Trojan Family Magazine Summer 2017

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F A M I L Y

FAS REGNA T ROJAE USC’s campaign hits $6 billion and continues,

carrying on the legacy of founder Judge Robert Maclay Widney.

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scene Sports drink and water soak the locker room as Bennie Boatwright (right) and the rest of the USC Trojans celebrate their upset win over Southern Methodist University in the 2017 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. The Andy Enfield-coached team capped off its winningest season ever with a gutsy showing during March Madness.

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PHOTO BY JOHN MCGILLEN

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inside

4 Editor’s Note

College can change everything for outstanding first-generation students and their families.

5 President’s Page In extending the Campaign for USC, the university invests in future generations of Trojans.

There are about 19 million cells in every square inch of your skin.

6 Seen and Heard

Your take on USC stories from our magazine and the social web.

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News Summertime students, changes at the Health Sciences Campus, and a storied coach makes waves.

12 A School of Their Own

By Robin Heffler A USC Rossier grad student opens the first educational institute in Afghanistan for women, by women.

18 To Russia with Love

By Robert Bradford

Pianist Daniel Pollack is an ambassador for (and through) the arts.

22 A Rosy Outlook

By David Medzerian

A new football season revs up after an unforgettable Rose Bowl win.

24 More Than Skin Deep

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By Constance Sommer Dermatologists focus on treating the body’s first line of defense: your skin.

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PHOTO BY SPL/SCIENCE SOURCE

53 Alumni News

USC salutes seven outstanding alumni, Trojans worldwide volunteer in their communities, and USC Lambda celebrates a quarter century.

58 Class Notes

Who’s doing what and where?

72 Now and Again

The Trojan Shrine is an enduring symbol of the Fight On spirit.

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Changing Minds

USC rallies its research power against Alzheimer’s disease, aiming to stem a looming health crisis. By Katharine Gammon

Driven by Dreams

There’s no stopping the Trojan Family. The Campaign for USC hits $6 billion and keeps going, all the way through 2021. By Lynn Lipinski

The Way Up

One in five USC undergrads is a first-generation college student, and each

has a story to tell. By USC Trojan Family Magazine staff

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The Truth Squad

As the journalism business deals with financial questions and fallout from fake news, media experts see reasons for hope. By Tom Kertscher usc trojan family

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e d i t o r’ s n o t e Alejandra Franco’s USC acceptance packet represented a lifelong dream for her and her parents.

The quarterly magazine of the University of Southern California E DI TO R-I N- CHI E F

Alicia Di Rado M ANAGI NG E DI TO R

Elisa Huang

The Golden Ticket

Who was the first person in your family to go to college? If the honor goes to you, you have a lot of company in the Trojan Family. About one in five USC students today can make that claim.

First-generation college-goers usually share common experiences, and you’ll read about them in a story in this issue of USC Trojan Family Magazine. They might come from a long line of rural or blue-collar workers. Maybe they didn’t speak much English at home when they were growing up, and their parents were born in another country. They all embrace the belief that a university degree is the way up, so they give school their all.

Sometimes the newfound college spirit spreads to the whole family. Proud parents might not relate to college itself, but they often embrace their children’s identity. Some watch football or proudly wear a “Trojan Parent” T-shirt. College changes everything.

At USC, these students are among the most academically decorated young scholars in the nation, and they bring different perspectives to the university that enrich their classmates and our campuses. By providing these top students access to quality higher education, USC gives them a chance at a fuller life—and helps build our nation’s economic firepower. This commitment to our spectrum of students makes me proud to be part of our big family. I hope that it inspires you too.

Alicia Di Rado Editor-In-Chief, USC Trojan Family Magazine

PRO DUCT I O N M ANAGE R

Mary Modina I NT E RACT I VE CO NT E NT M ANAGE R

Patricia Lapadula STAF F PHOTO GRAPHE R

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ART DI RE CTO R

Sheharazad P. Fleming DE SI GN AND PRO DUCT I O N

Julie Savasky, Pentagram Design, Austin

CO NT RI BUTO RS

Susan Bell Laurie Bellman James Feigert Emily Gersema Judith Lipsett

Russ Ono Gilien Silsby Susanica Tam Claude Zachary

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Minne Ho M ARKE T I NG M ANAGE R

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USC Trojan Family Magazine 3434 S. Grand Ave., CAL 140 Los Angeles, CA 90089-2818 magazines@usc.edu | (213) 740-2684 USC Trojan Family Magazine (ISSN 8750-7927) is published in March, June, September and December by USC University Communications. address at tfm.usc.edu/subscribe

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summer 2017

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p r e s i d e n t’ s p a g e

A Milestone for USC

PHOTO BY STEVE COHN

b y c. l. m a x n i k i a s

On a quiet Monday morning in late March, our Trojan Family celebrated a very special milestone: Our historic fundraising campaign officially reached its ambitious goal of $6 billion—18 months ahead of schedule! This was a spectacular collective effort that speaks to the extraordinary spirit of our Trojan Family, with support coming from all over the world.

This same spirit and dedication—backed by a very real momentum—prompted another decision: to extend our campaign for an additional five years.

In raising the bar, and in redoubling our efforts, we accelerate the important goals we have set for undergraduate scholarships, medical research, and faculty programs and research. We will also expand our ambitions in the sciences, engineering and medicine, as well as the arts and humanities, while working to increase access for lower- and middle-income students.

When officially launched six years ago, our campaign—Fas Regna Trojae, or The Destined Reign of Troy—was the largest in the history of American higher education, and its success has already allowed USC to create 100 new faculty chairs spanning every discipline, as well as 19 new research centers and institutions. Additionally, USC has more than doubled its university-funded financial aid pool to $320 million, a figure that currently stands as the largest in the United States. This makes a USC education more affordable to students from every background, and we are very proud that two-thirds of our students receive significant forms of financial aid.

This is what our Trojan Family has accomplished together. And your support—the continued dedication of our passionate alumni—has made a crucial difference. In annual giving, a remarkable 42 percent of our alumni are active donors. That number is exceptionally high, and higher than at any other premier university, public or private.

It is also noteworthy that half of the money we have already raised has come from a diverse group of supporters—nearly 320,000 donations of every size— tfm.usc.edu

while 64 percent has come from non-alumni of USC. And more than 70 percent of the money raised is already in the form of cash supporting our scholarly and creative work. To these efforts, our trustees have modeled magnificent generosity, providing nearly 30 percent of the total money raised.

And so our Trojan Family has much to celebrate, but we must not rest on our laurels! In extending our campaign to 2021, we make a commitment to future generations of Trojans. When Niki and I travel around the nation and the world, we meet passionate alumni who care deeply about USC and its success. We meet you! You want our university to continue to educate the next generation of leaders, to expand the reach of our work, and to contribute even more boldly and effectively to our society.

Together, we can do this, but our dreams have a deadline. Let’s move forward with even more determination and urgency. Let’s lay the foundation for even greater success for USC and our Trojan Family.

Fight On!

From left: USC Board of Trustees Chair John Mork and his wife, Julie Mork, with Niki C. Nikias and C. L. Max Nikias

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What’s the Trojan Family talking about?

Share your thoughts with us on social media or drop us an email.

seen and heard Musings about Trojan life and USC Trojan Family Magazine from mail, email and the online world.

USC’s Crosstown Traffic report illuminated patterns in the most dangerous days and times to be on L.A. streets (data from 2016): FRIDAYS The worst day to drive saw more than 30,000 accidents over the year.

THURSDAYS More than 29,000 accidents happened on this day, the second worst for driving.

#IGotIntoUSC

Do you still remember the moment when you found out you got into USC? In late March, 8,980 high school seniors around the country and the world savored that same life-changing feeling.

With the #IGotIntoUSC tag on Instagram and Twitter, we shared the unforgettable moment with them. (Search for the hashtag on social media and just try not to smile seeing soon-to-be-Trojans scream, sob and jump for joy as their letters arrive.) USC Admission posted one of our favorite images on Instagram. It included nowand-then snapshots of two Trojans celebrating their acceptance: Natalie Janett (top) back in 2016, and younger brother Jack after he received his letter in March. Now that’s Trojan Family pride.

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SUNDAYS With about 10,000 fewer accidents than Fridays, Sunday was the safest day to get on the roads.

EVENINGS Trends show that accidents consistently peaked during evening rush hour, far outpacing the number of accidents during the morning commute.

A March to Remember

In the Autumn 2016 issue (“Now and Again,” p. 72), we featured a vintage blackand-white picture of young military men marching down Trousdale Parkway, a reminder of USC’s long relationship with the U.S. armed forces. For one sharp-eyed Trojan, the photo was also a stirring personal reminder of times—and friends—gone but not forgotten: The picture shows us Marine V-12s. I’m somewhere among the tall men near the front, for I was 6-foot-2-inches. As I look at that photograph, I’m rather sure that I am the third man from the front, in the middle row.

Yes, the photo may have been taken sometime in late 1943, or early 1944.

The unit had dwindled as so many were transferred to Parris Island, South Carolina, for 12 weeks of intensive training.

Then it was off to Quantico, Virginia, for three more months of training and commissioning as 2nd lieutenants.

What happened to many of those Marines? Many were in battles in the Pacific, including Iwo Jima and Okinawa. The casualties were great. Many never returned.

William G. Jamison ’46 summer 2017

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE JANETT FAMILY

DANGEROUS DRIVING

T R A F F I C R E P O RT Dealing with traffic in L.A. is nothing new, but it became a hot topic thanks to the findings from Crosstown Traffic, the first interdisciplinary collaboration between students at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and the USC Viterbi School of Engineering’s Integrated Media Systems Center.

TV news stations, newspapers and media outlets across Southern California covered the results from the project, which sifted through 11 terabytes of data from thousands of street sensors and buses to find patterns for the most dangerous times to drive, the worst freeway interchanges and more. See the complete findings at bit.ly/CrosstownTrafficUSC.

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TROJAN

SUN DANCE Ballet on the beach? Why not. Sophomore Joseph Hetzer brings classical and contemporary moves to an untraditional location as part of a USC video shoot on Dockweiler Beach. Hetzer, from San Pedro, California, is part of the inaugural class at the USC Kaufman School of Dance.

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trojan news

From Politics to Publisher

Newly elected USC Trustee Fred Ryan ’77, JD ’80 has decades of experience as a media entrepreneur and political adviser.

Since leaving USC, Frederick J. Ryan Jr. ’77, JD ’80 has put his background in political science, communications and law to good use. Ryan might be best known today as CEO and publisher of the Washington Post, but he also founded prize-winning political journalism outfit Politico. He had a stint on “the other side,” too, serving as a White House senior staff member under President Ronald Reagan and as chief of staff during Reagan’s post-presidential years in California.

Now Ryan will draw from his experience as an entrepreneur, political adviser and newspaper publisher to support his alma mater as the newest member of the USC Board of Trustees. Here, he shares some of his reflections about USC and his career.

O N US C ’S G ROW I N G R E P U TAT I O N :

“When I first came to D.C., USC was certainly known and respected, but in the last few years, its presence here and the appreciation and admiration for what the university does has grown enormously. As a proud Trojan, that’s been great to see.”

“Anyone in media today realizes it’s not a profession for the timid. It’s one that attracts people who are willing to seek, embrace and shape change.”

O N WHY RE AGA N A SK E D HI M TO B E H I S A S S I S TA N T:

“Boy, I don’t know. I’m just glad he did. I enjoyed working for him and with the team he put together, which included a number of Californians, several from USC.”

O N TH E VALUE OF A L AW SC HOOL E D UC AT I O N :

“As a USC law student, I was trained to be rigorous in my analysis and think outside the box. Directly or indirectly, it seems I use my law degree virtually every day.”

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PHOTO BY PHILIP BERMINGHAM PHOTOGRAPHY

O N TH E CH ANGIN G ME D I A L A N D SC A P E :

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A School of Their Own A USC Rossier doctoral student opens the first educational institution in Afghanistan run for women, by women.

Azizullah Amir was just a young boy in Afghanistan when his mother first noticed an infection on her skin. Amir’s mother couldn’t see a male doctor out of modesty born of cultural tradition, and there were no female doctors who could examine it. As a result, the infection spread throughout her body and she died a few weeks later.

“From that time on, I was motivated to become a doctor and help prevent other kids like me from becoming orphans

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because their mothers had contracted a preventable disease,” says Amir, a cardiologist and founder of a private Afghan hospital.

His mother’s memory also inspired Amir to launch a one-of-a-kind educational facility for women.

“Girls and women in Afghanistan are often prevented from attending coeducational facilities and have been deprived of educational opportunities for decades,” explains Amir, who is a student in USC Rossier School of Education’s global executive doctoral program. “Especially in the provinces, girls have been marginalized.”

According to UNESCO, in 2015 the literacy rate among Afghan women age 15 and older was one of the lowest worldwide: just 24 percent, compared with 52 percent for Afghan men.

In 2016, Amir opened the

Moraa Educational Complex in Kabul, the first center in the country dedicated exclusively to the educational needs of women from preschool to university, with a medical school as its centerpiece. In addition to awarding medical degrees, the complex offers specialized programs for women in midwifery, nursing, anesthesiology, radiology and pharmacy, as well as undergraduate degrees in computer science, business and education. All of the staff members are women.

To run this complicated enterprise smoothly, Amir turned to USC Rossier’s two-year doctoral program. “Because my profession of cardiology is a very different field, I wanted to get a formal education in leading and managing educational projects to be able to head this successful program for women in Afghanistan,” he says. “USC Rossier is giving me the power and knowledge to deal with

the challenges and policies required to implement and advance a successful educational complex.”

There are 220 students at Moraa, with plans to grow by establishing branch campuses in the provinces. Although optimistic about the complex’s future, he still has concerns.

Chief among them are security and infrastructure challenges, such as a lack of high-speed internet and library resources.

To meet these needs, he is hoping that Moraa can affiliate with universities in the United States.

Despite such difficulties, Amir plans to remain in Afghanistan and expand the complex’s outreach.

“Our country will not remain the way it is now for our whole history,” he says. “So why not stay in Afghanistan, provide education, especially for women, and make dreams come true?”

ROBIN HEFFLER

summer 2017

ILLUSTRATION BY LAURINDO FELICIANO

STUDENT PROFILE AZIZULLAH AMIR

Saturday

Strange Forest / JuL 29 Devendra

Miho Hatori’s

Japanese pop and traditional music’s influence on culture in the U.S. as seen through the fantastical lens of Takashi Murakami.

Ikue

Banhart / New Optimism / Afrirampo / Mori Dustin Takako Tokiko Wong & Minekawa / Oorutaichi / Ihara Saturday

Oracle / aug 26 Xiu

A Place to Bury

Artists exploring the search for the true character of people, the source and meaning of spiritual manifestations, and the urgency for change in a time of anxiety, globalism and absurdity.

Arshia

Amy

Keijaun

Linda Mary

Xiu / Strangers / Haq & Alexander / Thomas / Montano Raquel Gabie Elliot Pauline Lisa David Gutiérrez & Strong / Reed & Gloss / Teasley & Harrow Saturday

Basquiat / sep 23 Zebra

Downtown

DJ

Punk meets hip hop, gay meets straight, black meets white, and downtown party meets uptown art world—influences that made Jean-Michel Basquiat the man he was.

Michael

Katz / Boys / Rashida / Stock (Part Time Punks) Mecca The MOVEMENT Shani Jay Damon V A & Movement / Crowe / Carlon / Locks

Tickets now available at thebroad.org.

Downtown Los Angeles

trojan news

HE A LT H FI L E S Your risk of memory loss may depend on the air you breathe. In places with high levels of certain air pollutants, older women have a 92 percent increased risk for dementia, including that caused by Alzheimer’s disease.

If the findings extend to the whole population, these pollutants may be responsible for about 21 percent of dementia cases.

Summer Studies

Students from all backgrounds and ages get a taste of university life during summer stints at USC. It’s summer, but at USC, supporting the pursuit of higher education is a year-round endeavor. Across the university, special seasonal programs offer students the chance to experience college life and academics, whether they’re teens making their first visit to a campus or veterans fresh from military service. These are a few of the programs that put college within reach.

USC medical researchers found that childhood asthma increases the chances of becoming obese by 51 percent, even after accounting for exercise.

To learn about USC’s academic immersion programs for high school students, go to summerprograms.usc.edu.

WARRIOR-SCHOLAR PROJECT USC is one of only 12 campuses to host this weeklong boot camp for veterans to experience the culture and academic environment of a top-tier university. For 10 hours a day, students attend lectures and workshops, write essays and lead discussions as they learn about transitioning to college and succeeding there.

USC SUMMER PROGRAMS Two- and four-week immersion programs offer motivated high school students a chance to attend college-level classes in subjects like neuroscience, journalism and 3-D design. Weekend field trips and evening activities include talent shows and movie nights, offering high school students a true university experience.

SOUTH CENTRAL SCHOLARS SUMMER ACADEMY Classes taught by USC professors are part of a rigorous seven-week academic enrichment program to prepare low-income, first-generation students of color for college-level writing, math and science.

Seventy-two percent of the academy’s students have gone on to earn science, technology, engineering or math (STEM) degrees or are on track to graduate in a STEM major.

