in 2005 for designs that boldly push the boundaries of form with genre-defying buildings like New York’s Cooper Union Building, the San Francisco Federal Building and L.A.’s Caltrans District 7 headquarters.
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in depth Doctors already use stem cells for bone marrow transplants, but that’s just the beginning. USC scientists are harnessing stem cells to develop potential new treatments for everything from kidney diseases to broken bones.
Growing Hope B Y C R I S T Y LY TA L I L LUS T R AT I O N S BY M I R A N A M E T H
If you lose a limb, it’s lost for life. If you damage a kidney, you won’t grow a new one. And if you have a heart attack, the scars are there to stay. But regenerative medicine is poised to change all of this. Building new tissue is within sight, and USC scientists are among the field’s pioneers. More than 100 scientists, engineers
MOUSE KIDNEY IMAGE BY LORI O’BRIEN/MCMAHON LAB
and doctors are united under what’s called the USC Stem Cell initiative. They’re already moving stem cells out of the lab and toward patient care. The potential is exciting: USC researchers have contributed to clinical trials of stem cell approaches to treating colorectal cancer, spinal cord injury, vision problems, HIV/AIDS and Alzheimer’s disease. They’ve also used stem cells to uncover important insights about kidney disease, ALS, arthritis, the Zika virus, birth defects and a wide variety of injuries. tfm.usc.edu
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Scientists are edging closer to growing new kidneys using stem cells.
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Major funders and USC donors have provided hundreds of millions of dollars to support the work. That investment and vote of confidence enables USC Stem Cell scientists to collaborate with other leading universities, biotech companies and key partners to translate their laboratory discoveries into patient cures. It hasn’t been easy. Scientists are evaluating some stem cell-based therapies through clinical trials, but so far, few treatments have made it to patients. Beyond scientific inspiration, taking treatments from lab bench to patient bedside requires immense amounts of time, money and, sometimes, luck. It also means working together with other scientists across boundaries. “Regenerative medicine is still a relatively young field, and it’s still early days,” says Andy McMahon, director of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at USC. “When it comes to that final phase of translating stem cell discoveries into clinical therapies for patients, it won’t be individual universities working in isolation. It will be multi-institutional collaborations with our neighbors that will transform medicine over the course of the 21st century.” THE KIDNEY IN MINIATURE So far, scientists haven’t been able to create complete adult human kidneys—they’re too complex. At USC, though, McMahon’s lab is coaxing stem cells to organize themselves into simplified, mini versions of this elaborate organ. Each healthy human kidney is made up of a million cellular filters called nephrons, which pull wastes out of blood, among other responsibilities. McMahon and his colleagues are making tiny organs (scientists dub them “organoids”) composed of a single nephron—a convenient size for testing potential drugs. With help from USC’s Chang Stem Cell Engineering Facility, McMahon’s lab has successfully produced organoids carrying the same genetic mutation that causes polycystic kidney disease, the most common genetic cause of kidney failure. Because kidney organoids develop cysts
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similar to those seen in the disease, scientists can observe how the disease progresses and develop therapies that may halt or reverse symptoms. Zhongwei Li, an assistant professor of medicine and stem cell biology and regenerative medicine, is also hard at work growing kidney organoids. There are only 18,000 donor kidneys available each year for more than 400,000 patients who need transplants, Li explains. He ultimately wants to create organs for transplantation using progenitor cells that could develop into kidney tissue. “USC is a perfect place to study the kidney,” Li says. Andrew McMahon W.M. Keck Provost Professor of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine and Biological Sciences Director, Eli and Edythe Broad Center for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at USC
Megan McCain Chonette Early Career Chair and Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering, and Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine
Zhongwei Li Assistant Professor of Medicine and Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine
HEALING HEARTS If you worry about dying in an earthquake, shark attack or lightning strike, don’t waste your energy. You’re far more likely to die of heart disease. Every year, about 610,000 people in the U.S. lose their life to it. That’s one in four deaths. And heart disease is the leading cause of death worldwide. Cardiac tissue that has died after a heart attack doesn’t come back—it just forms a scar. Studies have shown that doctors can safely inject stem cells into damaged heart tissue, but there’s no clear sign that these injections restore the heart. At USC, two stem cell researchers are tackling heart repair from other directions. In the lab of Henry Sucov, researchers aim to harness the heart’s innate ability to heal. They’re studying a regenerative type of heart muscle cell called a mononuclear diploid cardiomyocyte. Newborns have large numbers of these cells, but adults have relatively few, so the adult body has trouble regenerating heart tissue after injury.
What are stem cells? A stem cell is a cell that can develop into many different kinds of cells. Humans, mice and other mammals start out as a single cell: a fertilized egg. This is the ultimate stem cell because it is “totipotent”—meaning it has the power to form every kind of cell throughout the body. The totipotent egg quickly divides into the hundreds of embryonic stem cells that form the early embryo, or blastocyst. Embryonic stem cells are considered “pluripotent” because they possess the power to produce a plurality, or wide variety, of cell types. As the organism grows and develops, some of its stem cells differentiate into the specialized cells that make up the brain, heart, lungs, skin, blood and many other tissues and organs of the body. Other stem cells self-renew, or give rise to new stem cells. Throughout life, the organism will maintain a reserve of adult stem cells, stored throughout the body, to replenish dying or injured cells as needed. Not all adult organs have stem cells. This is why certain organs—such as the skin and gut—readily regenerate and heal, while others—such as the heart and kidney—do not. In 2006, scientist Shinya Yamanaka discovered that the differentiated cells that make up the skin, blood and other tissues can be reprogrammed or “rewound” into an embryo-like pluripotent state. These induced pluripotent stem cells serve as a patient-specific cell source for studying development and disease, screening potential drugs and pioneering personalized medical treatments.
KIDNEY IMAGES BY TRACY TRAN/MCMAHON LAB; ZEBRAFISH JAW IMAGE BY AMJAD ASKARY/CRUMP LAB; MOUSE SKULL IMAGE BY HU ZHAO/CHAI LAB; PANCREAS IMAGE BY SENTA GEORGIA/GEORGIA LAB; CARTILAGE IMAGE BY FRANCESCA MARIANI/MARIANI LAB
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USC stem cell research in pictures (CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT): A mini kidney; a zebrafish jaw joint; pancreatic cells that regulate blood sugar; tubular networks developing in a mammalian kidney; a mouse skull; and special cartilage tissue at an injury site during the body’s repair of broken bones
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When scientists looked for these cells in mice, they found that some mice had more of them than other mice did. They traced that variation to a gene called Tnni3k. Their research suggests that blocking the gene might boost the number of regenerative cells. If prescription drugs can be developed to modulate the activity of the gene, these medications could encourage more regenerative cells to develop in the heart, says Sucov, a professor of stem cell biology and regenerative medicine, integrative anatomical sciences, and biochemistry and molecular biology. “This could improve the potential for regeneration in adult hearts, as a preventive strategy for those who may be at risk for heart failure.” In Megan McCain’s lab at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, researchers are building human heart tissue. They not only study how the heart tissue works, but also use it to test how it responds to potential drugs. The work poses problems that call for the mindset of an engineer. It turns out that heart muscle cells don’t fully mature in the typical laboratory environment for growing cells—a petri dish filled with warm, nutritious liquid. To develop properly, heart muscle cells need to get some exercise by contracting in the rhythm of a beating heart. To do this, they need structure and resistance, which the lab’s researchers provide in the form of a tiny scaffold called a chip. This “heart on a chip” reproduces natural human heart tissue on a small scale in the lab. Ultimately, McCain hopes the technology contributes to precision medicine. Scientists could test medications on a patient’s own heart tissue on a chip. Eventually, this could enable doctors to choose drugs that pose the fewest side effects and to customize dosage for each patient.