PROVOST’S PRE-COLLEGE SUMMER SCHOLARSHIP FOR MILITARY HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS High school students from military families get a chance to experience life on an American college campus with full-tuition scholarships for the four-week USC Summer Program, which includes transportation to USC from any state or U.S. military base.

SUMMERTIME USC Rossier School of Education’s long-running college prep program provides tools, motivation and guidance for students from low-income backgrounds.

Ranging from high school juniors to community college sophomores, more than 100 students have gone through the course, picking up the intensive research and writing skills required for college.

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If you want to eat less, you may want to serve your own meals. USC business researchers showed that people who are handed a lot of unhealthful food by someone else are more likely to eat too much.

Why? They feel like overindulging isn’t their fault.

Babies can get sugar secondhand through breast milk, according to USC scientists. Even a small amount of fructose—found in processed foods and fruit, among other sources—in breast milk is enough to contribute to weight gain. Findings are preliminary, but the researchers suggest eating less sugar during pregnancy and while breastfeeding.

GO GREEN...

AND CARDINAL AND GOLD

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trojan news

Breaking New Ground

Cale College is the latest endowed residential college at USC Village.

Fewer than 100 scholars from around the world were selected to be part of this year’s Rhodes Scholarship program, but USC had the rare honor of seeing two Trojans recognized. The program sponsors young people from the United States and 18 international jurisdictions to study at Oxford University.

To be accepted, scholars must show outstanding intellect, character, leadership and commitment to service.

Jung Kian Ng ’14, MS ’14 and Oscar De Los Santos ’15 (featured in an article on p. 47) were chosen for this year’s class.

Ng first heard of the program when he saw a newspaper clipping on a USC bulletin board. He attended USC on a government scholarship from his home country of Malaysia—his single-parent family couldn’t have otherwise afforded to send him abroad.

By the time he graduated, he had earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering while completing a progressive master’s degree in the subject.

Today he serves as a special assistant to the minister of the economic planning unit for the Malaysian government, tasked with policy research, media strategy and speechwriting.

He also created a nonprofit to guide and encourage more Malaysian youth to study at universities in the United States.

“I felt my time in the United States changed me tremendously as a person. … I would like to encourage more Malaysians to study there,” Ng says.

As a Rhodes Scholar, he plans to pursue two more graduate degrees in public policy and environmental change and management.

“I hope to come back and better serve the Malaysian people,” he says. “I’m passionate about the social and political developments in Malaysia as well as global climate change.”

JOANNA CLAY

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LYNN LIPINSKI

PA C I F I C

PA R T N E R S

President C. L. Max Nikias recently led a USC delegation to Taiwan to meet with officials and explore and renew partnerships with institutions such as the Ministry of Education and National Taiwan University. USC’s ties to the region are longstanding: Its Taiwan office opened in 1998 to engage with the 4,000 alumni who live and work in the area. During the event, Nikias honored USC Trustee Daniel Tsai and his wife, Irene MA ’85, who hosted the trip.

summer 2017

CALES PHOTO COURTESY OF CHARLES CALE

S CH OL AR FOR CH ANGE

As many as 2,700 students will move into the new USC Village residential-retail complex in August, marking a major milestone for USC. Support from alumni like Jessie ’74 and Charles Cale LLM ’66 makes it possible.

The couple’s $15 million gift endows the Jessie and Charles Cale Residential College.

One of eight residential colleges in USC Village, Cale College will create a community for undergraduates through enriching academic, cultural and recreational activities.

Loyalty to the Trojan Family runs deep for the Cales. They’ve steadfastly supported the university, especially USC Athletics, where they endowed the Charles Griffin Cale Director of Athletics’ Chair in 2011.

Currently the managing member of investment firm Griffin Opportunities, USC Trustee Charles Cale was a founding board member of Women of Troy and is a longtime member of USC Associates. He is an alumnus of the USC Gould School of Law, while Jessie Cale graduated from the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

The Cales’ naming gift demonstrates “their heartfelt desire to build an exceptional environment for future students to live and learn,” USC President C. L. Max Nikias says. As Trojan parents, the Cales envision USC Village as a hub of intellectual and social life for students and faculty.

Cale College is part of the 1.25-million-squarefoot USC Village project, the biggest mixed-use development in South Los Angeles history. Besides enriching life for students, the complex brings new retail and service options, such as Trader Joe’s and Target, to the community.

Healthy Growth

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Updated patient, research and residential facilities are just a few of the improvements at USC’s Health Sciences Campus.

With 70 construction projects under way in the last few years, USC’s Health Sciences Campus has undergone a construction boom unseen since it first opened in 1952.

The 79-acre campus in Boyle Heights is home to USC’s medical and pharmacy schools and several hospitals and health professions programs.

Enhancements range from pedestrianfriendly landscaping to new facilities for patients and researchers.

The aim of the campus improvements, envisioned by USC President C. L. Max Nikias and the school’s master plan, is to establish advanced research and treatment facilities while also giving the campus more of a “university feel” to match the look of the University Park Campus. Here are just a few of the notable changes:

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Norris Healthcare Center The new medical building at the corner of Alcazar and San Pablo streets will expand outpatient care space and include infusion therapy services, an outpatient surgery center and a program in women’s cancers.

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USC Stevens Hall for Neuroimaging Home of the USC Mark and Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute, the building holds more than 100 faculty and staff in neuroscience, biology and related fields. Formerly the Raulston Memorial Research Building, the renovated site also houses one of the most powerful magnetic resonance imaging machines in North America.

CURRIE HALL PHOTO BY JOHNNY STEVENS

Currie Hall The 178-unit residential housing complex offers students fully furnished apartments with private bedrooms and bathrooms. It includes communal spaces and study areas, as well as a child care center that can accommodate more than 100 children.

Sidewalks and Landscaping Sidewalks have been widened and beautified in a project that includes brick ribboning, 350 new trees and landscaping. Paths will be illuminated by 265 new light posts. Markers and building signs also have been added to help visitors navigate the campus.

(1) Visitors to the Health Sciences Campus in east Los Angeles will find new sidewalks and signage.

(2) USC Stevens Hall for Neuroimaging opened in 2016 after extensive renovation and rehabilitation of the building’s 1952 frame. (3) The 7-story Norris Healthcare Center will include an infusion clinic with expansive mountain views. (4) Currie Hall can house as many as 456 students.

tfm.usc.edu

Streets and Parking To ease traffic, signal lights will be installed at three intersections: Soto and Norfolk streets, San Pablo and Alcazar streets and Norfolk Street/Eastlake Avenue and San Pablo Street. Across campus, 1,900 parking spaces have been added, including the opening of a 1,200-space parking structure at San Pablo Street and Valley Boulevard.

JOANNA CLAY

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trojan news

This interview has been edited for style and length. Read more at bit.ly/artsambassador.

To Russia with Love

Acclaimed pianist Daniel Pollack reflects on his role as an arts ambassador.

When Daniel Pollack recently traveled to Russia, it was a sort of homecoming.

The longtime faculty member at the USC Thornton School of Music views himself as a “musical grandchild of the great Russian musical heritage.” After all, Pollack earned his fame as a 23-year-old American pianist on the Moscow stage during the Cold War. His legendary 1958 performance of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 garnered him a cherished competition prize alongside American star-to-be Van Cliburn–and endeared him to the Russian people in a musical love affair that continues today.

In December 2016, just in time for the 175th anniversary of Tchaikovsky’s birth, Pollack served as an honorary ambassador of culture at the St. Petersburg International Cultural Forum, where he spoke about the future of the arts and gave a sold-out recital to close the event. Pollack recently spoke with writer Robert Bradford about the role of music and culture in bringing people together during times of strained relations.

friends in Russia today, not just musicians but people in many walks of life. Thanks to social media and cultural exchanges, we know a lot more about each other. Maybe not enough still, but more.

How can music bridge the serious political and philosophical divides between Russia and the United States? This has been happening for decades. When I was in Russia playing at the first Tchaikovsky competition in 1958, I was doing more than performing—I was an ambassador between the two countries. Those of us who have had the privilege of bridging these barriers are ahead of the diplomatic exchanges. My language is music, and music is an international language. I don’t have to speak Russian when I perform to reach the audience. It’s about human-to-human

contact. It’s a troika—it’s the composer, it’s the performer and it’s the audience.

You met Russian President Vladimir Putin at the forum. How did that come about? I was selected to meet with him and other dignitaries at the forum. Putin spoke to the group about the importance of cultural exchanges. And then he went around the room and clinked glasses with everybody. He came up to me and said, in English, “Tell me about yourself.” I told him my parents were born here [in Russia], that I was a prizewinner in the first Tchaikovsky competition, that my piano teacher from Juilliard was born here and that I toured in Russia. His answer was, “Then welcome back to your second home.” That’s all he said, but in that was a world of expression.

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PHOTO COURTESY OF DANIEL POLLACK

You first went to Russia in 1958 for the Tchaikovsky competition. Seventeen tour visits followed. What were the most dramatic changes you saw when you were there recently? I love the Russian people—their heart and their soul. Today the Russia I love is there, but you have to look for it. In the drab days of my first visit in 1958, everything was kind of dark and dingy in the dress of the people and their mood. There is still a lot of difficulty in the people today. The rich are super rich, somewhat like in our country, and the middle class is struggling. But I see a vast improvement over the years. I have a lot of summer 2017

COACH PROFILE JOVAN VAVIC

Making Waves

PHOTO BY KEVIN SULLIVAN/NCAA PHOTOS/GETTY IMAGES

Water polo’s Jovan Vavic has led the team to more titles than any coach in USC history.

Water polo matches pack in a lot of action, no small thanks to the stamina required from its athletes. But powerful goals are only the half of it: So much happens below the surface, out of sight.

“What no one sees is the battle taking place underwater with grabbing, pushing and intense legwork,” USC water polo Coach Jovan Vavic explains. “If they can show that on television, water polo’s future will be great.”

As one of the most celebrated college coaches in the sport, Vavic knows the nuances of the game better than just about anyone. During his 25 years at USC, Vavic has earned the most team titles of any coach in the history of the university.

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As coach of the men’s and women’s water polo teams, Vavic has guided Trojans to 14 national championships (nine men’s and five women’s). He’s a Pac-12 Coach of the Century and has been recognized 13 times as National Coach of the Year and 13 times as Mountain Pacific Sports Federation Coach of the Year. “There’s no secret, such as a great talent, brains or intelligence,” Vavic says of his track record. “Anybody can be successful in anything if they just put in the time and work.”

As for the comparison between coaching men and coaching women, he says, “There’s no difference.”

Vavic’s passion for water polo began in Herceg Novi, a town in Montenegro (part of

the former Yugoslavia). He started at age 8 and later played professionally. “My teammates would just do what the coaches told them, but I was intrigued by the little things of the sport and learning what it took to play more than one position,” Vavic says. “I was a student of the game.”

He moved to Southern California in 1984 and found his way poolside as a volunteer coach for high school teams. In 1990, he became an assistant coach at UCLA while he earned a degree in history. When that university dropped the sport, USC’s head coach, John Williams, brought him on as assistant coach. Vavic stepped into the head coach role when Williams retired in 1999.

Describing coaching as a constant learning process, Vavic notes that unlocking player personalities keeps coaches on their toes. “You have to learn how to work with

them in different ways,” he says. In recent years, this has taken on a whole different perspective—three of Vavic’s four children have become Trojan water polo players.

Fortunately, talent and a tireless work ethic run in the family. Nikola ’14 smashed a school record with 254 career goals. Monica ’15, an all-time top scorer, is the only Trojan in program history named to All-American First Team four times. Soon to premiere at the Uytengsu Aquatics Center is incoming freshman Marko.

His father anticipates great things from his 210-pound, 6-foot-5-inch son.

Even after decades of coaching and playing, Vavic knows there’s always something new to discover. “Most young coaches think they know it all,” he says. “But the learning process is really what keeps you going.”

BEKAH WRIGHT

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trojan news Q U OTAT I O N

T H E L AT I N O CO N N E C T I ON FROM MURALS TO MOVIES, PACIFIC STANDARD TIME: LA/LA EXPLORES LATIN AMERICAN INFLUENCE IN LOS ANGELES—AND USC ARTS INSTITUTIONS ARE ALL IN. If you’re in the Los Angeles area toward the end of this year and into the next, you’re in luck. The region is hosting one of its most expansive art collaborations ever, and USC is playing a big part in it.

Pacific Standard Time: LA/ LA is an ambitious exploration of Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles. Spearheaded by the Getty, cultural institutions are staging more than 70 exhibitions and programs linked to the theme.

One of the five USC exhibits and programs in the collaboration comes from the USC Pacific Asia Museum, which will stage the first major exhibition to explore the influence of 20th-century Latin American art and artists on contemporary Chinese art.

Pieces in “Crossing Pacific: Cultural Dialogues between Latin American and Chinese Artists” will explore the effects that visiting Latino artists had in China. Works include “Sueño,” shown here, by famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera.

Pacific Standard Time: LA/ LA starts this September and runs through January 2018; individual exhibitions’ schedules may vary.

To see a list of USC-specific programs, visit arts.usc.edu/pst.

For the overall program, go to pacificstandardtime.org.

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summer 2017

SUEÑO PHOTO © 2016 BANCO DE MÉXICO DIEGO RIVERA FRIDA KAHLO MUSEUMS TRUST, MEXICO, D.F. / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK; GOTO PHOTO COURTESY OF USC THORNTON SCHOOL OF MUSIC

“Learning music and performing music for a reason is very meaningful. It’s not about knowing more pieces, it’s not about knowing how to play right, but what the students can do with the music.” Midori Goto, the Jascha Heifetz Chair in Violin at USC and featured performer at the USC Global Conference in Tokyo on Sept. 23, on her teaching philosophy

James hd Brown, Mystery of My Other House, 2014, Oil, pencil, collage and industrial paint on linen, 138 x 262 inches, Collection of the artist

USC Participates in Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA The Tide Was Always High: The Music of Latin America in Los Angeles, a new book released in conjunction with PST: LA/LA and edited by Josh Kun, 2016 MacArthur Fellow, USC Professor of Communication.

Musical Interventions: a multi-part musical exhibition, curated by Kun, explores musical networks that move between L.A. and Latin American communities and cultures.

Axis Mundo: Queer Networks in Chicano L.A.

James hd Brown: Life and Work in Mexico

Organized by ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the USC Libraries, this exhibit maps the intersections and collaborations among a network of queer Chicano artists and their artistic collaborators from the late 1960s to the early 1990s. The exhibition is presented in collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

The USC Fisher Museum of Art will highlight Brown’s unique artist press, featuring approximately twenty books and related ephemera. Some of the artists in the Carpe Diem series include Joan Jonas, Graciela Iturbide, Kiki Smith, and Francisco Toledo, as well as a new artist book produced especially for PST: LA/LA.

Crossing Pacific: Cultural Dialogues between Latin American and Chinese Artists The USC Pacific Asia Museum will be the first major exhibition to explore the influence of 20th-century Latin American art and artists on contemporary Chinese art.

Visual Voyages: Images of Latin America Nature from Columbus to Darwin Curated by Daniela Bleichmar, USC Professor of Art History and History, this exhibition at The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens explores the role of images and objects in creating knowledge of the natural world during the first global era. The exhibition features more than 150 rare objects from the Huntington and other collections.

Learn more at: arts.usc.edu/PST

Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, is a far-reaching and ambitious exploration of Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles. Supported by grants from the Getty Foundation, Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA takes place from September 2017 through January 2018 at more than 70 cultural institutions across Southern California, from Los Angeles to Palm Springs, and from San Diego to Santa Barbara. Pacific Standard Time is an initiative of the Getty. The presenting sponsor is Bank of America.

trojan news 1

A Rosy Outlook

The touted Trojans turn the joy of a Rose Bowl triumph into renewed motivation for next season. (And go ahead: Relive that win with us one more time, in photos.)

Even for a storied football program like USC’s, the 2017 Rose Bowl victory was truly a win for the ages.

After USC Football’s disappointing 1-3 start to the 2016 season, some had written off the team altogether. But newly named starting quarterback Sam Darnold, a redshirt freshman, found his stride, and the Trojans ran the table with an eight-game win streak. They headed for a traditionrich postseason destination that had once seemed so unlikely: the Rose Bowl.

Trailing by 14 points in the fourth quarter, USC rallied to beat Penn State in the final seconds of the highest-scoring Rose Bowl game in history. Cue the con-

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fetti. The trophy. The roses. “Conquest.”

USC ended its season ranked No. 3 in The Associated Press poll.

Momentum remains on the Trojans’ side. Going into the 2017 season, Darnold and Coach Clay Helton are no longer untested newcomers but seasoned veterans.

USC’s recruiting class is touted as one of the best in the nation. And 81 players from last year are back.

“We understand the expectations at USC are high, especially after the successful season we had last year,” says Helton, a finalist for the 2016 Bryant Coach of the Year Award. “We welcome those expectations.”

The 2017 Trojans have a few holes

to fill. Standouts including JuJu SmithSchuster, Zach Banner, Adoree’ Jackson and Stevie Tu’ikolovatu are NFL-bound.

The team also faces a challenging schedule.

The Sept. 2 season opener, against Western Michigan at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, brings an opponent that ended its season 13-1 and ranked 15th in the College Football Playoff rankings.

Through it all, though, this year’s Trojans can draw on a legacy that is greater than themselves. When they put on the cardinal and gold (and white), they’ll be the 125th team to represent the University of Southern California—and they’ll have a proud history to uphold. DAVID MEDZERIAN summer 2017

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T H E 2 017 RO S E BOW L AN INSTANT CLASSIC F IN A L SC O R E :

52-49, USC TOTA L YA R D S :

USC 575 Penn State 465 RECORD S SE T:

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Points scored in USC’s fourth-quarter comeback, the biggest ever

(1) USC’s Leon McQuay III helped set up an unforgettable Rose Bowl victory with a key interception in the fourth quarter. (2) The 52-49 triumph brought USC’s Rose Bowl all-time win total to 25. (3) With the dramatic win over Penn State, Clay Helton took his record as head coach of the Trojans to 16-7.

(4) The victory set off celebrations in the locker room and among Trojans across the world.

(5) Riding a nine-game winning streak including the Rose Bowl, USC returns to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on Sept. 2.

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473

Total yards from quarterback Sam Darnold

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Touchdowns thrown

by Darnold

101 PHOTOS 1-4: JOHN MCGILLEN; PHOTO 5: ROBERT BECK/SPORTS ILLUSTRATED/GETTY IMAGES

A LEGACY BY T HE NUMBER S

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Total points

The 2017 Trojans will be the university’s

125th

football team. The previous 124 teams have produced a bounty of honors:

11

national championships

34 bowl victories 166 All-Americans 6 Heisman Trophy winners

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Touchdown receptions by wide receiver Deontay Burnett Highest attendance of any 2016-17 bowl game:

95,128

43 College Football Hall of Famers

22 Academic All-Americans

15 Pro Football Hall of Famers

Source: USC Athletics

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RO SE BOW L HIS TORY

USC’s 25 Rose Bowl wins are the most by any team USC is the only team to win three straight Rose Bowls (2007-09)

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This might look like a cave, but think smaller. It’s a sweat pore, magnified.

Everyone has millions of these pores, which help your skin keep usc your body cool. usc

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trojan health

More Than Skin Deep

Keck Medicine of USC doctors focus on treating tough cases in dermatology. b y c o n s ta n c e s o m m e r

When David Peng was training to be a physician, he wanted nothing less than to save the world. It was the 1990s, and young doctors-to-be were vying to enter hot fields. A flurry of advances in device technology and the artificial heart led some to cardiology. Others aimed to save lives through desperately needed AIDS research.

During a dermatology rotation, an attending physician urged Peng to consider a different route.

In dermatology, a subspecialty that many choose for its reasonable hours and lucrative pay, Peng would face less research competition than in other fields, the physician told him. “He says, ‘You’d be a big fish in a small pond—and you’d have a greater impact if you did,’” Peng recalls.

Fast forward two decades, and he’s making a difference as the contagiously enthusiastic chair of the Department of Dermatology at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. Four years after Peng’s arrival from Stanford University, the department has tripled in size to 18 physicians, with new hires recruited from top residency programs like Harvard University and University of California, San Francisco. They’ve brought with them a zeal for combining patient care with research, both clinical and lab-based. Keck Medicine of USC dermatologists today are making advances against melanoma and other skin cancers, psoriasis, allergic reactions and even leprosy.

As for Peng, his original goal has evolved into a more defined, if no less audacious, one for Keck Medicine dermatology. “We are going to go as far as science can carry us,” he says. tfm.usc.edu

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with psoriasis, a common, chronic skin condition characterized by scales and dry, pink patches. But many psoriasis patients also suffer from arthritis—a rheumatologic disease. Now the multidisciplinary clinic allows people with a wide spectrum of rheumatologic conditions to be seen by physicians from both dermatology and rheumatology, helping patients “get a cohesive plan in place for their treatment,” Crew says.

The clinic’s work is buttressed by research done by fellow Keck Medicine dermatologist April Armstrong. A graduate of Harvard Medical School, Armstrong did stints at the University of California, Davis and the University of Colorado before Peng recruited her in 2015. Part of her psoriasis research examines whether the skin condition is also a sign of internal issues. “We’ve found that patients with severe psoriasis have increased risk of heart attacks, strokes and death related to their cardiovascular system,” says Armstrong, who is associate dean of clinical research for the medical school and director of the psoriasis program. “We’re working to see if any of our current therapies can change that systemic inflammation.”

BRAIN POWER Another major area of dermatology research is skin cancer, and Peng isn’t alone at USC in targeting it. Dermatologist Binh Ngo studies genetic mutations in melanoma, trying to predict important characteristics such as its likelihood to recur or spread— or whether genetic mutations alone can point out whether a mole is cancerous or benign.

Ngo also looks at the incidence of skin cancers in organ transplant patients. Basal cell cancer is the most common form of skin cancer in the general population. But in transplant patients, due to immunosuppression, more-aggressive squamous cell cancer is seen up to 250 times more than in the general population. These carcinomas usually appear several years after transplantation, she says. Most at risk? Caucasian patients, because their skin has fewer protective, pigment-producing cells called melanocytes, and heart transplant patients, because they take the most immunosuppressant drugs.

FIVE SKIN WARNING SIGNS Our skin changes all the time: a pimple here, a rash there. But when is a skin issue a hint of a deeper problem? Here are a few signs that you might want to schedule an appointment with a dermatologist: A butterfly rash on your face could be a sign of lupus, an autoimmune disorder. The technical term is “photodistributed erythema.” The rash spreads across the cheekbones and nose with sun exposure. “It looks like a butterfly in the middle of your face,” David Peng says.

Brown, thickened, velvety patches on the back of the neck could be a sign of diabetes.

The name for the condition is “acanthosis nigricans,” and when Peng notices it on a patient, “oftentimes I can tell if someone is pre-diabetic before they even get their lab [results] back,” he says.

A changing mole deserves attention. Note if a mole grows or shrinks, changes color or suddenly appears where no mark existed before. This could indicate the potential for developing into melanoma.

Blotchy skin that loses sensation could be the first indicator of leprosy. Symptoms begin with “a small redness,” Maria Teresa Ochoa says. Then patients lose the feeling on that patch of skin. But don’t be afraid of leprosy—today the disease is highly treatable.

A blistering rash could signal a herpes infection, April Armstrong says, or it could be “a really bad drug reaction.” Either way, don’t wait to get it checked out.

summer 2017

PREVIOUS PAGE: PHOTO BY SPL/SCIENCE SOURCE

SKIN’S HEAVY LOAD To listen to Peng, you’d think there was no more exciting organ in the body than the skin. Yes—it’s an organ. Skin isn’t just the body’s largest organ, but its heaviest. “We used to think it was just a bag, essentially, that kept everything intact,” Peng says.

Today physicians see it as the body’s first line of defense.

The skin has lots of duties, as he explains. It’s a barrier that prevents disease.

It’s also an early alert system for trouble, thanks to circulating immune cells that help the body fight off early signs of infection. Of course, it’s a vehicle for our sense of touch. And it provides a home for bacteria that can influence and alter the body’s immune system.

But with responsibilities come problems, and skin can suffer from a variety of them.

Peng’s own research focuses on melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, and on the genetics of people who develop severe drug rashes, trying to identify patients who should avoid certain medicines. But these days, his primary concern is the welfare of his department.

“Every good chair considers the department’s success to be their metric for their own personal success,” he says. “I root for my faculty and I try to give them the opportunity to do well.”

Advances in treatment come from rigorous science, so Keck Medicine dermatologists are encouraged to dive into research. It’s a philosophy that sits well with members of the physician team.

For dermatologist Ashley Crew MD ’09, her research focus means she gets the chance to study a topic that could help countless patients: how the internet can increase access to dermatology care, particularly among underserved populations.

Los Angeles County uses a program called eConsult, which allows specialists to offer long-distance consultations to primary care physicians across the county. Crew is part of a team of researchers investigating the effort’s success in caring for skin problems and how it can be tweaked to further improve care and outcomes for patients.

She’s also co-chair of a multidisciplinary dermatology-rheumatology clinic.

The clinic began as a way to treat patients

DAVID PENG

Chair of Dermatology

TWICE A TROJAN Keck Medicine of USC should seem familiar to David Peng.

It’s his second stint at USC. He originally began at the Health Sciences Campus in 2004, then moved to the Stanford University School of Medicine for three years before returning to L.A. in 2012.

EYE ON PREVENTION Not only does Peng have a medical degree, but he also has a Master of Public Health. He has put that expertise to good use, promoting education to improve skin self-exams and working with colleagues to boost melanoma prevention strategies.

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trojan news Keck Medicine of USC dermatologists don’t just treat melanoma.

They also study the cancer to better prevent it and improve therapies. This image taken through a microscope shows how deeply melanoma can grow beneath the surface of the skin.

MYTHS ABOUT SKIN CARE Thanks to the internet and their own curiosity, patients today often present their physicians with self-diagnoses or ask about questionable medical theories. Here are some myths that USC dermatologists find themselves repeatedly dispelling: “I don’t use sunscreen because I’m afraid it will give me cancer.” No, no, no, Ashley Crew says. “Sunscreen is one of the most important tools in preventing skin cancer.” But it’s also not a suit of armor. Apply it early and often, choose broad spectrum with SPF 30 or higher, wear protective clothing and grab shade when you can.

“It must be good for me—it’s organic.” Just because a cream or an eyeliner is made from natural ingredients doesn’t mean you can’t have an allergic reaction to it. “A lot of plant-based products are common culprits for causing skin rashes,” Crew says.

“I’m not at risk for melanoma because I only went to a tanning booth once.” Even one visit seriously increases the risk of developing melanoma, Binh Ngo says. “The majority of my melanoma patients in their 20s and 30s got it from tanning beds.”

Then there’s a disease that many think no longer exists: leprosy, also known as Hansen’s disease. Every year, about 200,000 people worldwide are diagnosed with the infectious disease, and it’s a specialty of dermatologist Maria Teresa Ochoa, who runs Keck Medicine’s leprosy clinic. The clinic is one of only three of its kind in the state and the largest in the nation, tracking several hundred cases of the disease.

The trick to treating leprosy patients, Ochoa says, is early diagnosis. “If they come to the clinic in time, they are going to be fine,” she says. “There are a lot of misconceptions, like is it very contagious? No, it is not very contagious. And there is treatment.”

Peng likes to talk about the brainpower and dedication of the physicians around him, such as Ochoa, but it’s clear from talking to them that he’s the department’s lodestar. Ochoa and Ngo praised Peng’s determination to help faculty members turn research ideas into reality. “Sometimes, in an academic institution, you may have the idea for something, but you just can’t make it happen,” Ngo says. “He’s a very strong supporter.”

Crew, who was mentored by Peng as a student, credits him with her choice of specialty. “If you did a survey of dermatologists in my generation,” she says, “I think there are many dozens of us who went into dermatology because of Dr. Peng. … His passion, enthusiasm and desire to push the specialty forward is infectious.”

And Armstrong calls him “the main reason I’m at USC.”

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FROM TOP: April Armstrong, Ashley Crew, Binh Ngo, Maria Teresa Ochoa

Peng, she says, “is a terrific chair, passionate and compassionate. … He always asks what he can do to make our job easier.”

The hope, Peng says, is to make more possible: more quality clinic time, more opportunities for lab and clinical research.

There are plenty of dermatologists who can treat common skin conditions and do cosmetic procedures and surgeries, he says. Keck Medicine’s dermatology group aspires to more. “We want to be thought leaders,” he says. “We want to be research leaders.”

So he invests time and resources in the recruitment and support of top dermatologists from around the country. Together, he says, Keck Medicine skin specialists can focus on treating—and solving—the toughest cases. Says Peng: “We want to be the referral point for anyone who doesn’t know the answer for one of their patients. ... We’ll be the dermatologists for dermatologists.” • summer 2017

ARMSTRONG PHOTO BY RICARDO CARRASCO III

“Cutting dairy will help my acne.” Actually, there haven’t been enough studies done on nutrition and skin because, as David Peng says, “who would fund it?” Most dermatologists don’t believe food can affect conditions like acne or eczema, he adds, “but if the patient swears it, then we always say if you believe that, then just avoid it.”

THE KECK EFFECT: MORE FAMILY PARTIES As one of the nation’s top academic medical centers, Keck Medicine of USC is leading the way in delivering more medical breakthroughs. Our experts provide health-care excellence through research and clinical trials, while ensuring each patient receives the latest comprehensive, personalized treatments. That’s The Keck Effect — more expertise to get you back to doing what you love, faster.

With locations throughout Southern California, exceptional care is close to you.

See how we’re redefining medicine.

Get expert health tips

Text KECK to 313131

KeckMedicine.org

(800) USC-CARE

Alzheimer’s disease researchers race to get ahead of a looming health crisis.

BY K AT H A R I N E G A M M O N

in depth

Changing Minds

Ron Kooper had been an art teacher in San Pedro, California, for three decades, patiently guiding hundreds of students through drawing, sculpting and painting. But the year before he had planned to retire, he told his wife, Eleanor, that he wanted to leave his profession and move to the desert. “It was very unlike him,” Eleanor Kooper recalls. They made the move, and even set up a tiny art studio behind their house in La Quinta—but he never again painted or sculpted. Looking back on that time 14 years ago, she wonders if that sudden move was the first hint of her husband’s Alzheimer’s disease. It took a decade for him to start forgetting his keys and stumbling on words. He passed away last year.

The Koopers’ experience is just one story out of millions: Every 66 seconds, someone in the United States is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Currently 5.5 million people in the country live with the condition, and there is still no known way to prevent or cure the disease. With baby boomers getting older, doctors are preparing for a huge wave of Alzheimer’s patients—and the nation will have to figure out how to pay for their care. Today, there are drugs that can slow the symptoms of Alzheimer’s, but they can’t yet stop it.

USC has committed itself to tackling Alzheimer’s, and more than 70 researchers, physicians and scientists at the university work to attack a problem considered a looming health and economic crisis.

THE ROOT OF THE PROBLEM Alzheimer’s disease has been a tricky illness to crack for several reasons, says

Helena Chui, chair of the Keck School of Medicine of USC’s Department of Neurology. Alzheimer’s is a prototypic neurodegenerative disorder, which means it’s part of a class of disorders in which neurons in the brain die slowly, causing irreversible tissue shrinkage and damage. Other diseases in this category include Parkinson’s and ALS, also called Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Researchers haven’t learned how to slow or cure any of those disorders, Chui points out, and part of the reason is the complexity of the brain. In infectious diseases, physicians know the cause of a problem and can usually treat it. “If it’s like pneumonia or bacterial diseases, we have antibiotics,” Chui says, but in Alzheimer’s disease, “we still don’t know the culprit.”

Alzheimer’s disease starts slowly, sometimes taking a decade or more before cognitive problems appear.

Abnormal deposits of proteins called amyloid and tau build up throughout the brain, forming plaques and tangles. Then once-healthy neurons, or nerve cells, stop functioning, lose connections with other neurons, and die. The damage initially appears to take place in the hippocampus, which is the part of the brain essential usc trojan family

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in depth

FINDING IT EARLY Researchers see great hope in reframing Alzheimer’s disease into stages and hunting

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for symptoms of very early stages of the disease, where they can make a huge impact.

When large clinical studies began to follow people for many years, the field started to crack some fundamental parts of the disease, Aisen says. “One of the things we began to understand is that the plaques and tangles actually start to appear in the brain about 15 to 20 years prior to the physical manifestation of dementia.”

Using PET scanning—a technology that detects radioactive tracers injected into the body—researchers can now detect the beginning of amyloid buildup in the brain.

That’s a sign that seems to accurately determine who is going to develop Alzheimer’s.

Peering into brains early—before symptoms appear—could be a game-changer for the hunt for Alzheimer’s treatments.

Right now, treatments are targeted at people who are in what Aisen calls the late stage of the disease, when it has already substantially damaged the brain. It’s like trying to slow down a freight train: “At some point, it becomes too late, especially if your intervention is targeting the wrong stage,” he says.

Aisen’s study shows that roughly a third of the population over 65 has amyloid plaques in their brains. USC has been following these patients for about 13 years, and during that time, 85 percent of the people who showed amyloid accumulations in the PET scan have developed symptomatic Alzheimer’s disease.

“We think it’ll be 100 percent of the patients who develop the disease by the time 20 years is up,” he says. “It is our opinion that if you have these brain changes, you are going to develop symptomatic Alzheimer’s disease if you live long enough.”

STAGGERING NUMBERS The oncoming wave of Alzheimer’s patients is even bigger than researchers originally thought. Right now, life expectancy is around 82. The longer people live, the more Alzheimer’s disease there will be.

It’s one of the world’s biggest health problems, says Julie Zissimopoulos, associate professor at the USC Price School of Public Policy. In the journal Forum for Health Economics & Policy, Zissimopoulos and her colleagues modeled what the economic situation would be as baby boomers age and demographics shift. What they found was shocking: They estimated that

HEL ENA CHUI

Chair of the Keck School of Medicine of USC’s Department of Neurology, on barriers to treatment

“In the case of infections with a clear cause, like pneumonia or bacterial diseases, we have antibiotics. But in Alzheimer’s disease, we still don’t know the culprit.”

PAUL AISEN

Director of USC’s Alzheimer’s Therapeutic Research Institute, on scientific advances

“We’ve made tremendous progress. I now believe that we are on the cusp of effective therapies for Alzheimer’s disease.”