Henry Sucov Professor of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, Integrative Anatomical Sciences, and Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Jay R. Lieberman Chair, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery
STRONGER BONES According to common wisdom, bones heal. In reality, every year
HEART TISSUE IMAGES BY MEGAN MCCAIN/MCCAIN LAB
Gage Crump Professor of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, and Integrative Anatomical Sciences
OPPOSITE: The heart is still too complex to create a new one from stem cells, but scientists are growing heart tissue. LEFT: Megan McCain’s lab grows muscle tissue on a chip. It could be used to test drugs and customize dosages.
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about 5 million people in the U.S. sustain fractures that fail to mend. From elderly people undergoing total hip or knee replacement to soldiers injured by explosions or gunshots, many patients have bone defects that are too severe to repair. To complicate matters, everything from diabetes to the normal aging process can undermine bone’s ability to heal. USC researchers hope to one day use stem cells to build new bone in patients with severe or non-healing injuries. Jay R. Lieberman, who chairs the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, teamed up with Gage Crump and Francesca Mariani, two faculty members from the Department of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, to advance the science. The team has made a promising start in the lab. They discovered that healing bone requires a special type of repair cell, which they named an ossifying chondrocyte. Now the researchers are studying a substance that stimulates these repair cells to fix bone. The researchers credit much of their success to their collaboration. Says Lieberman: “It’s great to have a team approach. Clinicians and scientists working together bring different perspectives to understanding the biology of disease.” UNLOCKING GENETIC DIABETES Diabetes isn’t just a disease. It’s an epidemic that affects nearly 10 percent of Americans. About 30 million people in the U.S. have a form of diabetes. The disease happens when glucose levels rise in the blood. Insulin, a hormone made by the pancreas, helps the body pull glucose from blood and into the cells where it’s needed. But sometimes the pancreas doesn’t make enough insulin or the body can’t use insulin well. Oftentimes, in diabetes, the special cells in the pancreas that make insulin—called beta cells—are attacked by the immune system or wear out. Researchers worldwide are looking at ways to rebuild them. While lifestyle factors such as lack of exercise, diet and statin use contribute usc trojan family
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in depth
FRESH FACES “Our faces are our identities, and the first thing you see when you look at someone is his or her face,” says Yang Chai, director of the Center for Craniofacial Molecular Biology at the Herman Ostrow School of Dentistry of USC. So when someone has a cleft lip or other facial deformity or trauma, it can be devastating. Chai aims to find treatments for some of the most common craniofacial birth defects and injuries. To do that, he has tapped into a rich source of stem cells: the pulpy interior of the teeth. Fueled by a $12 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), he’s working with researchers from the Keck School of Medicine and institutions
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Francesca Mariani Assistant Professor of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, and Integrative Anatomical Sciences
Senta Georgia Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, and Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine
from Stanford to City of Hope on the project. They’ve already used these stem cells to generate the unique, high-density bone that makes up the skull. If these stem cells can effectively repair four-centimeter holes in the skulls of animals, the research project will advance the treatment into a clinical trial for patients with bone deficiencies due to injuries, dental problems or birth defects. One birth defect USC scientists are tackling is called craniosynostosis. The rare but serious problem occurs when sections of a baby’s skull fuse together at joints called sutures, restricting the developing brain and disrupting vision, sleep, eating and intellectual development. To treat this condition, growing children must undergo repeated skull-expanding surgeries—which are as dangerous and painful as they sound. Chai is one of at least a dozen USC stem cell researchers working to help these children. His lab has already identified a critical stem cell population that normally resides in the skull sutures, and discovered how to manipulate these stem cells to form new sutures in mice. “This is something that truly has to be done through a collaborative effort,” Chai says. “USC provides the best environment for collaborative research, which has led to NIH funding and publications as the result of these collaborations. These collaborative studies will fundamentally change the way to provide health care to our patients.” •
Stem Cell Leadership in Los Angeles
Yang Chai George and MaryLou Boone Professor of Craniofacial Molecular Biology Professor of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine
Scientists hope to use stem cells to fix bones so badly damaged they can’t heal or regrow on their own.
The Eli and Edythe Broad Center for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at USC is home to the university-wide USC Stem Cell initiative that brings together more than 100 research and clinical faculty to advance stem cell therapies. In support of these discoveries, California’s stem cell agency, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), has awarded $128.5 million to USC investigators. CIRM was established in 2004 through Proposition 71—a voter-approved measure to provide $3 billion for stem cell research at California research institutions and companies. Other key supporters include the National Institutes of Health, major biotech companies and visionary philanthropists such as Eli and Edythe Broad. The center includes several resources for specialized equipment and highly trained experts invaluable to stem cell research. Among them: The Choi Family Therapeutic Screening Facility What it is: A place to discover new drugs, with resources like chemical libraries, automated microscopes, equipment to screen small molecules using imaging, and on-call experts What’s ahead: USC Stem Cell scientists use cells from patients to screen drug-like molecules with the potential to treat diseases ranging from ALS to breast cancer. The Chang Stem Cell Engineering Facility What it is: A facility to generate and genetically modify stem cells, so that researchers can look at what goes wrong in diseases, as well as create tools to treat genetic disorders What’s ahead: Scientists with USC Stem Cell will shed light on diabetes, kidney disease and other diseases.
PORTRAIT ILLUSTRATIONS BY MURPHY LIPPINCOTT; MOUSE RIB IMAGE BY FRANCESCA MARIANI/MARIANI LAB
to the Type 2 form of the disease, genetic mutations also can cause diabetes. At Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA), researcher Senta Georgia aims to use stem cells to help patients with these genetic forms of the disease. Her lab is focusing on a young CHLA patient with a rare genetic disease known as enteric anendocrinosis. The disease causes chronic diarrhea because patients lack certain gastrointestinal cells that produce hormones, and they eventually lose their beta cells as well, causing diabetes. With the help of USC’s Chang Stem Cell Engineering Facility, Georgia’s team took stem cells derived from the patient’s skin and edited the cells’ genome to fix the genetic mutation causing the problem. They then used these genetically corrected stem cells to generate new insulin-producing cells. The goal is to eventually transplant these insulin-producing cells back into the patient to reverse the diabetes—providing a tailor-made cell replacement therapy. The study could potentially set a precedent for how to generate new insulin cells for patients with genetic forms of diabetes, says Georgia, assistant professor of pediatrics and stem cell biology and regenerative medicine at the Keck School of Medicine. “We hope that CHLA and USC can become leaders in providing new cellular therapies for patients with genetic diabetes in the future.”