J UL IE ZISSIMOPOULOS

Assistant professor at the USC Price School of Public Policy, on the economics of Alzheimer’s

“Even delaying the onset of [Alzheimer’s] disease by one year has enormous benefits for individuals and society.” summer 2017

PORTRAIT ILLUSTRATIONS BY MURPHY LIPPINCOTT

in forming memories. As more neurons die, additional parts of the brain are affected.

For decades, scientists have looked to plaques and tangles to make a diagnosis, but it’s still an open question as to when they appear in the course of the disease. “Plaques and tangles could be on the direct causal pathway or could be a reaction to what is going on,” Chui says. Scientists have known that the accumulation of amyloid peptides in the brain drives Alzheimer’s disease, yet no effective anti-amyloid therapy exists for slowing down Alzheimer’s.

Paul Aisen, a neuroscientist who leads the Keck School of Medicine’s Alzheimer’s Therapeutic Research Institute, points out that the disease, first described in 1906 by the physician Alois Alzheimer, was considered a rare disease of middle age for most of the 20th century.

“It was only in the 1970s that the field recognized that senile dementia—a common disease of the elderly—was the same as the one Dr. Alzheimer described,” Aisen says. “Now we know this isn’t a rare disorder; it’s the most common dementia of aging.”

Even though results of many clinical trials of potential drugs have disappointed researchers, Aisen is hopeful. “I think we’ve made tremendous progress,” he says. “I now believe that we are on the cusp of effective therapies for Alzheimer’s disease.”

One of the important lessons researchers have learned over the past three decades of tracking Alzheimer’s is that it doesn’t begin with the symptoms you’d commonly identify with the disease, such as memory loss. It used to be that Alzheimer’s disease couldn’t even be definitively diagnosed until after death—no scanning technique was sophisticated enough to see the plaques and tangles in a living person.

When a patient’s symptoms were bad enough to interfere with daily living, doctors would call it “probable” Alzheimer’s, Aisen says. But it turns out that this diagnosis was incorrect about 20 percent of the time, something doctors would only discover later during autopsies. “So we’d be testing drugs on people who didn’t have plaques and tangles,” he says. “That leads to difficulty in establishing drug benefits.”

Every 66 seconds, someone in the U.S. is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. tfm.usc.edu

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PET scans can show areas of the brain with decreased activity (right) as well as accumulated plaque, a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers hope that improvements in imaging can point out early signs of the disease, which may help improve treatment when better interventions are discovered.

POSSIBLE PREVENTION? Since those treatments are still in the future, patients who are diagnosed today try to live as well as possible. When Eleanor Kooper was caring for her husband, she wanted to make sure that he had the best possible chance of living a healthy life. So she stocked up on organic food, arranged for a personal trainer and made sure that he had music, art and other stimulation in his life even when he lived in care facilities.

There are many reasons to eat healthful food, reduce stress and work out. Chui says they might cut the risk of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s. “Exercise and eating well may help reduce the rate of these harmful processes, but we haven’t proved it yet,” Chui says. “It’s also true that sleeping well is important, because amyloid clears more when sleeping.”

The biggest risk factor for developing Alzheimer’s is simply aging, because the plaques and tangles accumulate over time.

In addition, blood vessels help clear the plaques from the brain, so keeping a healthy cardiovascular system is also important.

Genes are also a factor. One rare type

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PHOTO COURTESY OF U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

the financial burden of Alzheimer’s disease in the United States will skyrocket from $307 billion annually to $1.5 trillion.

Not only will the number of people with Alzheimer’s triple between 2010 and 2050, the cost of taking care of each person is also expected to double from $71,000 in 2010 to $140,000 in 2050.

However, those numbers depict a scenario where treatments aren’t available.

Zissimopolous says that there is another important takeaway: Small advances can make a big difference in slowing the growth of health care costs. “We don’t need to hit a home run,” she says. “Even delaying the onset of the disease by one year has enormous benefits for individuals and society.” of early-onset Alzheimer’s is caused by a mutation in one of three genes, and its symptoms begin at a young age, often when patients are in their 30s to 50s. John Ringman, a Keck School of Medicine professor of clinical neurology and researcher, studies families with this form of inherited Alzheimer’s disease. By using various kinds of scans and examining spinal fluid, he studies the changes that occur in the brains of people who have the mutation but don’t yet have symptoms. Understanding this early-onset type of disease may help develop better treatments or interventions to prevent the later-onset disease, he says.

As is often the case with disease risk, genes and the environment seem to interact in Alzheimer’s. Ask Caleb Finch, gerontologist at the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, who has spent decades studying the effects of aging in relation to air pollution, nutrition and more.

Finch and USC colleagues Jiu-Chiuan Chen, associate professor of preventive medicine, and Constantinos Sioutas, professor of civil and environmental engineering,

developed the first evidence that the gene variant APOE4, a major risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease, also increases vulnerability to air pollution. The researchers studied detailed medical assessments of more than 3,600 women in their mid-60s to late 70s from the Women’s Health Initiative Memory Study. They found that older women nearly doubled their dementia risk if they lived in places with fine particulate

AL Z H E I M E R’ S DI SE ASE R E SE ARC H 1906:

Alois Alzheimer first describes “a peculiar disease” German physician Alois Alzheimer describes the case of Auguste, a patient who has profound memory loss, unfounded suspicions about her family and other psychological changes. During autopsy, he observes significant shrinkage and abnormal deposits in and around nerve cells in Auguste’s brain— hallmarks of what came to be known as Alzheimer’s disease.

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in depth exposure higher than the Environmental Protection Agency’s standard, and effects were stronger in women who carried the APOE4 variant. If the finding holds up in the general population, small particles in outdoor air could account for roughly 21 percent of dementia cases worldwide.

“Essentially what we are observing is that the inflammation caused by environmental pollution increases the processes leading to Alzheimer’s,” Finch explains.

This is the first time that researchers have shown an interaction between particulates and APOE4. “In other words, you need to know not only what genes a person is carrying, but also their environment,” Finch says.

BEYOND THE BARRIER Berislav Zlokovic, director of USC’s Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute and its Center for Neurodegeneration and Regeneration, has been thinking about a different kind of environment: leaky vessels around the brain.

Zlokovic studies the blood-brain barrier, a physical gatekeeper that keeps toxic substances and pathogens such as bacteria and viruses from reaching the brain.

Zlokovic was the first scientist to propose that flaws in the blood-brain barrier and impaired blood flow drive neurodegeneration, which contributes to all kinds of neurological disorders from Parkinson’s to Alzheimer’s. The idea is that the brain doesn’t function alone in the system: It depends on healthy blood vessels. When the vessels work improperly due to age or other factors, the system starts to break down and the brain’s function can be compromised.

One reason so many Alzheimer’s treatment trials have failed, according to Zlokovic, is that they don’t take into account

1984:

Beta-amyloid identified Researchers report identification of “a novel cerebrovascular amyloid protein,” known as beta-amyloid—a component of brain plaques believed to trigger nerve cell damage.

tfm.usc.edu

1984:

Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center established The Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at USC is among the first centers established by the National Institute on Aging specifically to further the understanding of Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders.

One in 10 people age 65 or older in the U.S. has Alzheimer’s disease.

Not only will the number of people with Alzheimer’s triple between 2010 and 2050, but the cost of taking care of each person is also expected to double from $71,000 in 2010 to $140,000 in 2050.

1986:

Tau protein identified Researchers report that tau protein is a key component of tangles—the second pathological hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease and another cause of nerve cell degeneration.

1993:

First Alzheimer’s risk factor gene identified Researchers identify APOE4, the first gene variant associated with a higher risk for developing Alzheimer’s.

the whole vascular system. “You can have great treatments, but they won’t succeed in the brain environment if the vessels are not working properly to supply blood and oxygen and clear toxins,” he says. “If you don’t treat the whole system, you may have only a short-lasting effect or no effect at all on brain functions.”

He estimates that up to 45 percent of all dementias worldwide are wholly or partly due to age-related small-vessel disease of the brain. His team plans to further study blood vessels in neurological diseases, including the role of pericytes, the sentinel cells stationed at exclusive doorways through the blood-brain barrier.

Zlokovic is working on addressing Alzheimer’s disease on many fronts, from studies in the living human brain to animal and stem cell models. One line of attack is testing to see if a neuroprotective enzyme developed by his team for stroke patients can stabilize the vascular system in mice and rats with Alzheimer’s. That would theoretically delay disease onset, stabilize blood vessels and slow the accumulation of plaques and tangles. “There are a lot of things happening, and I’m very pleased with that, because we have been proposing vascular contributions to Alzheimer’s for a number of years,” he says. “I think it’s a very good time for Alzheimer’s disease efforts.”

Another innovative approach may come in the form of a brain prosthesis with the potential to restore long-term memory for people who have dementia or are recovering from stroke. USC Viterbi School of Engineering’s Ted Berger, a professor of biomedical engineering, is working on a technology that could help those suffering from short-term memory loss retain new information that can be recalled again. The

2004:

Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) ADNI, a nationwide study to establish standards for obtaining and interpreting brain images, begins.

Arthur Toga, now director of the USC Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute, is one of its principal investigators.

2015:

Alzheimer’s Therapeutic Research Institute (ATRI) The Keck School of Medicine of USC establishes the USC ATRI, headed by Paul Aisen, in San Diego. The ATRI team studies Alzheimer’s therapeutics and is currently involved in 14 research trials.

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5.5 million people in the U.S. live with Alzheimer’s disease.

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Learn about Alzheimer’s resources through Keck Medicine of USC and the Keck School of Medicine of USC at adrc.usc.edu and keck.usc.edu/atri.

B E R I S LAV Z LOKOVI C

Director of USC’s Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute, on his research into blood vessels and Alzheimer’s disease

“There a lot of things happening, and I’m very pleased with that. ... I think it’s a very good time for Alzheimer’s disease efforts.”

C ALE B F I NC H

University Professor in the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, on Alzheimer’s risk factors

“What we are observing is that the inflammation caused by environmental pollution increases the processes leading to Alzheimer’s.”

ART H U R TOGA

Director of the USC Mark and Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute, on the importance of patients partnering with scientists in clinical trials

“The way to study Alzheimer’s is to study people: You have to participate. You have to be part of the solution.

People must take ownership of this problem.” tfm.usc.edu

implantable device is designed to bypass a damaged hippocampal section of the brain and provide the next region with a correctly translated memory.

IMAGING THE FUTURE For Arthur Toga, director of the USC Mark and Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute, watching his mother pass away from Alzheimer’s disease humanized the work that he was already doing on brain imaging. “A lot of us in research focus on the biology or imaging, reducing it into data,” he says. “But the fact of the matter is that Alzheimer’s is a disease that affects [people’s] lives and their families. So for me, having a mom who died of the disease links the science to the personal story.”

It’s an energy he takes to his work.

Toga and his colleagues are collecting brain scan images of people in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. The comprehensive sets of images include detailed descriptions of anatomy, the integrity of the blood-brain barrier, and images that describe brain function with patients performing tasks. “All of these collectively now provide a richer data set from which we can characterize where the disease process is,” Toga says. Together, this rich information can help researchers develop a biomarker signature that more fully describes how the brain functions in people with Alzheimer’s compared to those with normal, age-related problems.

In addition, Toga and his team are developing huge databases of brain scans from around the world. The project has become an important way of examining vast amounts of data to identify patterns and trends that might not have been visible otherwise, Toga says.

For example, women were once thought to develop Alzheimer’s disease at 1.5 times the rate of men—an observation published in 1997. “Since we now have aggregates of vast amounts of data, we went back and looked at 58,000 subjects to make comparisons between men and women,” Toga says. “We found that men and women are largely equivalent except in a very narrow decade of life, ages 65-75.”

That finding was revolutionary. Drug trials could have been designed better if scientists

in depth knew that men and women are equally likely to develop the disease.

Toga suggests that in the future, it’s likely that researchers will find a biomarker that identifies patients earlier in the progression of the disease so they can have a treatment that slows the process, similar to how statins are prescribed to people with high cholesterol. Today, by the time that symptoms send someone with Alzheimer’s to see a doctor, Toga says, a lot of brain tissue has already been lost. Combining treatments with early biomarkers—based on complex scans—could start to address the disease early and potentially slow or stop it.

Alzheimer’s continues to be one of the most complex health challenges facing researchers, but one meaningful way that the public can help is to partner with researchers and sign up for studies, Toga points out.

Investigators need patients to join in large numbers to advance the science. “The way to study Alzheimer’s is to study people: You have to participate. You have to be part of the solution,” he says. “People must take ownership of this problem.”

Helena Chui likens participating in a clinical trial to joining a team. “It’s altruistic in a way,” she says. “There might not be an immediate benefit, but every trial is informative and it’s so important for the next generation.”

Eleanor Kooper agrees. She enrolled her husband, a USC patient, in a new drug trial for 18 months. The trial was halted, but she encourages everyone to take part in clinical research. “I told Ron, if there is any chance that this will help you or help the kids, you’ve just got to do it,” she says.

Her husband was the third member of the family to have Alzheimer’s disease, and her thoughts are now with her children: If clinical trials today can help them 20 years from now, it’s worth it to participate. Ron Kooper also agreed to donate his brain to Alzheimer’s disease research after his death. It’s just another way that he was always helpful, kind and thinking of others, Eleanor Kooper says.

“For a long time, Alzheimer’s was like a dirty little secret,” she says. “Now people are talking about it, and they have to. We have to protect our future.” • usc trojan family

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Driven by Dreams The university surpasses its $6 billion target for the Campaign for USC well ahead of schedule—so leaders refocus on grand ambitions and extend the record-breaking drive.

B Y LY N N L I P I N S K I

M

ost mornings, workers arrive before the sun rises over the USC Village construction site.

Carpenters and painters scurry to put last-minute touches on dining areas and retail stores, while movers cart furniture to get rooms ready for student and faculty residents this fall.

There’s an air of excitement on campus as opening day approaches. USC Village is the biggest-ever expansion of the University Park Campus, and the most visible sign of the university’s dramatic growth made possible in recent years by the Campaign for USC. But more significantly, evidence of the university’s remarkable transformation can be found in every corner of its campuses through influential research projects and patient care—as well as in the classrooms, studios and labs where the next generation of scholars, leaders and artists study and dream.

As these campaign-funded changes come to life, you might reasonably ask if the USC community should stop, take a breath from its ascent, and simply enjoy the view for a while.

The answer, according to USC President C. L. Max Nikias, is no. Not yet.

“We are defined by the magnificence of our dreams,” Nikias said in his spring “State of the University” address to faculty and staff. “Why should our dreams narrow while USC blossoms?”

A WAVE OF TRANSFORMATION USC Village is just one of many transformational projects funded by the Campaign for USC—a massive fundraising effort that met its $6 billion goal in late winter, 18 months earlier than expected.

The staggering level of support from the university’s trustees, alumni, parents and friends already secured the campaign’s place among the most successful ever in higher education.

With momentum on his side, Nikias announced in February that USC would extend the campaign for another five years.

“This is the moment to accelerate our efforts even more,” he says.

When first announced in 2011, the $6 billion Campaign for USC—also called Fas Regna Trojae (“The Destined Reign of Troy” in Latin)—was the largest fundraising campaign in the history of higher education at the time. It marked the third occasion that USC had established a record-setting campaign goal.

The launch was roundly questioned by fundraising experts.

USC’s goal was just too big, too bold, too “audacious” in a time of national financial instability. Nikias embraced the audacious tag, appropriating it as a rallying cry.

Asked why he would aim so high, Nikias had a simple answer: “Our ambitious vision for USC’s academic future far exceeded our ability to pay for it.” His aim—one shared by the Trojan Family— was to usher the university into the pantheon of academia’s most elite and most influential institutions.

Fast forward to today, and the university has raised as much through the Campaign for USC in 6½ years as it had during the previous 6½ decades combined. Only four other universities—all elite research institutions—have ever raised more than $5 billion to support academic and research priorities through campaigns of tfm.usc.edu

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CA M PA I GN FO R U S C , BY T H E N U M BE R S

G IV IN G A R E A S

>$3 billion

for academic priorities

>$1.9 billion

for scholarship, faculty and research funding

>$1 billion

for capital projects W HO ’S G IV IN G ?

Trustees $1.6 billion Alumni $2.2 billion Parents $1.9 billion Non-alumni 61% of gifts

Five donors each have given $100 million or more

100

new faculty positions created

>10,500

donors to scholarships USC’s annual financial aid pool has doubled to $330 million annually, thanks to donors

>7.4 million

square feet of building space added or renovated

varying duration. And in 2013, USC first vaulted into a spot among the nation’s top three universities for annual fundraising, joining Harvard and Stanford—a position it has held ever since.

Campaign funds have helped USC make, in Nikias’ words, “a decade’s worth of academic progress in just a few years.”

Extending the campaign will accelerate this dramatic progress, he said.

LIFE-CHANGING GIFTS For many students, donors’ gifts underwrite scholarships that turn the dream of attending USC into reality. USC Trustee John Mork and his wife, Julie, have helped hundreds of top undergraduates study at USC through their $110 million gift to establish and endow the USC Mork Family Scholars Program. Theirs was the largest gift to USC ever for undergraduate scholarships.

Scholarships open doors for students like Jonathan Curtiss, a graduate student at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, who was one of the first recipients of the George Lucas Scholarship last year. The George Lucas Family Foundation made two $10 million gifts in the past two years toward scholarships that will help increase student diversity in the school’s undergraduate and graduate programs.

“I wouldn’t have been able to attend USC without it, and my acceptance letter would have just been decoration in my room,” says Curtiss, a native of South L.A. who had turned to a crowdfunding website to try to raise tuition money.

Curtiss also feels a responsibility to pay that generosity forward. “Filmmaking is what I was created to do, and this scholarship means I have fellowship, opportunity and the ability to inspire younger filmmakers in my community to dream without limits,” he says.

BIG DREAMS USC faculty and researchers dream just as big as USC students do, and donors to the university’s centers, institutes and programs provide the funds necessary to make those dreams a reality. Large gifts received during the campaign supported the W.M. Keck Foundation’s naming of usc trojan family

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cover Keck Medicine of USC and Keck Medical Center of USC and the creation of the USC Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy for Arts, Technology and the Business of Innovation.

Through campaign gifts, USC donors have endowed 19 new research centers and institutes spanning the arts and humanities, social and natural sciences, and engineering and technology.

By creating 100 new faculty positions since the campaign began, donors have also enabled USC to recruit and retain faculty members who are transforming their disciplines—including stem cell scientist Andrew McMahon, diversity and equity expert Shaun Harper, and brain researchers Arthur Toga and Paul Thompson, just to name a few.

Neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s are some of the world’s most heartbreaking and complex set of illnesses, says Toga, who holds the Ghada Irani Chair in Neuroscience. But funding from the Campaign for USC is creating hope by helping to find treatments and eventually, perhaps, cures.

“I asked for a building devoted to neuroimaging and informatics, and I got it,” Toga says of the new home for the USC

A HISTORY OF G E NE ROSITY Since USC’s beginning, each generation of Trojans has built on the ambition of the one that preceded it through ongoing giving and campaigns.

Mark and Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute, which he directs.

“I asked for a Siemens 7T—the most advanced MRI scanner in the world, capable of imaging brains faster and at a higher resolution. It arrived. Now we’re able to capture better images of the hippocampus— the memory center—and its connections.”

COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH Adjacent to USC’s track, scaffolding rises around the soon-to-open Michelson Hall, which will be the largest academic building on the University Park Campus. It will house the USC Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience, envisioned as a research hub for professors, scientists, engineers, students and others working toward a cure for cancer and other diseases.

The Campaign for USC has been instrumental in creating opportunities for this cross-disciplinary research.

“We’re taking down walls that have separated experts in different disciplines fighting the same disease. We’re confident that collaboration will lead the way toward solving the most intractable problems of this century,” Provost Michael Quick says.

Convergent research is spurring breakthroughs in health and medical research at

The First Gifts

FOUNDER Judge Robert Maclay Widney YEAR 1879 GOAL Create a university in Los Angeles ACHIEVEMENT 308 lots of land donated; USC opened in 1880

USC, but it is also fueling innovation for budding entrepreneurs at the USC Iovine and Young Academy. Last year, students there worked with cancer researcher Peter Kuhn on a new cancer-mapping initiative called CancerBase.

The social media-based initiative allows patients to share real-time data with researchers and other patients that help them understand the progression of their treatment and cancer, says Kuhn, who is a USC Dean’s Professor of Biological Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. It even got a shout-out last year from Vice President Joe Biden during the National Cancer Moonshot Summit.

The Michelson Center and CancerBase demonstrate the kind of innovative thinking and collaboration that attract the continued investment of donors ranging from music industry titans Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young to USC Marshall School of Business alumnus Daniel Ast MBA ’86.

Ast was inspired to make his first gift to USC in 2016 after touring campus with his college-age daughter.

“I was amazed at the transformation that USC has undergone over the past 30 years. I had to be a part of it by contributing to its future,” Ast says.

Master Plan for Enterprise and Excellence in Education

PRESIDENT Norman H. Topping YEARS 1961–1966 FUNDRAISING GOAL $106.7 million TOTAL RAISED $107 million * Received 64,000 individual gifts, surpassing goal in five years HIG HLIG HT S

Doubled the university endowment Added 30 buildings to Health Sciences and University Park campuses Added 60 acres to University Park Campus USC elected to Association of American Universities E N D OW E D PO SIT IO N S

1 chair, 2 professorships

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summer 2017

Alumni giving totals $2.2 billion so far, driven in part by USC’s undergraduate alumni, who set a new record for giving in 2016. Their giving rate soared to 42 percent last year, placing USC ahead of most research universities of similar size for undergraduate alumni participation and slotting it in first place among all Pac-12 universities, according to the Council for Aid to Education.

In all, more than 328,000 donors have given to the campaign.

“Although USC’s larger gifts tend to make the news, it’s the outpouring of support from alumni, parents, grateful patients and friends from all across the nation and world at all levels of giving that is most inspiring,” says Al R. Checcio, senior vice president for university advancement.

WHAT’S NEXT Continuing fundraising efforts will build on past success, and focus on medical research, the arts and increasing the university’s endowment for scholarships.

“This campaign and its continuation is about what we can do—how we can transform the world—with

1950

1960

1970

Toward Century II

PRESIDENT John R. Hubbard YEARS 1976–1981 FUNDRAISING GOAL $265 million TOTAL RAISED $309.3 million * Received $13 million from William Wrigley Family to create what’s now the USC Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies H I G H L I GH T S

Established a university plateau of $50 million in gift income annually USC became a top-10 private university for federally sponsored research Received historic gift to create the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology E N D OWED P OSI T I ON S

20 chairs, 22 professorships

those funds. The Trojan Family has shown us time and again how much it believes in USC and its potential to better lives,” Checcio says.

The investment made possible by the Campaign for USC is creating a ripple effect in Los Angeles and beyond. A recent independent study showed that USC is one of California’s strongest economic engines.

The study found that the university spurs $8 billion annually in economic activity in the Los Angeles region and California.

For many donors, investing in USC provides real impact. And while extending the campaign is a bold move, Nikias and Checcio are confident that university supporters will redouble their efforts.

“While we have an ambitious vision for USC’s future, let’s remember that our dreams have a deadline,” Nikias says. “Let us continue gathering the resources to make them a reality.” •

1980

1990

The Campaign for USC: Leadership for the 21st Century

PRESIDENT James H. Zumberge YEARS 1984–1990 FUNDRAISING GOAL $557 million TOTAL RAISED $641.6 million * Walter Annenberg was the largest individual donor, giving $28.2 million HIGHLIGHTS

Surpassed goal in six years with contributions from foundations, corporate supporters and more than 170,000 individual donors New facilities constructed included Hedco Neurosciences Building and Cinema-Television Complex; Health Sciences Campus doubled in size ENDOWED POSIT IO N S

38 chairs, 21 professorships

P US H ING TH E ACC ELER ATO R In the last six years, USC accomplished what it had previously taken six decades to do:

raise $6 billion.

$6 Billion

2000

$6 Billion

2010

2020

Building on Excellence

PRESIDENT Steven B. Sample YEARS 1993–2002 FUNDRAISING GOAL $1 billion TOTAL RAISED $2.85 billion N OTA BLE G IF T S

Walter Annenberg: $120 million W. M. Keck Foundation: $110 million Leonore & Wallis Annenberg: $100 million HIG HLIG HT S

Five schools received naming gifts: USC Marshall School of Business, USC Leventhal School of Accounting, USC Rossier School of Education, USC Thornton School of Music, Keck School of Medicine of USC E N D OW E D PO SIT IO N S

99 chairs, 37 professorships

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KALPAKIAN PHOTO COURTESY OF LAURA KALPAKIAN

At USC, about one of every five undergraduates has parents who didn’t go to college. And they’re some of the university’s top students.

The Way Up B Y U S C T R O J A N FA M I LY M A G A Z I N E S TA F F PHOTOGRAPHY BY NOÉ MONTES

The man strode up to George Sanchez with a sense of purpose.

Sanchez had just wrapped up a pep talk for parents of incoming USC students. The remarks capped off USC’s first dinner for moms and dads of a special group of scholars—those in the first generation of their family to go to college. Now, one of the fathers wanted a word with him.

He looked into Sanchez’s eye, as a young woman stood by his side, looking slightly intimidated. “Will you take care of my daughter?” the father asked in Spanish.

Sanchez was taken aback. In Spanish, he assured the man, a Mexican-American from California’s Coachella Valley, that he would do his best. But he knew that his promise carried a powerful cultural obligation, especially for Mexicans.

“That connection had to be there for that father, and it was incredibly important to him,” explains Sanchez, professor of American studies and ethnicity and history. “He wanted to make sure he had an adult here that he could trust.”

Like that father two years ago, many parents who didn’t go to college feel uncomfortable visiting college campuses, intimidated by an unfamiliar world. Their children face struggles too, and are more vulnerable to dropping out. But at USC, significant financial aid, mentoring and other resources provide first-generation students greater access to a high-quality university education and help them thrive—giving them a shot at a college degree and a better lot in life.

WHO’S IN FIRST? First-generation students have become the focus tfm.usc.edu

of researchers’ increased scrutiny. At first glance, their findings may be surprising: The percentage of first-generation students at U.S. four-year institutions declined from about 40 percent in the early 1970s to about 16 percent in 2005, according to UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute.

There’s a reason for that. Forty years ago, about a quarter of adults in the U.S. went to college, but today more than half do.

The trend has a big exception: The parents of minority students are still much less likely than the overall population to have attended college.

That’s especially true of Latinos, followed by native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders.

And despite gains, many academically qualified, low-income students—regardless of ethnicity—are still not getting degrees.

To fulfill their mission, colleges and universities have made a push to recruit first-generation students over the past decade. At USC, the proportion of first-generation students has more than doubled since 2005, and today they account for about one in every five USC undergraduates.

USC Provost Michael Quick says that these students bring desired values to the campus, including a powerful work ethic.

“Students who are the first in their families to attend college have all the skills to be successful students—before they even get here,” Quick says.

“They are driven, resilient and eager to learn. They are exactly the type of students who succeed in higher education.”

About 92 percent of USC first-generation students graduate within six years, just like their classmates. It’s a rate far above the national average

College Matters

The more students graduate from college, the greater the benefits to the nation, according to the College Board.

Greater employment and lifetime earnings Higher levels of voting and volunteering Healthier lifestyle habits Parents more likely to support children’s education

Alejandra Franco had college in her sights since childhood.

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Build the Next Generation USC supporters Lydia and Todd Bauer are helping Trojans develop a passion for the natural world— especially firstgeneration students.

The Bauer Family Environmental Studies Endowed Scholarship Fund helps students pursue research or internships through the USC Environmental Studies Program and the USC Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies. That includes summer studies at the Wrigley Marine Science Center on Catalina Island.

First-generation college students and those who come from low-income families get special preference for the awards.

Todd Bauer, who serves on the institute’s advisory board, created the fund through a gift.

The fund is just one way that generous USC donors have reached out to students who need help to advance their studies and careers.

for first-generation students. Many go on to graduate school at USC, where nearly 7,100 firstgeneration students now account for 28 percent of total enrollment.

These students have grown up highly motivated to excel, and they’ve strived to attend USC to change the trajectory of their families, says Christina L. Yokoyama ’02, MEd ’04, director of USC’s Norman Topping Student Aid Fund, a unique student-funded scholarship whose recipients are nearly all first-generation students. “Despite many challenging aspects of their lives, first-gen students are thriving because of who they are before they even arrived on campus.

“Our first-generation students contribute significantly both inside and outside the classroom, making our community a better place,” says Yokoyama, who was herself a first-generation college student.

Quick, a Los Angeles native who also was the first in his family to attend college, notes that welcoming such students is “not just a mission of diversity for diversity’s sake.”

“Part of our mission is to educate future leaders, the next generation of people who are going to thrive in a 21st-century, mega-city, global environment,” he says. “We want to look like the world because we want to be the training ground for our students, so they are ready to take on the world.”

BRIDGING TWO WORLDS Sanchez is one of the first contacts for many firstgeneration USC students. The son of Mexican immigrants, Sanchez is a professor of history and American studies and ethnicity in the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. He also was a first-generation college student—at Harvard University. At USC, he helped develop a Welcome Week orientation workshop to show families what to expect when there’s a college student in the family. He has also taught the sophomore seminar “Pathways to Career Success for First-Generation Students” for many years.

As for his promise to a concerned father, Sanchez came up with a plan. The daughter— Alejandra Franco—now works as a research assistant in his office.

“It was a really humbling experience to see someone who is so successful come and talk to the first-generation community,” says Franco, a political science and contemporary Latino and Latin American studies double major and a rising junior. “The thing about Dr. Sanchez that most captivated me is that when he talks, you truly feel recognized. He didn’t know me then, but he seemed so interested in getting to know who I was, and what I could potentially become.”

Beyond having faculty and staff who welcome such students, the first step in attracting and keeping them is understanding the barriers they face. Studies that explore the issues often describe

To learn how you can help, visit campaign.usc.edu.

George Sanchez (right) is one of the many faculty and staff members working to make college welcoming for firstgeneration students.

Engineering student Sierra Williams (opposite page) has made the dean’s list every semester but one since her freshman year.

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First-generation college students find mentoring and support at USC.

Five Steps Forward

First-generation programs span across USC. These are just a few.

FIRST-GENERATION COLLEGE STUDENT MENTOR PROGRAM This USC Career Center program pairs students with alumni who were also firstgeneration students to share career advice.

FIRST-GENERATION COLLEGE STUDENT TASK FORCE USC faculty and staff, including academic advisers and professors, advocate and educate the USC community on firstgeneration college student issues.

FISHER FELLOWS PROGRAM Financial support granted freshman year helps first-generation USC Dornsife students take research trips with faculty, prepare for graduate school admissions tests and study abroad.

NORMAN TOPPING STUDENT AID FUND This supplemental scholarship for entering freshmen, transfer and graduate students gives special consideration to firstgeneration students and those from USC’s surrounding neighborhoods.

FIRST-GENERATION SCHOLARSHIPS Scholarships provide support to first-generation students working on summer internships that deliver valuable career experience but are unpaid.

To learn more, visit bit.ly/USCFirstGen.

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challenges in dry, academic language. But students’ own heartfelt voices speak to their experiences.

Franco, who was advised in high school to stick to state schools because USC was thought to be too expensive, says she faced low expectations.

“I feel like the biggest obstacle is trying to drown out the noise of all the negative things people say: ‘You can’t succeed at this because of where you come from or who you are.’”

Vina Vo ’12, MPL ’13, who was born a year after her parents arrived as refugees from Vietnam, left USC four years ago with a bachelor’s in business administration and a master’s in urban planning. Yet, the issues facing her fellow firstgeneration students are still fresh in her mind.

As if reading from an essay, she enumerates the obstacles: First, there’s a lack of information and resources that forces students to make decisions without knowing all the options. Second, students have to navigate financial aid forms with little or no guidance. Third, they must overcome culture shock.

“It was really hard to relate to some of my peers who came from extremely wealthy backgrounds,” says Vo, 27, who was raised in central Orange County’s Little Saigon area.

She was stunned that classmates had credit cards. “They didn’t have to worry about money, and I thought, ‘Wow, that’s such a different life.’

And in a way, it was demoralizing at first. But then we ended up in the same place, despite our different circumstances. And I realized I should

be really proud of where I came from.”

Family finances can make bridging home and campus difficult. Sanchez recalls students who showed up to orientation alone, surrounded by classmates who had supportive parents.

Trista Beard EdD ’16 (pictured above), associate director of USC’s Norman Topping Student Aid Fund, was raised in a blue-collar household in a small community in southern Kansas and remembers the isolation that Sanchez describes.

“When I saw all those other kids, and their parents moving them into school, I felt a gut punch,” recalls Beard, a first-generation student who graduated from New York’s University of Rochester. “When Thanksgiving came and I didn’t have anywhere to go, I felt a gut punch. When it was family weekend in October for homecoming, I felt that punch in the gut again.”

BUILDING A NETWORK Sometimes going to college can feel daunting even if it’s close to home. If a college environment feels foreign, says Beard, many students feel “torn between two worlds.”

Explains Sanchez: “One of the struggles of first-generation students is that you don’t have any of the social cues that a lot of other students have.

You don’t know how to make basic decisions, like what should I major in, because you haven’t heard of half the majors that are available. So there’s a lot of trying to figure it out.” summer 2017

PHOTO COURTESY OF OSCAR DE LOS SANTOS

A solution to isolation? Creating a new network of peers and advisers on campus. Adult mentors can play a key role in that mission. But perhaps more important are peer relationships, says Beard, whose dissertation focused on how networks help Latino students succeed. First-generation students often follow the lead of fellow students who pass on tips and recommendations, such as what class to take or which adviser to trust.

Yet, creating that circle of trusted peers who share the same background isn’t always easy. Unlike ethnicity or race, being a firstgeneration student is an “invisible identity marker,” Beard says. That makes it hard to connect to classmates at first.

Rising senior Sierra Williams, who grew up a few blocks from the USC University Park Campus, tried to find her place when she first came to USC in 2014. Often, she found herself the only black woman in her classes at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. Seeking a connection to others, she joined the National Society of Black Engineers and attended meetings of the Black Student Assembly.