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What a Difference a Day Makes Make May 4 your day to give. Each year, on the USC Day of SCupport, USC alumni, parents and friends come together to demonstrate the power and generosity of the Trojan Family. On Friday, May 4, 2018, we invite you to join us by making a gift of any size to the USC school, program or initiative most meaningful to you.
dayofSCupport.usc.edu | (213) 740-7500
ALUMNI.USC.EDU | ALUMNI@USC.EDU | TEL: 213 740 2300
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FA M I LY LUNCH BREAK Actor Danny Trejo made a career out of playing menacing movie tough guys. Now the native Angeleno’s latest project brings Mexican food with a healthful spin to South L.A. Teaming up with Trojans Jeff Georgino ’90 and Ash Shah ’89, he unveiled the newest location of Trejo’s Tacos at USC Village. Says Shah: “This is a university in the middle of an urban environment, and it’s allowed us to open in an area that’s underserved when it comes to healthful food. I think you’re going to see better food coming into neighborhoods like this.”
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family news
Squad Goals For 50 years, USC’s Song Girls have thrilled stadium crowds as ambassadors of school spirit and goodwill.
a usc football game without the Song Girls? It may be hard to imagine, but the dance team was assembled in 1967 solely to boost basketball attendance. When the idea was first proposed to perform at football games, USC’s dean of students assembled a committee to discuss whether the Song Girls would be “good enough and do a first-class, high-quality job.” Those first Song Girls put to rest any doubt during the 1968 season as a team that was “tradition-shattering,” according to the Daily Trojan. Since then, Song Girls have inspired stadium crowds, not to mention generations of little girls. “USC was my dream school and part of that dream was being on the iconic Song Girl team,” says Taylor Felix ’13, captain of the 2012 squad. Each year, close to 100 dancers vie for six to 11 positions on the squad. Even returning members must go through the intensive audition process. A fact about Song Girls to clarify from the start: They’re not cheerleaders. The emphasis is on dance choreography, personality and presence. This stance began with the squad’s first coach, Lindley Bothwell ’23, a founding USC Yell Leader. Professionalism
and character were the watchwords for Bothwell, who was the volunteer coach of the Song Girls and Yell Leaders for 60 years and also co-founded the Trojan Knights. Listen to Song Girls share favorite memories, and a sense of magic resonates. “There’s a chant we shout while marching: ‘To the Rose Bowl!’” says senior Jaclyn Sigman, captain of the 2018 team. “During the 2016 football season, the idea that we would make it to the Rose Bowl seemed so far-fetched, we stopped saying the chant. Then … the season turned around.” Indeed, the Trojans not only made it to the Rose Bowl, but eked out a last-second win against Penn State. “I don’t think any game could ever top that one,” Sigman says. Yes, there’s magic in being a Song Girl. “Your teammates become sisters for life,” Felix says, “a community of really strong women who can lean on each other.” And then there’s the magic of performing for a crowd. Sigman says, “There are moments, like at the annual Union Square rally in San Francisco. [It’s] that feeling of … ‘Well, I never want to leave.’ ”
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3 Football Saturdays
NELSONS PHOTO COURTESY OF LORI NELSON; 1970S PHOTOS COURTESY OF USC UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES; ROSE BOWL PHOTO BY ROBERT BECK/SPORTS ILLUSTRATED/GETTY IMAGES; SPIRIT RALLY PHOTO BY MICHAEL OWEN BAKER
The Traditional Uniform
On game days, squad members are ready by 8 a.m. to perform at two campus rallies. Then, it’s off to the game, which lasts about four hours, followed by a postgame show.
According to Song Girl Marsha Gean Kendall ’75, the 1972 squad was asked to appear in a Texaco commercial. The wardrobe was a white turtleneck sweater emblazoned with a megaphone and matching skirt trimmed in cardinal and gold. Coach Lindley Bothwell adopted the look, which debuted in 1973. Typically, Song Girls have as many as three custom-made uniforms.
Beyond Football Other sports get Song Girl love, too. The squad performs at all men’s and women’s basketball games. Schedules permitting, the team is also on deck at baseball, volleyball, lacrosse, water polo and soccer competitions.
Sisterhood There were seven Song Girls in the original 1967 squad. To date, there are 250 alumni members.
Fancy Footwork 4
She’s Got Talent In a closed-to-the-public audition process, preliminaries include personal interviews and talent auditions. Following a showcase for leaps, fouettés, leg holds and high kicks, hopefuls perform the Fight Song and a jazz routine. Contenders making it to the final cut then present a one-minute choreographed solo.
Song Girls have three-hour practices five days a week and perform more than 42 dance routines each year.
White House Welcomes The Song Girls have performed for many First Family members, including presidents and first ladies: Betty Ford (1979) Barbara Bush (2002) Bill Clinton (2016)
The Song Girls’ Pledge
We Are Family
Pride without arrogance; confidence without conceit.
For away games that call for the entire band, the Trojan Marching Band, Silks, Spirit Leaders and Song Girls travel together in seven buses.
Global Ambassadors The squad travels around the world and makes about 27 appearances outside of athletic events each year, including philanthropy and charity events, magazine shoots, dance clinics and weddings.
USC’s “Greatest Hits” 5
Coming Up Roses The Song Girls have appeared in 20 Rose Bowl Games and Rose Parades.
Sure, there’s the Fight Song. Other tunes that have become Song Girls standards include the Trojan Marching Band’s renditions of Tusk, Heartbreaker, Frankenstein, The Kids Aren’t Alright, Dance to the Music and All Right Now.
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FIGHTING ON #1 The 1968 Song Girls shattered tradition when they took to the football field for the first time. #2 Current coach Lori Nelson, center, was a Song Girl, and daughters Whitney and Natalie continued the legacy. #3 By the 1970s the Song Girls, also called Song Leaders, were firmly entrenched in football game-day rituals. #4 Most of the original Song Girls came together in the late 1970s for their first reunion. #5 The Song Girls not only show school spirit at USC’s bowl games, but they also have appeared at events such as the 2000 Summer Olympics in Australia. #6 The Song Girls remain a fixture at pep rallies.
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A Quiet Risk-Taker Real estate investor and dedicated Trojan William McMorrow ’69, MBA ’70 is set to accept USC’s highest alumni honor. by eric lindberg
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“That is the real secret sauce of USC.” His oldest son, Tyler, is learning that firsthand as a junior majoring in business. McMorrow’s connections to the Trojan Family helped him break into the business world, he explains, and lately he has focused on repaying the favor. In addition to supporting USC Village and serving on the USC Board of Trustees since 2015, McMorrow established the Military Veterans Initiative, which helps student-veterans earn a USC degree and find employment. At the USC Marshall School of Business, he endowed the McMorrow Global Real Estate program and helped launch the Performance Science Institute. USC students can regularly be found interning at Kennedy Wilson. “If you are lucky enough to have any success, you’d better give back to the people and places that helped you along the way,” he says. “I am so grateful to USC and all the people there who put me on the right path.”
PHOTO BY WILL CHIANG
when usc president C. L. Max Nikias called William McMorrow ’69, MBA ’70 to inform him that he had been selected to receive USC’s highest honor for alumni—the Asa V. Call Alumni Achievement Award—McMorrow was tempted to turn him down. Modest and contemplative, McMorrow prefers to stay out of the spotlight. But along with humility, one of the USC trustee’s guiding principles is to be open to new opportunities. “No matter what the idea is, I always try to say yes, at least at the beginning,” says McMorrow, who will be feted at USC’s 85th Annual Alumni Awards in April. That receptive attitude helped McMorrow build his real estate investment and management company, Kennedy Wilson, into a global success story. When he purchased the business in 1988, it had one office and 11 employees. Today, there are 25 offices and nearly 7,000 employees around the world. Asked about his secrets to success, McMorrow says there are no tricks or shortcuts. It’s about creating relationships, recognizing and seizing opportunities and taking a few risks. He brings that mindset to other parts of his life, too, including his passion for the ocean as a surfer, paddleboarder and all-around waterman. He recalls shocking a business partner on a trip to Hawaii when he caught a massive wave in an outrigger canoe with no apparent fear or hesitation. “You have to take chances and put yourself out there,” he says. A Southern California native, McMorrow and his wife, Leslie, live not far from his childhood home in Malibu. Growing up, McMorrow was one of nine children in a family that extolled the value of hard work, with frequent reminders of the sacrifices of earlier generations from Ireland and Germany. His father, a U.S. Navy fighter pilot, was a diehard Trojans football fan, and the McMorrow clan spent many Saturdays at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, rain or shine. Attending USC felt like destiny after McMorrow graduated from Loyola High School, and he now counts it among his luckiest decisions. “Beyond what I learned in books, it was the friendships I made at USC that have been a big part of my success,” he says.
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The Mentor For this networking pro, there’s something special about Trojans helping Trojans succeed. Donald Dean ’90 leads a double life. By day, he oversees a regional sales team for French pharmaceutical company Sanofi. By night—and afternoon, evening and weekend— he pours his time into his other passion: the Trojan Family. Dean has mentored students for more than 10 years and serves on numerous USC alumni boards and associations. As cochair of student outreach on the USC Alumni Association’s Board of Governors during the 2014–15 academic year, he brought together students and alumni to share stories and celebrate USC traditions during familystyle dinners. The association recognized his dedication, volunteerism and service in 2016 with the President’s Award. “I light up like a Christmas tree whenever USC comes
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up,” Dean says. “I’m excited because I can see where the university is going and how it’s grown. From USC Village to all the buildings going up around campus to new programs at the schools, it seems like there is something new every week.” Despite growing up near UCLA, Dean decided not to follow his older sister’s footsteps into Bruin territory. He had noticed a close camaraderie among several USC grads at his after-school job at a department store, and it fascinated him. “I knew right then I wanted to be a Trojan,” he says. Within weeks of setting foot on campus, he knew he had made the right choice. “It was everything I imagined it could be.” As a marketing major at the USC Marshall School of Business, Dean was already looking
out for his fellow Trojans. He helped recruit companies for student networking events, which led to many internship and job connections. After graduating, he stayed involved with USC, volunteering with alumni groups and serving as founding president of the Second Decade Society, which offers networking events, cultural activities and social get-togethers for USC alumni in their 30s and 40s. But perhaps his biggest contribution comes through his mentoring and networking work with current students. It’s hard for him to say no, he says, which probably explains why at one point he had 20 mentees and had to organize group sessions to handle the demand. “One thing I always encourage them to do is to start early—get an internship and set yourself up for graduation, so you aren’t waiting until the last minute,” he says. “USC is known for its network, so you want to connect with compa-
nies and make sure they know who you are.” He has become so popular as a mentor that students from across the university have approached him for support, including one from the USC School of Cinematic Arts who would call for advice as he worked through negotiations in the entertainment industry. When the student returned to campus to screen a short film, he stopped in the middle of his remarks to thank Dean for his support. “I wasn’t expecting that at all,” Dean says, “but you never know the impact you are going to have on someone.” It’s this kind of connection that he sees as the strength of the Trojan Family. “Hopefully when they graduate, they want to come back and help out in that same way. I’ve always loved to see Trojans helping Trojans.” ERIC LINDBERG
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When you’ve traveled the world for 40 years, you know your way around. Since 1978, more than 17,000 Trojans have enjoyed the exceptional service and camaraderie of USC Trojan Travel. Visit trojantravel.usc.edu or call (213) 821-6005 for more information and to book your next unforgettable Trojan Travel experience.
ALUMNI.USC.EDU | ALUMNI@USC.EDU | TEL: 213 740 2300
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George D. Demos PhD ’59 (EDU) published Introduction to Counseling: A Handbook and serves as president and CEO of PTSD Clinics, an organization that helps veterans recovering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
Paul Morissette ’80 (ENG) is a software developer for the Fountain Group at Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems. Bradley Wootten MS ’80 (ENG) retired as president and CEO of Q Systems Dynamics. He is an adjunct business professor at Webster University.
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Mark Peacock ’64 (LAS) published The First Gathering of the Break Time Stories, a collection of three previously published short stories. Robert Eaglet MS ’68, PhD ’70 (ENG) retired from the U.S. Air Force as a major general in 1991. Terry Hodge Taylor ’69 (LAS) of Hodge Taylor Productions and executive producer of the American Theater Hall of Fame, celebrated 35 years of producing concert salutes and gala events in New York City.
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Michael Martorano MS ’71 (ENG) received his 45-year length of service certificate and Secretary of the Navy letter from Rear Adm. Brian Corey of the U.S. Navy.
PHOTO COURTESY OF USC ATHLETICS
Jose Camerino MSW ’75 (SSW), adjunct assistant professor at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine’s Department of Psychiatry, supervises psychiatry residents in Cleveland, Ohio. Gary Milliman MPA ’76 (SPP) is a municipal court judge in Port Orford, Oregon. He is city manager in Brookings, Oregon. Tommy J. Wong ’77 (ENG) retired after working for several aerospace companies, including Logicon, Rockwell International, McDonnell Douglas and Lockheed Martin. He travels and mentors students.
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Steve Bloom ’82 (SCA) was the lead editor on Pixar’s 19th animated film, Coco. The movie was directed by Lee Unkrich ’90 (SCA).