“But it didn’t click,” says Williams, who was raised primarily by her mother, a retired in-home care provider. It wasn’t until she joined the governing board of the Norman Topping Student Aid Fund that she found people with common bonds.

“Topping scholars all had to struggle,” Williams says. “So even though our personal experiences are different, we all understand the struggle of being poor.”

SOLUTIONS AND SUPPORT Leaving home for college can be fraught with turmoil for many students. Their sense of obligation to their parents is deeply internalized, and forcing them to let go can be traumatizing. There’s even a name for it: breakaway guilt.

Franco, for one, worried about how to cover her college costs. Her parents had no internet service at home, so she’d spend hours at McDonald’s using public Wi-Fi to fill out financial aid forms.

“In the end, they’ve got to let go of some of this,” Sanchez says. “We have to push them to make that leap, to be a little bit selfish, because they’re always thinking tfm.usc.edu

about their parents. They’ve got to start thinking about what they’re giving up, because this college period is unique and will never come again.”

USC has marshaled a wide range of resources to address the needs of low-income first-generation students. Faculty and staff advocate for these students across the university through a dedicated task force, which spawned the new First-Generation Student Union. Parents attend a special welcome reception on move-in day in August and a workshop during Trojan Family Weekend. A summit at USC also brings together first-generation students from several colleges, as well as researchers and educators, to talk about the needs of these students. Individual USC schools offer their own targeted efforts.

Another USC program serves as a pipeline to get more students to college. The Neighborhood Academic Initiative offers college-prep coursework for low-income students who live in the neighborhoods surrounding USC’s University Park and Health Sciences campuses. Successful graduates who gain admission to USC receive a full-tuition scholarship.

The program has been Williams’ ticket out. Williams—who has made the dean’s list every semester but one since freshman year and who tutors high school students in AP calculus through the Neighborhood Academic Initiative—once hesitated to label herself a first-generation college student.

“I didn’t because for the longest time there was a negative stigma attached to it,” says Williams, who wants to be an engineering professor. “I felt like a firstgeneration student is someone who always needs help, or always needs guidance, or somebody else to tell them what to do.

“But now I embrace it because, yes, I’m a self-driven person, but at some point in my journey, somebody’s always had to help me out.”

Franco was also self-driven enough to reach beyond low expectations and learn to lean on supporters like Mom and Dad. When she was growing up, her parents kept a picture frame hanging on the living room wall. It had nothing in it.

“They would tell me every day, ‘That’s where your college diploma is going to go.’” •

Trojan Trailblazer

How many USC Dornsife students can say they’ve had a burger, fries and a milkshake with an American president? Oscar De Los Santos ’15 (seated, right) can.

De Los Santos won a competitive essay contest about effective leadership in 2012, and part of his award was lunch with President Barack Obama in Washington, D.C. Last year, De Los Santos earned another great honor: He was selected from a pool of 882 applicants as one of 32 American recipients of the 2017 Rhodes Scholarship. The coveted scholarship provides all expenses for two or three years of study at the University of Oxford in England starting in October.

The Los Angeles native, who now lives in Laveen, Arizona, is this year’s only Latino Rhodes Scholar and the first member of his family to attend college. He graduated from the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences magna cum laude with a degree in political science and was a Norman Topping Scholar and Phi Beta Kappa member. The Los Angeles City Council honored him as an emerging leader, and he interned with the National Economic Council and the House of Representatives.

“I’m the child of Mexican immigrants, an anti-hunger advocate and a former teacher and political organizer,” he says. “My degree choices are a way for me to respond from a sense of moral urgency to help marginalized people.”

Since graduation, De Los Santos has continued to serve underserved communities, first as an English and social studies teacher for high-risk youth and now as a lobbyist and manager of public policy for the Association of Arizona Food Banks.

At Oxford, De Los Santos plans to read for a master of public policy and a master of studies in theology with a focus on Christian ethics.

LAURA PAISLEY

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As the media industry experiments with business models and copes with fake news, journalists still relish the chance to tell stories that matter.

The Truth Squad

BY TOM KERTSCHER

I L LUS T R AT I O N S BY T H E H E A D S O F S TAT E

One weekend last December, 28-yearold Edgar Maddison Welch, a father of two, drove from his home in North Carolina to Washington, D.C. on a mission to protect kids.

In search of what he had heard were secret underground tunnels harboring child sex slaves, Welch armed himself with an assault rifle and a revolver and entered a pizzeria, terrifying diners. He fired at least two shots, including one that broke a lock off a door.

But he found no tunnels or captive children. After 45 minutes inside the restaurant, the misguided gunman surrendered peacefully to police and no one was injured.

Online conspiracy theories that had circulated about a sex-trafficking ring— allegedly masterminded by presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and a top aide —were far-fetched but too compelling for him to resist. The shooting incident, quickly dubbed “Pizzagate,” unmistakably established the power—and consequences —of fake news.

As is often the case, however, crisis brings opportunity. In the wake of fake or sloppily reported news stories that have gone viral, veteran and aspiring journalists alike are redoubling their commitment to their craft. New efforts are underway to improve the public’s media literacy. And at a time when traditional media struggle tfm.usc.edu

to find workable business models and many media outlets get by with a pareddown reporting staff, the divisive political environment has increased readership for media stalwarts like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, both of which reported a recent jump in subscriptions. In the process, there is hope that the newsconsuming public will appreciate anew the indispensability of quality journalism.

“We have a return to a clarity of what our mission is,” says Willow Bay, incoming dean of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and a veteran broadcast journalist and author. “It is a calling, not just a job.”

WHY THE RISE OF FAKE NEWS? Fake news, or “misinformation crafted to influence public opinion or cull digital advertising dollars,” as the Columbia Journalism Review puts it, is increasingly difficult to separate from real news. According to the Pew Research Center, 23 percent of Americans say they have shared a made-up news story, either knowingly or not, and 64 percent say fabricated news stories cause a great deal of confusion about the basic facts of current events.

Even the most sophisticated are vulnerable.

Jacob Soll, a USC professor of history and accounting who is also a staff writer for

Politico and a regular contributor to The New York Times and The New Republic, recalls that a “hysterical” political story appeared in the newsfeed on his smartphone after the 2016 presidential election and he quickly shared it on Facebook. “Somebody said, ‘That’s not true,’ and I had to take it right down,” he recalls. “It makes you realize how Pavlovian one’s reaction is to news stories. You’re not sitting, reading, scouring the paper version of The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal over a table, which is a really different thing.”

Soll traces the problem in part to a decline in the teaching of science and basic literacy. Only a few decades ago, he says, science was venerated in popular culture, but it’s now poorly understood or distrusted. The dive in discernment leaves people vulnerable to the allure of fabricated information.

“People aren’t reading in a complex way, so they’re not going to sit down with serious news sources,” Soll says. “They can’t assess sources well.”

Readers may think that the reliability of information in an ordinary blogger’s site is the same as that in an outlet like The New Yorker, he adds, but it’s not. “The New Yorker hires fact checkers from Princeton.

There’s a huge difference.”

Of course, fake news—known in its incarnations as yellow journalism, bogus usc trojan family

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news and sensationalism—is nothing new.

To stir up anti-British sentiment in 1782, Benjamin Franklin created a fake newspaper story claiming that Native Americans had sent the scalps of Americans to the king of England as a sign of loyalty. Franklin was able to pull off the hoax by printing an authentic-looking newspaper on his own printing press. Today, social media has given anyone with an internet connection the means to spread messages with a speed that Franklin could never dream of. In the U.S. alone, 70 percent of adults report using some type of social media.

Gabriel Kahn, a professor of professional practice at USC Annenberg and a former bureau chief and foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, notes that technological advances have leveled the playing field for anyone to create a website that at first glance looks like a credible news source. Moreover, he says, the algorithms employed by Facebook continue to feed users what they’ve already shown an affinity for. “It sounds true because it jibes with my worldview,” he says of a person’s typical response to fake news shared on social media. “You’ve got the perfect environment for people to live in their filter bubble and be served only ideological comfort food.”

Social media users also get immediate visceral feedback when they share news online. As Bay puts it: “It’s much more fun to spread something outrageous, whether you support it or are horrified by it, than it is some serious, substantive, accurate news information.”

All of this is easier to understand when you consider that traditional news media have suffered losses in reach and in trust. According to Pew, only 20 percent of Americans trust the information they get from local news organizations. Meanwhile, 60 percent say they get their news from social media. But all is not lost for analysis and thoughtful reporting: Smartphone users are still reading and spending time on long news stories, indicating they’ve got an appetite for in-depth reporting.

CONSCIENTIOUS CONSUMERS Even with fake news and the economics of traditional media working against journalism, experts see opportunities for it to thrive.

Bay says a key element of the solution is to make consumers savvier about what they see and hear. Schools can help meet that challenge.

“We spend a lot of time with young

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people explaining the dangers of online chats and social media accounts. We should be spending at least that much time, if not more, on teaching young people how to differentiate credible content from notcredible content or hoaxes, which is in essence what fake news is,” she says.

To that end, USC is offering “Navigating Media and News in the Digital Age,” a required class for journalism majors that Bay believes would benefit all undergraduates. Among other things, it teaches readers to put every story through the “SMELL” test—examining it for sources, motivations, evidence, logic and what’s left out.

“You’re getting a piece of content on your phone, but it no longer comes with the signifiers of quality, or even authorship, that it once did,” Bay says. USC, she adds, strives to teach students “to do more than consume media, but also to critique it and then to create it, to learn how to use the tools effectively, ethically and accurately to produce content of their own.”

Newly graduated USC Annenberg alum Eli Goodstein ’17 sees another solution: stepping out of the news bubble. “I think it’s important to try following things that maybe [I] don’t agree with, so I can hear what other people are talking about, so I can get both sides of the argument.”

This helps guard against being taken in by shoddy journalism, or worse, he says. “It’s on the people who are consuming the news

MOMENTS IN [FAKE NEWS] HISTORY 1825 Moon Hoax

In what Smithsonian magazine called one of the greatest hoaxes of all time, The New York Sun claims there is an alien civilization on the moon, selling enough papers to establish The Sun as a leading, profitable newspaper.

1917 Birth of the Bathtub The New York Evening Mail prints journalist Henry L. Mencken’s fictitious and absurd history of the bathtub in America, which, to his consternation, circulates widely as fact. Despite a public explanation that it was pure nonsense, the tale continues to circulate for decades.

1980 Jimmy’s World

A Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post article details the heart-wrenching story of “Jimmy,” an 8-year-old heroin addict. As readers seek to find Jimmy and help him, writer Janet Cooke is forced to admit that the boy didn’t exist.

to really go out there and actually start listening to people.”

REBUILDING TRUST And journalists, too, must address the challenges themselves.

“As journalists and educators of journalists, we would be well served by combining humility with a powerful sense of purpose,” Bay says. “Trust has to be earned—one reporter and one story at a time—by doing what good journalists have always done and focus on the core elements of their job: accurate, ethical, timely and relevant reporting.”

Kahn says responsible media outlets need to better explain their methodology and professional ethics so that the public can more easily identify the responsible from the irresponsible.

“The public doesn’t quite understand the intricacies of the craft, the layers of editing, the editorial judgment, the corroboration and so forth,” Kahn says. “Give the public some understanding that there is real effort put into this to make it fair and responsible and accurate.”

The newly graduated journalists feel prepared to find the way forward.

Taking advantage of more immersive, sensory technologies, such as video on social media or storytelling on the radio, will be increasingly important for journalists, says Intisar Seraaj MA ’17, who studied digital journalism at USC Annenberg and plans to pursue cultural reporting on the web or on radio. Digital tools can add layers of complexity and context that were impossible a few years ago.

“I know people are taken in by the clickbait, but I do think there are people still out there reading the deeper pieces,” Seraaj adds. “They’re maybe just not sharing it as much because it’s not cute to share that kind of stuff on social media.”

Goodstein says he was drawn to journalism so he could tell important stories on the most effective platform that reaches people where they are—whether it’s traditional print or new tools like Facebook Live. He’s not daunted by the challenges facing new reporters.

“I don’t feel depressed; I actually feel very energized,” he says. “Maybe people don’t think so, but I actually think this is the best time to be a journalist. We’re in a moment of reflection and reevaluation and it’s really important for people who are in the field to do the best job that we possibly can.” • summer 2017

The USC Alumni Association presents

Unique wines crafted exclusively for the Trojan Family.

Recommended by wine-industry experts, the Trojan Wine Collection features exceptional vintages customlabeled with iconic USC imagery. You’ll want to share these exquisite wines with fellow Trojans, family and friends.

Quantities are limited so order today: TrojanWineCollection.com

Proceeds support USC Alumni Association programs and services.

ALUMNI.USC.EDU | ALUMNI@USC.EDU | TEL: 213 740 2300

FA M I LY

PHOTO BY MATEI HORVATH

REAL LOVE Nishkaam Mehta MBA ’12 and Poonam Kaushal got married in February. But the big news isn’t the wedding. It’s that they donated $20,000 to charity instead of spending it on a lavish celebration. They also asked friends to donate. The couple support an effort to provide a million school meals to children affected by the Boko Haram violence in Cameroon. Read more at bit.ly/GivingCouple.

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And the Award Goes to . . .

The USC Alumni Association salutes seven outstanding Trojans.

The 84th Alumni Awards gala was a night to remember as USC alumni, friends and supporters gathered to pay tribute to seven outstanding members of the Trojan Family. The annual event recognizes notable alumni whose achievements bring honor and distinction to the university.

ASA V. CALL ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

ALUMNI MERIT AWARDS

Rick J. Caruso ’80

Wanda M. Austin PhD ’88

The university’s highest alumni honor, this award recognizes Trojans who have demonstrated exceptional commitment to USC.

Founder and CEO, Caruso; founder, the Caruso Family Foundation A highly respected civic leader, philanthropist and real estate visionary, USC Trustee Rick Caruso has decades of hands-on experience in public service.

In 1991, he founded the Caruso Family Foundation, which is committed to improving the lives of at-risk children in Los Angeles. In 2015, he and his wife, Tina, gave $25 million to endow and name the USC Tina and Rick Caruso Department of Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery. A previous naming gift from the family established the USC Caruso Catholic Center.

This award recognizes noteworthy alumni whose accomplishments reflect the range and quality of a USC education.

Former president and chief executive officer of The Aerospace Corp.

Wanda M. Austin, a USC trustee, is internationally recognized for her work in satellite and payload system acquisition, systems engineering and system simulation. Austin retired in 2016 and has received numerous awards and citations over her career, including the National Intelligence Medallion for Meritorious Service, the Air Force Scroll of Achievement and the National Reconnaissance Office Gold Medal.

Grant Gershon ’85

Artistic director, Los Angeles Master Chorale; resident conductor, LA Opera Hailed for his bold artistic leadership, Grant Gershon has led more than 100 Master Chorale performances at Walt Disney Concert Hall during his 16-year tenure. Gershon is also the resident conductor of LA Opera and made his acclaimed debut with “La Traviata” in 2009. His discography includes Grammy Award-nominated recordings, commercial CDs with the Master Chorale, and live-performance albums.

Learn more about the 2017 USC Alumni Awards gala at alumni.usc.edu/awards.

TOP ROW (from left): C. L. Max Nikias, Niki Nikias, Rick Caruso BOTTOM ROW (from left): Grant Gershon, Vicki McCluggage, Wanda Austin, Allyson Felix, Wilfred Uytengsu and Dan Cassidy

ALUMNI SERVICE AWARD

This award is presented to alumni who demonstrate outstanding volunteer efforts on behalf of the university.

Dan Cassidy ’59

YOUNG ALUMNI MERIT AWARD

This award recognizes the achievement of alumni age 35 or younger.

Allyson Felix ’08

Nine-time Olympic medalist Allyson Felix is the most decorated woman in American track and field history. Since making her Olympics debut in 2004 in Athens, she has won six gold and three silver medals in four Olympic games. Her honors include three Jesse Owens Awards—USA Track & Field’s highest accolade—and the 2006 ESPY Award for Best Female Track Athlete.

Vicki McCluggage ’77

Past president, Trojan League of Los Angeles A former vice president of sales in the television industry, Vicki McCluggage has served on the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism Board of Councilors, the USC Associates Board of Directors and the President’s Commission on Alumni Relations. McCluggage also served as president of the Trojan League of Los Angeles and was a member of the USC Alumni Association Board of Governors.

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PHOTO BY STEVE COHN

Wilfred Uytengsu ’83

President and CEO, Alaska Milk Corp.

One of the most admired entrepreneurs in the Philippines, Wilfred Uytengsu heads the country’s leading milk company, serves as the president of GENOSI—a food supplier for the McDonald’s chain—and founded Sunrise Events Inc., a triathlon organizer. In 2012, an $8 million gift from the former Trojans swim team captain named the Uytengsu Aquatics Center.

Past president, Half Century Trojans Board of Directors; founding partner of Liebert Cassidy Whitmore Daniel Cassidy, a specialist in public sector labor relations and employment law, was elected to the Half Century Trojans Board of Directors in 2006.

He is a longtime university volunteer for the USC Alumni Association Board of Governors, the USC Price Athenian Society Leadership Council, the USC Athletic Department Board of Counselors and the Spirit of Troy Marching Band Board of Directors.

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A Legacy of Pride

For a quarter century, USC Lambda has championed diversity and inclusion.