Do you have news to share? Send it along with your name, school and class year to classnotes@ usc.edu and it may appear in a future issue.
Joshua Margo ’90, MA ’93 (LAS) received his Master of Rabbinic Studies and rabbinic ordination. James Antoyan ’91 (BUS) launched JLA Real Estate Group, based in Riverside, California, which specializes in property investments and management. Katrina Cravy ’92 (LAS/SCJ), an Emmy Award-winning reporter, started her own consulting company and is a member of the National Speakers Association.
Tanya Candia MS ’83 (ENG) is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. Kimberly Krantz ’83 (BUS) was California’s Member of the Year in Epsilon Sigma Alpha International. Her poetry placed first in the group’s literacy competition. Mary Stark MS ’85 (ENG) launched Mary McElhinney Stark LLC, which provides fiscal consultancy services to California public schools. George J. Chambers MS ’86 (ENG) taught systems engineering at several schools after retiring from the Hughes Aircraft Co. as a systems engineer. He has written four naval history books and published two. Michael J. Pugh MS ’89 (ENG) is vice president of collaboration solutions at RingCentral after serving as j2 Global’s vice president of marketing and leader of its cloud communication business. David Herriott ’89 (ENG) is a senior mechanical engineer at Bastion Technologies in Houston. He supports design activities for Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner.
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Nadine Ding PhD ’90 (LAS) was inducted into the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering’s College of Fellows.
T R O J A N
T R I B U T E
Luther Hayes Luther Hayes ’63, MS ’74 (EDU), was a twosport star at USC, lettering in football in 1958-60 and track and field in 1959-61. He won two NCAA triple jump titles and set a USC record (51-9½) in 1961. Hayes was a two-way end in football and played a key role in the Trojans’ 1958 game against UCLA. In 1961, Hayes was selected in the 10th round of the NFL Draft by the Philadelphia Eagles and the 27th round of the AFL Draft by the San Diego Chargers. He ultimately chose to play for the Chargers. After his playing career, he taught in the Los Angeles Unified School District and coached at Crenshaw High, California State University, Northridge and Los Angeles City College, where he also was a counselor. Hayes died Nov. 7, 2017. He is survived by his wife, Anita, daughters Andrea Jordan and Crystal Hill and son Luther, as well as sisters Mary Jones and LaVerne Perkins and four grandchildren.
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family class notes Rhoda Smith MSW ’92 (SSW) is on the faculty at Springfeld College School of Social Work in Massachusetts. She received a New York City Administration for Children’s Services grant to create support programs for pregnant and parenting teens in foster care.
DIANA TURNER
David Majchrzak ’93 (BUS) of Klinedinst PC has been elevated to senior counsel. He is a member of the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers, vice chair of the San Diego County Bar Association’s Legal Ethics Committee and co-editor of the association’s Ethics Quarterly.
Realtor ®, e-Pro, BA
Derek Hyde ’95 (ENG) is chief technology offier for TrustedChoice.com in Minneapolis. Jonathan Matey ’95 (ENG) retired from the U.S. Army after more than 22 years of active duty. He works for Booz Allen Hamilton, where he supports the U.S. Air Force in developing GPS user equipment.
LOOKING FOR A PROPERTY IN L.A.’S WESTSIDE OR SOUTH BAY AREA? Let Realtor ®, Diana Turner, a USC alum with professional insight and broad local knowledge assist you. Diana has been a Top Producer since 2004. She is also a board member of the Trojan League of South Bay.
Graig Eastin MS ’97 (EDU) is vice president for institute advancement at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Ellisen Turner ’97 (ENG) is managing partner at Irell & Manella LLP. Previously, he clerked for the Honorable Robert E. Payne of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. Prior to his career in law, Turner worked as a software engineer for Hewlett-Packard and IBM.
FIGHT ON!
David Matthew Guest MFA ’01 (SCA) cofounded LifeofDad.com, which won an award at the 64th Cannes International Festival of Creativity for a marketing campaign with General Mills. Julie Watts ’02, MA ’03 (SCJ), a reporter and news anchor at KPIX in San Francisco, received the Gracie Award for best investigative feature, a Society of Professional Journalists’ SDX Award for public service, a National Headliner Award for business and consumer reporting and a National Press Club award for consumer journalism. Sean Kingston ’03 (SPP) joined Fisher Phillips in Irvine, California. He previously worked as an associate for Nossaman LLP. James O. Kemp ’04 (ENG) works in Johnson & Johnson’s medical devices division. Preston Ascherin ’05 (LAS) is partner at Akerman LLP in Los Angeles, where he focuses on the fnancial services sector. Ken Gillespie MBA ’06 (BUS), an executive director in public fnance investment banking with Oppenheimer, is chief fnancial officer of Fisher House Southern California, a nonproft serving military families. Cyndi Paik EdD ’06 (EDU) was named superintendent of the Westminster School District in California. Jessica Huang ’06 (LAS) was inducted into the San Francisco Prep Hall of Fame. She was a member of USC’s women’s swim team from 2002-04.
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310.213.2450 diana.turner@vistasir.com LosAngelesBeachHome.com CalBRE# 01442365
Filiberto Gonzalez MSW ’00 (SSW), vice president of development and strategic initiatives at Grapevine Development in Los Angeles, oversees the company’s publicprivate partnerships throughout California. Sanjiv Gupta MS ’00 (ENG) is a chief engineer at Northrop Grumman in San Diego.
EACH OFFICE IS INDEPENDENTLY OWNED AND OPERATED
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Chris Cowan JD ’07 (LAW), an attorney specializing in business litigation in the Austin office of Beck Redden LLP, was named a 2017 rising star by Southern California Super Lawyers. Julie Pifher ’07 (SCA) wrote Love from Mars and Sam & The Secrets of the Universe under the pen name JP Cawood.
Charles Eckstrom MBA ’01 (BUS) is chief information officer for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. spring 2018
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A Colorful Life A fourth-generation Trojan brings a global view to the art of stained glass. While other teens took on summer jobs as lifeguards or busboys, David Judson MA ’96 started with sweeping the floors of his family’s business: Judson Studios, Los Angeles’ famed stained-glass makers. Growing up roaming the stonewalled rooms, he eventually learned the timeless art himself as he watched artisans shape stained-glass panels. Judson Studios’ handiwork can be seen across USC, including in the vibrant windows of USC Caruso Catholic Center, Mudd Hall and the USC Village dining hall in McCarthy Honors College. David Judson’s great-greatgrandfather, English painter William Lees Judson, launched the Colonial Glass Company in downtown L.A. with his three sons in 1897. The same year, he founded the College of Fine
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Arts in L.A.’s Highland Park neighborhood, which became the epicenter of California’s Arts and Crafts movement. Within three years, the college became part of USC, and William Lees Judson its first dean. When the college moved to the University Park Campus in 1920, the Judsons took over the Highland Park building for their growing stained-glass business. Yet when it came time for David Judson to go to college, he chose another path. “My parents encouraged us to try other things, knowing we could always come back with something else to contribute,” he says. He earned his bachelor’s in political science and Spanish literature from San Diego State University and spent time in Madrid, Spain. Living abroad
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inspired him to enroll in USC’s master’s in international relations program, becoming the fourth generation of Judsons to attend the university. Back in Madrid for an internship with the United Nations’ World Tourism Organization, he visited the Prado Museum and studied the city’s extensive public art. When he returned to L.A. to complete his degree, he found himself at the nexus of two historic events—the centennial celebrations of Judson Studios and the College of Fine Arts, today known as the USC Roski School of Art and Design. He began to see where his passion and vision could make an impact. “Majoring in international relations, coupled with living abroad, helped me to think differently and gave me exposure to ideas I’ve been able to bring back to a company setting,” says Judson, who serves as president of Judson Studios. One innovation he’s working on is melding 21st-century technology with the centuriesold art form. He’s forged
alliances with contemporary artists to explore fused glass, a technique that can produce subtle color combinations and gradations that traditional stained glass can’t. The company recently completed the largest-ever fused glass window—3,440 square feet—for a Methodist church near Kansas City. To pursue this new direction, Judson opened a 7,000-squarefoot industrial facility in South Pasadena. (The company’s original headquarters has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1999, which makes renovations more challenging.) Expansive, sunny rooms house six high-intensity kilns at the new location. “We’re creating a place where interesting collaborations can happen,” he says. In our digital culture, people are more and more interested in handcrafted arts, notes Judson: “Glass is authentic, genuine, tactile, and it resonates with people on a deeper level.” CANDACE PEARSON
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family class notes
Do you have news to share? Send it along with your name, school and class year to classnotes@ usc.edu and it may appear in a future issue.
Pat Pefly EdD ’08 (EDU), based in the United Kingdom, works for the U.S. Department of Defense’s Defense Intelligence Agency and oversees leadership training
and professional development of intelligence officers for U.S. Africa Command and U.S. European Command.
Emily Fridlund PhD ’14 (LAS) was named to The Man Booker Prize 2017 Longlist for History of Wolves, her first novel.
Marcelo Vazquez EdD ’08 (EDU) is associate vice president of student life and dean of students at California State University, Dominguez Hills.
C. Molly Smith ’14 (SCJ) is assistant entertainment editor at HelloGiggles.
T R O J A N
T R I B U T E
MacDonald Becket MacDonald Becket ’52, a USC School of Architecture graduate, was a driving force in the development of architecture in Los Angeles and beyond. As president of Welton Becket and Associates, he was instrumental in the design of projects such as the Washington, D.C. Convention Center, Terminal 1 at the Los Angeles International Airport, Barclays Bank International in New York City, the Federal Courts Building in downtown Los Angeles and the Valley National Bank (now Chase Bank) in downtown Phoenix, still the tallest building in Arizona. Becket was the first American architect to construct a major building in China and also worked on significant buildings in Moscow and Seoul. An American Institute of Architects fellow, he was founder and chairman of the USC School of Architecture’s Board of Councilors for 15 years. During the 1980s and early 1990s, he led a project for physical improvements at USC. In spring 1994, the MacDonald Becket Center opened at USC, along with a remodeled workshop, new landscaping and courtyard improvements and a student-centered café. He was awarded the USC Alumni Merit Award in 1993 and inducted into the Half Century Trojans Hall of Fame in 2007. The arts leader was also a founding contributor to the Architectural and Design Endowment for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and served as a founding member of the Los Angeles Cultural Commission. Becket died in December 2017. He is survived by his wife of 35 years, Diane; his sister, Jacquelin Hart; sons MacDonald Jr., Thomas, Michael and David; nine grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.
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Michael Bhatt MS ’15 (ENG) is a gameplay programmer at 505 Games.
Tina Hovespian ’09 (ARC) was listed in Forbes’ “30 under 30” and joined Oceanwide Plaza as design director.
Sam Dorn ’15 (LAS/SCJ) is the mid-Atlantic regional director for the Israel on Campus Coalition.
Amanda Rossie MA ’09 (SCJ) received a Mellon-ACLS Public Fellows fellowship as a policy analyst for the National Women’s Law Center in Washington, D.C.
Molly Nichelson MPP ’15 (SPP) has been named public information officer for the County of Orange Social Services Agency.
Clint Sylvestre MS ’09 (ENG), electrical design engineering manager at Boeing, celebrated 10 years at the company.
2 0 1 0 s
Brian Chung ’10 (BUS) was featured in The Huffington Post, Daily Trojan, USC Trojan Vision and Kickstarter for work on Alabaster, a redesign of the Bible. Jacquie Levy ’11 (LAS/SCJ) won two Pacific Southwest Emmy Awards for writing and producing the shows Heart of Vegas and Behind the Vegas Ice.
Daniel Rashid ’15 (DRA) appeared in the feature film You Can Choose Your Family. Chit Saraswat ’15 (ENG) is part of a threeyear engineering rotational program at Northrop Grumman to gain experience in systems engineering, project management and radio frequency design engineering. Malia Civetz ’16 (MUS) appeared on Ryan Seacrest’s morning radio program for the debut of her first single, “Champagne Clouds.” The song was co-written by Nathan Fertig ’15 (MUS). Eric (Xiaojun) Dong ’16, MS ’17 (ENG) is a software engineer at Hyperloop One.
Justin McFarr MPW ’11 (LAS) published his first novel, The Bear Who Broke the World.
F R I E N D S
Zachary Cuca MBA ’12 (BUS), a financial analyst at the U.S. Embassy in Athens, Greece, received the U.S. Department of State’s Meritorious Honor Award.
George Ciampa was named Los Angeles County Veteran of the Year for 2017.
M A R R I A G E S Susan Kelejian MSW ’13 (SSW) is executive director at Changing Tides Treatment Centers in Ventura, California.
Karina Godoy ’06 (LAS) and Vikram K. Sridharan ’09 (ENG).
PHOTO COURTESY OF WBA
Ben Adelson ’09 (MUS), senior vice president at Republic Records, made Billboard’s list of “40 under 40: Music’s Top Young Power Players Revealed.”
Colin Woodell ’14 (DRA) performed a lead role in Long Day’s Journey Into Night at the Geffen Playhouse.
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A LU M N I
P R O F I L E
D O R A
D E
L A R I O S ’5 7
The Shape of Things
PHOTO BY STAR MONTANA
A celebrated ceramist and pioneering artist reflects on a lifetime spent breaking the mold. Dora De Larios ’57 took her first trip to the archaeological museum in Mexico City at age 6. That’s where she saw a stone sculpture of the Aztec calendar for the first time. “It had a great impact on me,” she says. “I wanted to make something as beautiful as that someday.” The artist and ceramicist spent the last 60 years doing just that—making art that awes and inspires. De Larios, a Los Angeles native whose parents emigrated from Mexico, nurtured her love of ceramics at Dorsey High School, where she worked with clay every afternoon. “The janitor would say, ‘OK, time for you to go.’ The school would all be locked up and I’d walk home,” she says.