Last June, Amy Ross PhD ’86 was enjoying a stroll down Trousdale Parkway when she noticed bright rainbow banners draped along the avenue celebrating LGBT Pride Month. Ross was struck by how different the scene was just a few decades ago. “There was still a lot of discrimination and anti-LGBT attitudes in society,” says Ross, who graduated from the Keck School of Medicine of USC with a doctoral degree in experimental pathology. “Today, the university—and society at large—is not only accepting but also celebrating LGBT people and our contributions.”

In the ’80s and ’90s, LGBT Americans were banned from marrying each other and from serving in the military, but it was also an era of rising LGBT visibility and activism. In 1992, Ross, Donald L. Gabard MS ’78, MPA ’88, PhD ’90 and a

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group of like-minded USC graduates and faculty decided the time had come to create an alumni group for a community that had always kept a low profile. They wanted the students to see how successful members of their community could be.

USC was one of the first universities in the U.S. to have an LGBT alumni group that also included staff and faculty. However, the milestone wasn’t welcomed by everyone. “When we got our charter in 1992, somebody wrote a letter to USC Trojan Family Magazine expressing disgust that the university would do this,” Ross remembers.

Despite the pockets of opposition, the university put its support behind the association and USC Lambda grew from a grassroots organization with no office space to a national model for other uni-

versities seeking to create LGBT alumni programs. The membership grew from 65 to nearly 5,000 members and includes Trojans like Melissa Ward ’86, the first black woman to serve as a U.S. Air Force flight instructor, television personality Alpha Mulugeta ’06 and Jason Clodfelter ’00, senior vice president at Sony Pictures Television. Co-founder Ross, a noted cancer researcher, went on to serve as 2014-2015 president of the USC Alumni Association Board of Governors and was elected to the USC Board of Trustees in 2015.

“I appreciated the role Lambda played for the university,” says Vince Wong ’03, who served as president of the group’s board of directors from 2008 to 2011. “It’s a community for LGBT alumni and a safe space to learn and grow as a member of the professional and broader communities that just happen to identify as LGBT.” USC Lambda officially joined the USC Alumni Association in 2003, and it will celebrate its 25th anniversary in November.

“It is a great accomplishment to have been founded nearly 25 years ago when the social climate regarding LGBT individuals and issues was not as accepting as it is tosummer 2017

PHOTOS COURTESY OF USC LAMBDA ALUMNI ASSOCIATION ARCHIVES

by rachel ng

To learn more about USC Lambda, go to alumnigroups.usc.edu/lambda.

PHOTOS 1 AND 4 BY STEPHEN BLAHA; PHOTO 2 BY LOGAN HELEY; PHOTO 3 BY ARMANDO BROWN

USC Lambda’s inaugural reception in 1993 was held at the Fisher Art Gallery. At the event, Co-President Donald Gabard (below) welcomed members and supporters to the newly chartered group.

day—although challenges still remain, of course,” says Miguel A. Vásquez ’11, current director of USC Lambda.

USC Lambda hosts award dinners and networking events and supports the next generation of Trojans through scholarships. It has awarded more than $400,000 to students who support LGBT issues across disciplines such as dramatic arts, business administration, health and law. “Lambda offered me a scholarship at a time when I was weighing whether or not I would be able to finish my degree,” says John Palmer, a first-generation student in the film and television production MFA program at the USC School of Cinematic Arts. “Their support allowed me to stay in school.”

Last year, Palmer was able to showcase his film Pitbull at the Don Thompson LGBT Film Festival, which launched in 2008 as a fundraiser for the Don Thompson Scholarship in Cinematic Arts. Palmer’s movie, centered on a young Latino who is harassed by his homophobic neighbor, won the festival’s Jury Award for LGBT Awareness.

USC Lambda also offers students valuable support through its alumni mentor program. As a student, Steven Strozza ’15 was an alumni liaison through the Queer and Allied Student Assembly and was paired with Kevin Notrica ’86, who was then president of USC Lambda. “He helped me to discover my career path and connected me to industry leaders so that I could gain great experience and a more informed perspective,” Strozza says. “It meant a lot that alumni were so dedicated to our success.”

By growing alumni participation and increasing its scholarship endowment, the group hopes to continue that legacy for the next 25 years and beyond. tfm.usc.edu

Alumni Day of SCervice

Since 2012, the USC Alumni Association has organized the Alumni Day of SCervice, a chance for Trojans all over the world to spend a day boosting their communities. Here are a few snapshots from the March 11 event:

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#1 KID POWER The USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work teamed up with Kinder2College to mentor boys at the University Park Campus. #2 WRAPPING UP The USC Alumni Club of Kansas City sorted and packaged donated products for the needy at the Harvester’s Food Network.

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#3 COMMUNITY CARE Yard work, cleaning and babysitting were just a few of the ways Orange County members of the USC Asian Pacific Alumni Association pitched in at a local maternity shelter. #4 SCHOOL WORK The USC Latino Alumni Association helped beautify Resurrection Catholic School in East Los Angeles with painting and gardening projects.

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#5 BEACH DAY More than 300 pounds of trash was collected during the USC Alumni Club of Taiwan’s beach clean up.

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family class notes 1 9 4 0 s Manuel L. Real ’49 (BUS) celebrated 50 years as a U.S. district court judge in November 2016. Appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1966, the 92-year-old is still a full-time judge and is one of the longest-serving active district court judges.

1 9 5 0 s Eugene Elkin PharmD ’56 (PHM) retired after a 60-year career as a pharmacist. He recently published his second novel, The Pharmacist.

1 9 6 0 s Walter Karabian ’60 (LAS), JD ’63 (LAW), MS ’65 (SPP), former state assembly majority leader, created the Walter & Laurel Karabian Fellowship at the Armenian National Committee of America–Western Region to support young Armenian-Americans focusing on public policy and politics.

Edward Roski Jr. ’62 (BUS) received the Circle of Honor Award, the highest honor given by the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation, which pays tribute to U.S. citizens who have made profound contributions to the country. Roski, a Realtor, civic leader and USC trustee, was an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps and is president and chairman of the board of Majestic Realty Co. Armando Torres Morales MSW ’63, DSW ’72 (SSW) was inducted posthumously into the California Social Work Hall of Distinction. The first Latino in the nation to earn a doctorate in social work, he founded the first psychiatric clinic for Spanishspeaking patients at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute.

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U. Kyaw Win MS ’66, PhD ’71 (EDU) published My Conscience: An Exile’s Memoir of Burma, a book about his 48 years of living in the United States as a political exile.

Michael John ’76 (SCJ) was named executive communications director for the chancellor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Robert E. Lutz ’68 (LAS) received the 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Bar Association Section of International Law.

Geraldine Knatz MS ’77 (ENG), PhD ’79 (LAS) co-authored the book Terminal Island: Lost Communities of Los Angeles Harbor. In September 2016, she and her co-author were honored with the Bruckman Award for Excellence in a Book about Los Angeles.

Ronald S. Prager JD ’69 (LAW), a retired judge with more than 29 years of service, joined the San Diego office of Judicate West, a leading provider of alternative dispute resolution services.

1 9 7 0 s Gary Cohen ’70 (LAS) retired from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, where he served as professor of history from 2001 through 2016 and as chair of the history department from 2010 to 2013.

Janet E. Black MSW ’71 (SSW) was inducted into the California Social Work Hall of Distinction. An early advocate of distance education, she developed programs for many schools of social work and served as a consultant to the California Social Work Education Center.

Don Warrick DBA ’72 (BUS) published his ninth book, Leadership: A High Impact Approach. He also was honored with the Outstanding Teacher Award in the College of Business at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs.

Vicki L. Callahan ’74 (ART) received the 2016 Redondo Beach Woman of the Year Award.

David R. Moore ’75 (LAS) was sworn in by the chief justice of the California Supreme Court as a member of the board of directors for the Conference of California Bar Associations.

Terence A. Harkin MFA ’76 (SCA) published his debut novel The Big Buddha Bicycle Race, a cross-cultural love story.

Dwight Tate MSW ’77 (SSW) received the USC Alumni Association’s 2016 Widney Alumni House Volunteer Award. A member of the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work Board of Councilors, he and his wife established the Dwight and Katherine Tate Scholarship Endowment for Veterans to provide scholarships for veterans and military spouses pursuing a Master of Social Work degree at USC. Janet Maker PhD ’78 (EDU) published her book The Thinking Woman’s Guide to Breast Cancer: Take Charge of Your Recovery and Remission.

Gus Frias ’79 (LAS), MPA ’83 (SPP), EdD ’10 (EDU) received the 2016 Meeting the Challenge Award from the FBI’s InfraGard National Members Alliance, recognizing his work in developing protective measures against violence and terrorism at K-12 schools. He serves as the education sector chief for InfraGard Los Angeles.

1 9 8 0 s Rick Caruso ’80 (BUS), USC trustee and CEO and founder of real estate development company Caruso, received the Papal Honor of Knight Commander in the Order of the Knights of St. Gregory the Great by Pope Francis. The Order of St. Gregory the Great was established in 1831 and is a special honor bestowed by the authority of the pope upon Roman Catholic men and women in recognition of their personal service to the the community and those in need. summer 2017

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.

James O’Sullivan ’80 (SPP), a business attorney and equity shareholder at Phoenix-based Tiffany & Bosco P.A., received the 2016 Champions Award from M&A Source, a leading mergers and acquisitions trade association.

Ira Poltorak PharmD ’80 (PHM) was promoted to chief operating officer of Comprehensive Pharmacy Services.

Jeffrey Seay ’80 (BUS), a retired NCIS special agent and author of the Ruben Carver action thriller series, published his novel The Jihadist List.

Paul Thaddeus Povinelli PhD ’80 (LAS) retired as chief of psychology from Elmira Psychiatric Center, New York State Office of Mental Health, after a 36-year career.

Cynthia Stern MSW ’80 (SSW) is a licensed clinical social worker with a private practice specializing in short-term treatment for families and couples in Santa Monica, California.

Bonnie Nijst ’81 (LAS), president and CEO of Zeesman, was awarded the MBE Trailblazer Award from the National Minority Supplier Development Council.

Steve Ross ’81 (SCJ) was named the first chief marketing and brand officer of the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, a highly rated charity that provides critical funding for breast cancer research.

WAPNER PHOTO BY AP/BOB GALBRAITH

Russell Cummings ’82, PhD ’88 (ENG) was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society in London, an international, multidisciplinary professional institution dedicated to the global aerospace community.

Kimberly Durment-Locke ’83 (LAS/SCJ) received the Excellence in Diversity Award from The Aerospace Corp.

Gordy Grundy ’83 (LAS) has written his third book, Blood and Paint: Essays on Art in Los Angeles.

Mark Henschke PharmD ’83 (PHM) was selected by the International Association of Internists as a Top Doctor in York, Maine.

Clarence Tam ’85 (ENG) serves as the chairman of the Department of Ophthalmology and chief of surgical eye services for St. Agnes Hospital in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin.

Mike Huckman ’83 (SCJ), W20 Group’s global practice leader of executive communications, will lead Connect, his firm’s program designed to develop leadership and communications skills for C-suite leaders.

Ann Muscat PhD ’83 (LAS) retired as president and CEO of the board of directors of the Catalina Island Conservancy, a post she held for 13 years.

Lori Waldon ’83 (LAS) was named regional director of news for KCRA-TV and KQCA-TV in Sacramento, California; KOAT-TV in Albuquerque/Santa-Fe, New Mexico; and KSBW-TV in Monterey/Salinas, California.

Inga Ballard MFA ’84 (DRA) appeared as the nurse in Romeo and Juliet at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C. Marc Hernandez ’84 (BUS) joined the Beverly Hills office of Teles Properties, a luxury real estate firm. He serves on the board of The Gentle Barn animal sanctuary.

Wyn Morton MA ’84 (OST) has volunteered as a marshal at PGA and USGA golf tournaments since 2009.

Timothy Fountain ’82 (LAS) wrote the short story “Slum Lord,” which was selected for radio broadcast in the University College Cork’s “Carried in Waves” competition in Ireland.

Ute Van Dam ’84 (SCJ) was elected to a third term as a school board trustee for Moorpark Unified School District, in California where she recently served as board president.

Jackie Lacey JD ’82 (LAW), Robert Dugdale JD ’93 (LAW) and David Willingham JD ’98 (LAW) were on The Daily Journal’s “Top 100 Lawyers in California 2016” list.

Brian Goldbeck MS ’85 (ENG) was recognized by U.S. State Department Under Secretary Patrick Kennedy at his November 2016 retirement ceremony in Washington D.C. for his more than 32

tfm.usc.edu

years of service, including postings to South Korea, Ethiopia, Mongolia, the Philippines, China and what was then known as North Yemen.

T R O J A N

T R I B U T E

Joseph Wapner Joseph A. Wapner ’41 (LAS), LLB ’48 (LAW) became an unlikely celebrity when he presided as judge over small-claims cases from 1981 to 1993 in the popular television series The People’s Court.

Wapner graduated from USC with a philosophy degree and served in the Army during World War II, earning a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star for valor. After the war, he returned to USC to complete his law degree.

In 1959, he was appointed to the Los Angeles Municipal Court by Gov. Pat Brown. He soon was elevated to the Los Angeles County Superior Court, where he served until his retirement in 1979.

TV producers for The People’s Court came calling two years after his retirement and he agreed to appear on their proposed courtroom show. For more than a decade, Wapner handed down decisions five days a week for real-life disputes in front of a daily television audience estimated at 20 million. The show’s plaintiffs and defendants, who were paid for their appearance on the show, agreed to abide by Wapner’s final decisions.

In 1989, a newspaper poll showed that Wapner was the most recognized judge in the country. Two decades later, he was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Wapner died in Los Angeles on Feb. 26 at age 97. He was preceded in death by his daughter Sarah. He is survived by his wife, Mickey; sons David and Fred; and several grandchildren.

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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.

Stefan Zweig DDS ’86, CRT ’92 (DEN) is treasurer of the American Association of Endodontists and serves as a clinical associate professor in the endodontics department at the Herman Ostrow School of Dentistry of USC.

Craig Carlson MA ’92 (SCA) published a memoir, Pancakes in Paris, about finding investors who helped fulfill his dream of opening the first American-style diner in Paris. The book made The New York Times Best Sellers List in October 2016.

Jennifer Bowles ’87 (SCJ), executive director of the Sacramento-based Water Education Foundation, led a two-day international journalism workshop about water issues for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

Participants came from Iran, Turkmenistan, Pakistan, Oman and Malaysia.

Lee-Volker Cox MS ’87 (ENG), who retired from the U.S. Air Force in 2011, completed his doctorate in organizational leadership.

His photography has been selected for many exhibitions, and one of his photos from the exhibit “Berries, Blooms, Broccoli, and Bulls: Working the Land on California’s Central Coast” was highlighted in the Santa Maria Sun. John Iino JD ’87 (LAW), Reed Smith’s Los Angeles managing partner and global cochair of its Japan business team, was named as the firm’s global chair of diversity and inclusion. He received the USC Asian Pacific Alumni Association’s 2017 Leadership Award for his outstanding contributions in the legal profession.

Cynthia DeCure ’88 (DRA) was hired in 2016 as an assistant professor in the Department of Theatre at California State University, Stanislaus.

Jennifer Appleton Gootman ’89 (LAS) is the executive director of DC Stoddert Soccer in Washington, D.C. Bret Marnell ’89 (SCA) moved to Sony Pictures Animation to become the editor of Smurfs: The Lost Village. He also played the voice role of Brainy Smurf ’s assistant, Snappy Bug.

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1 9 9 0 s David Blakesley PhD ’90 (LAS) received the George E. Yoos Distinguished Service Award and was named a fellow by the Rhetoric Society of America.

Susie Davies Davenport ’90 (SCJ), a civil rights investigator for the California State Department of Fair Employment and Housing, was promoted to consultant specialist III. Newel Lee Straus ’90 (SCA) was promoted to executive vice president for business affairs, alternative/reality and specials programming for NBC Entertainment and Universal Television Alternative Studio.

Carlyn Taylor ’90 (LAS) was named the 2016 Woman of the Year in Restructuring by the International Women’s Insolvency & Restructuring Confederation.

Amelious Whyte Jr. ’90 (SPP) is director of public engagement for the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota and previously served as senior associate vice provost for student advocacy and support at the university.

Christina Dillon Dicaro ’91 (LAS) is a lobbyist at Sacramento-based KP Public Affairs, the largest public affairs management firm in California.

Sean Kell ’91 (ENG), was appointed to the board of directors at Nativis Inc. He is the CEO of A Place for Mom Inc. and previously served as a senior vice president and general manager of Expedia.com and held senior executive and general management roles at Hotels.com, Starbucks Coffee and McKinsey and Co. Andrew Vrees ’91 (LAS/SCJ) was promoted to vice president for news at WCVB-TV in Boston.

Troy Wollwage ’91 (BUS) is marketing manager for percussion instruments at Yamaha Corp. of America. He presented on the inner workings of the music products industry at the Percussive Arts Society International Convention.

Laura Fry JD ’92 (LAW) accepted a position as director of externship programs at the USC Gould School of Law. She will also serve as an adjunct assistant professor.

Gary Furuta MSW ’93 (SSW) retired in 2012 and volunteers at Veterans First in Santa Ana, California. He is also active in the American Legion Chinatown Post 628 and District 17 as a service officer, and recently served as a mentor for USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work second-year students.