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The 84-year-old artist, whose tell-it-like-it-is nature is balanced by a grounded humility, studied at the USC Roski School of Art and Design with famed ceramists Vivika and Otto Heino and Susan Peterson. “It was a very exciting time at Fisher Gallery [now USC Fisher Museum of Art]. The whole complex where the fine arts and architecture departments were housed was a very vital place,” she recalls. And as a Latina, De Larios stood out in that era. “There were a lot of exchange students. Those were all my friends because I didn’t fit in. I ran around campus in black leotards and black ballerina shoes and everyone was in white bucks and gray pants
and hot pink shirts,” she says. After graduation, De Larios continued to carve her own path in the male-dominated art world. She created a studio with fellow artist Ellice Johnston, which they shared with several other female artists: a printer, a painter, a few potters, and a sculptor who kept a live owl in her studio. “We were really pretty revolutionary and didn’t even know it,” she says. De Larios draws from her Mexican heritage in her art— decorative vessels, sculptures and large-scale installations that illuminate the female figure, mythological characters and a love of nature. Her work has been exhibited at major museums, and in 1977, she was commissioned to create dinnerware for the White House’s annual Senate Ladies Luncheon. But her public pieces are some of her favorites because of their accessibility, including a 40-foot mural at the Hilton Hotel Anaheim, a 36-foot-high monolith in the courtyard of Pasadena’s Villa Parke Commu-
nity Center and a 40-foot mural for the Compton Public Library. Five years ago, along with her daughter and son-in-law, De Larios launched a dinnerware collection through Irving Place Studio, their boutique family business. It was perfectly timed to the current ceramics renaissance. “It’s thrilling,” she says of the public’s newfound interest in her lifelong passion. “I have people coming to the studio and they look at me with adoring big eyes. I tell them to close their eyes and open them again. I’m just another human being. …Everything I’ve done has been a process of learning more and more about my craft.” The inspiration, she adds, is endless. “The only trouble is that life is too short.” LISA BUT TERWORTH
EDITOR’S NOTE: Dora De Larios died of cancer Jan. 28, a month after this interview. A retrospective of her work, “Dora De Larios: Other Worlds,” is at the Main Museum of Los Angeles until May 13.
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The USC Alumni Association proudly announces the
85TH ANNUAL
USC ALUMNI AWARDS Saturday, April 28, 2018 | InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown
ASA V. CALL ALUMNI ACHIEVEMENT AWARD W I L L I A M M c M O R R O W ’6 9, M B A ’ 7 0 USC Trustee; chairman and CEO, Kennedy Wilson
ALUMNI MERIT AWARDS C A R M E N N AVA ’ 8 4 USC Trustee; senior vice president (retired), AT&T Entertainment Group
C A R O L G O M E Z S U M M E R H AY S D D S ’ 7 8 Past president, American Dental Association
KEVIN TSUJIHAR A ’86 Chairman and CEO, Warner Bros. Entertainment
YOUNG ALUMNI MERIT AWARD RYA N C O O G L E R M FA ’ 1 1 Award-winning filmmaker
ALUMNI SERVICE AWARDS B O B PA D G E T T ’6 7 Former USC Trustee; past president, USC Alumni Association Board of Governors VA L E R I E G U M B I N E R W E I S S ’ 74 , M PA ’ 8 1 Past chairman, Alumnae Coordinating Council; longtime university volunteer
HONORARY ALUMNI AWARD BRUCE AND MADELINE R AMER Steadfast Trojan ambassadors and dedicated supporters of USC
ALUMNI.USC.EDU | ALUMNI@USC.EDU | TEL: 213 740 2300
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A LU M N I
P R O F I L E
R O S A L I N D
W I E N E R
W Y M A N ’5 2
Rosalind Wiener Wyman receiving a USC alumni award in 1964.
True Blue PHOTO COURTESY OF THE HERALD-EXAMINER COLLECTION/LOS ANGELES PUBLIC LIBRARY
A Trojan alumna blazed her own trail in politics— and started a new chapter for Dodgers baseball. Los Angeles wouldn’t be the same without the Dodgers, and you can thank Rosalind “Roz” Wiener Wyman ’52 for that. At a time when many women weren’t encouraged to pursue high-profile careers—much less public office—Wyman blazed her own trail in politics, breaking more than a few glass ceilings along the way while leaving an indelible mark on Los Angeles sports. A Los Angeles native, Wyman grew up in a family that valued politics. A photo in her baby book shows her at age 2 standing next to a Franklin Delano Roosevelt billboard. For years she sent letters to Roosevelt: “I wrote to him as if he were an uncle,” she remembers. Upon his death, the bereft 14-year-old’s sense of civic duty was cemented.
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As a student government leader at Los Angeles High School, Wyman became well known by the vice principal, to whom she regularly presented “crazy ideas.” She rallied for lunch mixers to bring lonely students together and pushed for school dances for those who couldn’t afford country club dances. At USC, she worked as part of the student government to bring speakers to the school and plan campus events. After graduating, the 22-year-old public administration major ran for Los Angeles City Council. Campaign headquarters were in Wyman’s living room, where USC students volunteered. “I literally wore out 13 pairs of shoes doing precinct work,” she says. A photo of those shoes made it into Life maga-
zine. A longshot candidate, Wyman became the youngest elected legislator in a major U.S. city, a title she holds to this day. One of Wyman’s campaign platform promises was to bring major league sports to Los Angeles. At the time, no major league teams were located west of the Mississippi. She penned a letter to the owner of the hottest sports team at that time: the Brooklyn Dodgers. Owner Walter O’Malley refused to even talk with Wyman. Still, she says, “I didn’t quit.” Pregnant at the time, Wyman continued her crusade, pointing out that rainouts would be a thing of the past in sunny L.A. Eventually one of the city supervisors convinced O’Malley to take a helicopter ride above Chavez Ravine. From that vantage point, O’Malley could imagine how a baseball stadium might fit. Their persistence paid off, opening a new chapter in L.A. history—and kicking off a lifelong friendship between
Wyman and O’Malley. Wyman would later also be instrumental in moving the Lakers to L.A. from Minneapolis. Her career in politics led to a number of milestones as she became the first woman to run a national political convention, preside over the Los Angeles City Council, serve as acting mayor of Los Angeles and direct a campaign to create more parks: the Campaign for Acquisition of Land. Steadfast over these years was Wyman’s friendship with O’Malley, who never forgot the role she played in his team’s history. After O’Malley’s death in 1979, Wyman received a phone call from his son, Peter. His father had left behind a special key said to fit every door in Dodger Stadium. Only one person could have it. Wyman still proudly holds the key to this day. BEKAH WRIGHT
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What Will Your Trojan Legacy Be? Charles A. Isham BA ’65, MBA ’72 had a strong desire to help USC. But he also wanted to secure his retirement. By making a gift through a charitable gift annuity to endow a scholarship fund for undergraduates studying economics at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, he’s receiving significant tax advantages and income for the rest of his life.
“I worked hard all of my life and I’m proud my legacy will support USC students.” Charles A. Isham BA ’65, MBA ’72
To create your Trojan legacy, contact the USC Office of Gift Planning at (213) 740-2682 or giftplanning@usc.edu and visit us online at www.usc.edu/giftplanning.
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Obituaries of members of the Trojan Family appear online at tfm.usc.edu/tributes.
family class notes
Kate Gorman ’07 (DRA) and Joe Horton ’07 (DRA).
Spencer Johnson ’63 (LAS) of San Diego; July 3, 2017, at age 78.
Jacquie Levy ’11 (LAS/SCJ) and Nick Gray ’11 (SPP).
Adrian Stanga EdD ’72 (EDU) of Saratoga, California; Sept. 20, 2016, at age 93.
Frank (Fan) Gao MS ’12 (ENG) and Winnie Liang.
Josh Gilbert MFA ’89 (SCA) of New York City; Nov. 26, 2016.
B I R T H S
Carrie Dyan Campbell ’98 (SCJ) of Redlands, California; July 16, 2017, at age 46.
Michael Wilson ’00 (BUS) and Dana Wilson, a daughter, Mila. Aunt is Leila Baboi ’03 (SCJ).
Evan Hershey Helmuth ’99 (DRA) of Los Angeles; July 18, 2017, at age 40. John Nordlinger MFA ’13 (SCA) of Bishop, California, on July 31, 2017, at age 54.
Jared Yeager ’02 (SCA) and Anne-Elisa Yeager ’03 (SCA), a son, Rex Elliott. L E G E N D Kristina Gallegos ’03 (LAS) and Shaun Dixon ’07 (SCA), a son, Quincy Theodore. LAS
I N
M E M O R I A M
A LU M N I Eunice Launer Harris ’39 (LAS) of Fullerton, California; March 12, 2017, at age 100. Mary Wikoff Fisher ’40 (LAS) of La Jolla, California; March 7, 2017, at the age of 98. Irving Weiner ’42 (BUS) of San Diego; Feb. 26, 2017, at the age of 95. WIlliam Spaeter ’50, MS ’60 (EDU) of Los Angeles; Sept. 21, 2017; at the age of 93.
PHOTO COURTESY OF JERRY PAPAZIAN
Lillian May Stevens ’51 (LAS), LLB ’54 (LAW) of Glendale, California; March 17, 2017; at age 87. Roderick Ristow ’54 (LAS) of Pasadena, California; Jan. 26, 2017 at age 84. George Yamaguchi PharmD ’57, of Montebello, California; Sept. 17, 2016, at the age of 96. James G. Mills PharmD ’60 (PHM) of Solvang, California; Aug. 12, 2017, at the age of 91. tfm.usc.edu
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ACC ARC BUS SCA SCJ DNC DEN DRA EDU ENG ART GRN LAW MED MUS OST
USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences USC Leventhal School of Accounting USC School of Architecture USC Marshall School of Business USC School of Cinematic Arts USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism USC Kaufman School of Dance Herman Ostrow School of Dentistry of USC USC School of Dramatic Arts USC Rossier School of Education USC Viterbi School of Engineering USC Roski School of Art and Design USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology USC Gould School of Law Keck School of Medicine of USC USC Thornton School of Music USC Chan Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy
PHM BPT
USC School of Pharmacy Division of Biokinesiology and Physical Therapy
SPP SSW
USC Price School of Public Policy USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work
Jill Barone, Matt DeGrushe, Michelle Dumas, Wendy Gragg, Katherine Griffiths, Julie Labich, Leticia Lozoya, Jane Ong, Stacey Wang Rizzo and Deann Webb contributed to this section.
T R O J A N
T R I B U T E
Joan Metcalf Schaefer During her 35-year career in the USC Office of Student Affairs, Joan Metcalf Schaefer counseled thousands of students in their quests to find their ideal academic and intellectual pursuits. The beloved administrator joined USC in 1955 as dean of women. She officially retired in 1992, but “Dean Joan,” as she was known, never truly left USC. She remained dean of women emerita, keeping an office on campus where she would visit regularly with current and former students even into her 90s. Schaefer was adviser for USC Mortar Board, a national senior honor society that was once exclusive to women. She was also active in USC’s chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, which honors top undergraduates in the arts and sciences. Throughout it all, she was a role model for young women who sought to enter professional careers, especially during an era when few women did. During retirement, she led groups of USC students to attend the University of Cambridge’s International Summer School, where they immersed themselves in British literature and culture. Cambridge recognized her for her contributions in 1985 by naming a garden in her honor. Schaefer died Sept. 3, 2017, at her home in Los Angeles. But her legacy remains alive through her students and friends, as well as the Joan M. Schaefer Scholarship at USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. The scholarship fund has supported more than 300 USC students with merit and travel awards totaling more than $1.1 million.
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now and again
For Angelenos, Sept. 4, 1880 marked a memorable day for their sleepy frontier town. On that foggy Saturday, one-tenth of the population of Los Angeles braved the town’s sprawling dirt roads to witness history: the laying of the cornerstone for USC’s first building. It once stood alone in an open field, but today the building known as the Widney Alumni House is a hub of activity on the University Park Campus. When the university opened its doors to the inaugural class of 53 students, the building hosted religious services and housed classrooms and the school library. But as USC grew and expanded its campus and academic offerings, the building was alone no more.
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Over the years the building has garnered status as a state historical landmark and adapted gracefully to change. It has moved four times, first from north of Bovard Auditorium to where the Physical Education Building now sits. A second change (using rolling dollies, as seen in this 1955 photo), carefully resettled it across from Doheny Memorial Library, where it was home to the USC Thornton School of Music for decades. It was moved again in 1997, this time to its current spot on Childs Way. The USC Alumni Association used the house as its headquarters from 1976 to 2010, and today it remains a lasting reminder of USC’s storied past and bold aspirations.
PHOTO BY DUSTIN SNIPES
On the Move
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ELISA HUANG
spring 2018
3/2/18 2:06 AM
healthier lives by
THE KECK EFFECT HERE, YOUR HEALTH COMES FIRST At Keck Medicine of USC, our 6,000 staff members work every day to keep you and your loved ones safe and well — and our recent Keck Hospital Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade of A is proof. We are proud to deliver multidisciplinary, academic-level care with your well-being in mind, helping patients live happier, healthier lives.
To read patient stories and share yours, visit KeckMedicine.org/KeckEffect
For appointments, call (800) USC-CARE
© 2018 Keck Medicine of USC
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