David Bowman ’94, MS ’96, PhD ’99 (LAS) was appointed dean of the College of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics at Eastern Washington University.

Maureen Furniss PhD ’94 (SCA), program director of experimental animation at California Institute of the Arts, won the Animafest Zagreb 2017 Award for Outstanding Contribution to Animation Studies. The Society for Animation Studies announced the inaugural Maureen Furniss Award for Best Student Paper on Animated Media. Both awards follow the publication of her third book, A New History of Animation.

Elizabeth “Liz” Murphy JD ’94 (LAW) joined Jackson Lewis’ Los Angeles office as a principal. With more than 20 years of experience in employment litigation, she focuses on the field of home health care and employment law.

Robert Vinson ’95 (LAS) was elected president of the El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument. He was first appointed to the commission in 2014 by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti.

summer 2017

ALUMNI PROFILE JAN BERKELEY ’86

Shoot for the Stars

ILLLUSTRATION BY JACQUI OAKLEY

For USC Viterbi alumna and NASA engineer Jan Berkeley ’86, the sky’s not the limit—it’s just the beginning.

Reflecting back on her life, Jan Berkeley ’86 says, “I picked the best of both worlds.”

She’s talking about her decision to attend USC, but she could easily have been referring to worlds much, much farther away—Saturn, Jupiter or Mars, to be specific. Berkeley, a proud Trojan, happens to be a mission operations engineer at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) at Caltech.

Berkeley grew up with a passion for space, but when it came time to apply to college, she found Caltech lacked something: a marching band.

She looked at USC, but at the time, the USC Viterbi School of Engineering didn’t offer the computer engineering major she wanted. The Trojan March-

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ing Band, however, was exactly what she was seeking. Determined to make it work, she found a USC course catalogue and plotted out her classes so that she could learn everything she needed to know for her future career in aerospace.

Berkeley was able to create the best of both worlds.

In her sophomore year, Berkeley took her place in the Silks, the band’s tall flag and color guard group. A treasured moment occurred at the end of the 1985 Aloha Bowl: “The band formed a semicircle for a postgame concert,” Berkeley says. “Usually, the Song Girls would be in the center, but this time, the Silks performed a routine we’d brought back from the 1984 All-American Olympic

College Marching Band: “Sing, Sing, Sing.” It was my favorite all-time performance, as we were front and center.”

Berkeley was also front and center in the classroom. “Who is this girl?” was a common reaction she received from her mostly male classmates. She interned at Rockwell International, the prime contractor for the space shuttle program, and later at JPL as it prepped for the Galileo mission launch. “I was asked to create a power and thermal report,” Berkeley says. “This was before anyone knew what a spreadsheet was, so I learned the software and pulled one together.” Next up was a summer spent testing microprocessors at IBM. After graduating with an electrical engineering degree, Berkeley returned to JPL to work on the Galileo mission.

Trying to help the new kid out, employees shared an internal document that would help her organize her reports. “When I downloaded the emailed

attachment,” Berkeley says, “I immediately recognized it as the spreadsheet I’d created seven years earlier.” To this day, several mission programs use analysis tools based on Berkeley’s original spreadsheet.

At JPL, Berkeley also had the chance to work on the Cassini orbiter’s mission to Saturn, which found lakes and seas of liquid methane and ethane on the moon Titan, among other discoveries.

Cassini will end its journey this September, and Berkeley has transferred to a Mars Rover project. For now. “I want to work on the Europa mission,” she says. “It’s one of Jupiter’s moons where the Galileo discovered a saltwater ocean under the icy crust.”

The big question behind this program: Are there life forms in Europa’s ocean? Berkeley wants to find answers. And who better than a person known for finding the best of all worlds?

BEKAH WRIGHT

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Now Departing...

2017 USC Football Weekenders Join us on the road this fall to cheer the 2017 Rose Bowl Champions to victory! The USC Alumni Association is hosting official Weekenders at Cal and Notre Dame, and local alumni clubs are hosting activities at Washington State, Arizona State and Colorado.

Make your Weekender plans today at alumni.usc.edu/weekenders Cal 9.23.17 | WSU 9.29.17 | Notre Dame 10.21.17 | ASU 10.28.17 | Colorado 11.11.17

ALUMNI.USC.EDU | ALUMNI@USC.EDU | TEL: 213 740 2300

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.

Christopher M. Johnston ’96, MACC ’96 (ACC), an audit partner with Ernst & Young, was named West Region real estate assurance market segment leader.

Steven Sweeney JD ’96 (LAW) joined Duane Morris as an associate in its Los Angeles office.

Peter Afrasiabi JD ’97 (LAW) is co-director of the University of California, Irvine School of Law Appellate Clinic. A federal court lawyer and adjunct professor of law, he published Burning Bridges: America’s 20Year Crusade to Deport Labor Leader Harry Bridges, the first full account of the longest deportation battle in U.S. history.

Frances Esparza ’97 (LAS), Boston Public Schools assistant superintendent of the Office of English Language Learners, was appointed to the board of directors at Boston Partners in Education in October 2016.

nership that invests in scientific research that strengthens economic opportunity.

Marisa (Medrano) Perez MPP ’98 (SPP) was re-elected to the Cerritos Community College Board of Trustees in November 2016. She represents Southern California residents in the communities of Lakewood, Bellflower, Hawaiian Gardens, Cerritos and Long Beach.

Seth Green ’99 (BUS) received the U.S. Department of State’s Heroism Award for actions in Afghanistan while serving at the American Embassy in Kabul.

Ali Alexander Khan ’99 (DRA) is the host of the Cooking Channel show Cheap Eats, in which he travels the country to find the best budget meals.

Maricel Isidro-Reighard ’97 (NUR) was named president of the California Association of Nurse Anesthetists in October 2016.

Chris Munn ’99 (LAS) is director for watchlisting and countering terrorist travel on the president’s National Security Council.

Bari Newport ’97 (DRA) is in her fifth year as producing artistic director of Penobscot Theatre Company, a 43-year-old professional theater in Bangor, Maine.

Adolfo Nuñez MBA ’97 (BUS) earned a Certified Professional in Learning and Performance credential in May 2016, demonstrating understanding and application of talent development competencies.

Bryan J. Barnhouse ’98 (LAS), MPA ’00 (SPP) is vice president of the Arkansas Research Alliance, a public-private parttfm.usc.edu

40 annual events and serves as the global brand’s spokesperson.

Alvin Huang ’98 (ARC) and his firm Synthesis Design + Architecture were honored with the 2016 American Institute of Architects Los Angeles Presidential Honoree Award for Emerging Practice, the highest honor that the AIA LA bestows upon an emerging firm for consistently innovative design work.

Jeannette Hill-Yonis ’97 (BUS/SCA), head of business and legal affairs at Alcon Entertainment, negotiated the rights and talent deals for the movie Blade Runner 2049.

Victoria Manley ’97 (SCJ/LAS) celebrated her 10-year anniversary at Pixar Animation Studios. She works in the studio’s development department collaborating with directors on upcoming projects.

PHOTO BY TERRY V. REYNA

family class notes

James Tom DDS ’99 (DEN), a clinical associate professor in the Herman Ostrow School of Dentistry of USC, has been appointed to the American Society of Anesthesiologists’ Moderate Sedation Task Force. He was nominated by American Dental Association president Carol Gomez Summerhays DDS ’78 (DEN) to help represent dentistry on the interdisciplinary panel, which will prepare new national guidelines for sedation use in hospitals, surgical centers and all clinical settings.

2 0 0 0 s Lenee Breckenridge ’00 (SCA) is vice president of communications for Ultimate Fighting Championship, where she leads communications efforts for more than

T R O J A N

T R I B U T E

John Davis John Albert Davis left a lasting mark on the Keck School of Medicine of USC and on thousands of young people by establishing Med-COR, the nationally recognized program designed to boost the number of minorities in the biomedical sciences.

Davis joined the Keck School of Medicine in 1968 as a research associate charged with recruiting and counseling minority students.

He realized that to diversify medical school, educators had to reach students before college to improve students’ skills and introduce them to careers in health care. Since the first Med-COR group in 1970, these students have learned about careers in medicine directly from USC staff and faculty. At its peak, more than 1,000 students from 77 schools were enrolled in Med-COR, which sends 99 percent of its graduates to college.

Growing up in LaGrange, Georgia, Davis was an orphan by the age of 5. He and his brother were sent to L.A. and barely scraped by, relying on their wits and a network of family friends and neighbors who cared for them.

He attended Los Angeles Community College and UCLA on athletic scholarships.

Shortly after finishing his doctorate in sociology in 1971, he joined the faculty at Loyola Marymount University, where he founded the Department of African American Studies, in addition to continuing his work at the Keck School of Medicine. He remained in charge of Med-COR until 2010.

Davis died on Jan. 13 at age 82. He is survived by his wife, Mamie, whom he married after his first wife, Judith, passed away, and by three children—Gregory, Deanna and Keith—and eight grandchildren.

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ALUMNI PROFILE DAVID KURODA MSW ’72 they will always be loved.

Make sure the children know the divorce is not their fault.

Explain that the parents have some differences they weren’t able to work out, so they’ve decided getting divorced is the best thing for them.

This may be particularly difficult when one parent wants the divorce more than the other or if there has been an affair, but it’s important.

Navigating the Divide

A pioneering social worker advocates for children—and healthy divorces.

Over his decades-long career as a social worker, counselor and mediator, David Kuroda MSW ’72 has helped some 8,000 families navigate the stress of separation and divorce.

He has seen firsthand that dividing a family is never easy, but it doesn’t have to come at the cost of a child’s well-being. “It’s not the divorce that hurts children,” he says. “It’s the way parents get divorced, and the amount of conflict between them, that harms children.”

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Recently inducted into the California Social Work Hall of Distinction, Kuroda has helped provide input to change family law so that judges can send divorcing parents to counseling. He has taught courses at the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work and received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Association of Social Workers in 2003.

With about half of U.S. marriages ending in divorce, Kuroda has seen growing interest from clients wanting to resolve their issues through mediation and “collaborative divorce”—ways of settling cases outside of court. He recently shared his expertise with writer Lynn Lipinski about how parents can part ways amicably without leaving a path of destruction in their family.

What’s the first thing you say to divorcing parents?

Don’t see divorce as a failure, but as a change in the family. Both parents together should tell the children of the decision, reassuring the kids that

How can parents avoid pulling children into the pain and difficulties they’re experiencing?

Try not to say critical and negative things about the other parent to the children. Avoid using older children as confidants and burdening them with your concerns.

Find a counselor who can help with the angry and sad feelings. Often a marriage counselor can provide divorce counseling. Instead of litigation and fighting in court, consider mediation and collaborative divorce.

“Closing the book gently” can help everyone.

summer 2017

ILLUSTRATION BY DAN PAGE; PHOTO BY ALICE KURODA

What can parents do to keep kids on a good academic path during the divorce? As much as possible, keep study and homework routines the same. Keep the expectations the same and try not to let sympathy and sadness distract the children from their schoolwork.

Both parents need to support the other in encouraging the children about their studies.

Often a more permissive parent gives a different message than the other parent and the children may choose to listen to the more lax parent.

Parents should come up with a parenting plan that is good for the children and their education.

For example, requiring the children to switch homes every day would add to their confusion.

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.

Justin Sanders JD ’00 (LAW) is a founder of Sanders, Roberts and Jewett LLP, which was named one of the Top Boutiques in California 2016—Litigation by The Daily Journal. In 2011, Reginald Roberts JD ’00 (LAW) joined the firm, whose clients include Ford Motor Co., Los Angeles Unified School District and Caltech.

Dwight Stirling JD ’00 (LAW), senior judge advocate general officer in the California State Military Reserve and CEO and co-founder of the Veterans Legal Institute, was named as one of the Orange County Register’s 100 most influential people for 2016.

Kristof Van Grysperre MM ’00, MM ’02, DMA ’05 (MUS) made his New York City Opera debut conducting the November production of Fallujah, an opera inspired by a U.S. Marine’s struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Benjamin Jacobson ’01, MM ’07 (MUS) and Andrew Bulbrook ’02 (LAS), both violinists, join violist Jonathan Moerschel ’01, MM ’03 (MUS) and cellist Eric Byers ’03 (MUS) of the Calder Quartet as artists in residence at the Broad Stage in Santa Monica, California, in 2017.

Derek Polischuk ’01, MM ’04, DMA ’06 (MUS) founded “Celebrating the Spectrum: A Festival of Music and Life,” a weeklong summer piano festival at Michigan State University for students with autism.

Alan Chang ’02 (MUS), Jason Goldman MM ’02 (MUS) and Erik Kertes ’04 (MUS) co-wrote Michael Buble’s song “Nobody But Me.” Jinal Jhaveri MS ’02 (ENG), MS ’04 (LAS), CEO and co-founder of SchoolMint, joined the board of directors of EducationWorks, Philadelphia’s premier organization for providing academic support, career readiness, and enrichment programming to children and young adults.

Van Nguyen JD ’02 (LAW), a partner in Crowell & Moring LLP’s Commercial Litigation Group, was named to the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association’s tfm.usc.edu

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“2016 Best Lawyers Under 40” list. She was past president of the Orange County Asian American Bar Assn. and is a director on the board of the Federal Bar Association/Orange County Chapter.

Andrew Norman ’02, MM ’04 (MUS), USC Thornton assistant professor, was named 2017 Composer of the Year by the Musical America organization.

Ryan Green ’03 (SCA), Charlie Pecoraro ’03 (SCA) and Leslie Andrew Ridings ’05 (ART) released their feature documentary Hollywood Shorties on Netflix, iTunes and DVD. It is the larger-than-life story of the world’s smallest basketball team.

Jeff Maloney JD ’03 (LAW) won a seat on the Alhambra City Council. He is chief counsel for the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority and the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, and former chair of Alhambra’s Transportation Commission.

Amanda Sigafoos ’03 (BUS), a senior associate at Rios Clementi Hale Studios, is a member and past president of the Los Angeles chapter of the Society for Marketing Professional Services and a Californialicensed notary public.

Venita Blackburn ’04 (LAS) was awarded the Prairie Schooner book prize in fiction for 2016. Her collection of stories, Black Jesus and Other Superheroes, will be published in fall 2017.

Vander Dale MSW ’04 (SSW) is a DUI education facilitator for Southern California Alcohol and Drug Programs Inc. He received his credential as a national certified master addiction counselor from the National Certification Commission for Addiction Professionals.

Christopher Kelly PhD ’04 (GRN) received an Alumni Outstanding Teaching Award from the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO) Alumni Association in honor of distinguished teaching in the classroom, which was presented during UNO’s Faculty Honors Convocation.

Glennon Stratton ’04 (SCJ), MBA ’12 (BUS) oversees hands-on learning at the MakerSpace initiative for Portland Public Schools in Oregon.

Deryn Sumner ’04 (LAS) was named partner at The Law Offices of Gary M. Gilbert & Associates P.C., located in the Washington, D.C. area. She heads the firm’s federal sector EEO practice group, focusing on civil rights and employment law.

Eric Wilson ’04 (SCA) is editor of NCIS: Los Angeles on CBS. He also edited the award-winning feature The Relationtrip, which had its world premiere at the SXSW 2017 Film Festival. At the Dallas International Film Festival, the film took home the Narrative Feature Grand Jury Prize.

Nanette Barragán JD ’05 (LAW) was elected to the U.S. Congress, representing California’s 44th district.

Jennifer Campos MSW ’05 (SSW), a licensed clinical social worker, works in Los Angeles County’s Human Resources Bureau.

Matt Leinart ’05 (LAS), a three-time All-American first-team quarterback and USC’s 2004 Heisman Trophy winner, was named to the 13-member 2017 College Football Hall of Fame class.

Jacqueline Perez EdD ’05 (EDU) is assistant superintendent of educational services at Glendale Unified School District in California.

Kaitlyn Ramirez ’05 (SCA), MBA ’13 (BUS) leads data science and applied analytics consumer research at Nike World Headquarters.

Alice Walton ’05 (LAS/SCJ) joined Ek, Sunkin, Klink & Bai, one of California’s leading independently owned public affairs, strategic communications and government advocacy firms.

Ryan Cornner MSW ’06 (SPP), EdD ’10 (EDU) is vice chancellor for educational programs and institutional effectiveness for the Los Angeles Community College District. usc trojan family

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family class notes Jeff Prugh MFA ’06 (SCA) directed, produced and edited the feature film The Caretaker.

Giovanna Silvestre ’06 (LAS), founded Confused Girl activewear, a fashion startup company featured in the September issue of Silicon Beach Magazine. The company was also featured in Yoga Magazine and LA Yoga.

Ben Giroux ’07 (DRA) wrote, directed and starred in the independent short film Time Travel Romance. He also performed in A Cinderella Christmas at the Pasadena Playhouse.

T R O J A N

T R I B U T E

George Olah Noted scientist and Nobel laureate George Olah had a profound influence on the world of hydrocarbon chemistry, paving the way for less-polluting gasoline, more-effective oil refining and several modern drugs.

He joined USC in 1977, where he was the Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, the Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Chair in Organic Chemistry and a founding director of the Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute in the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

Olah received the 1994 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for groundbreaking work on superacids and his observations of what are known as carbocations, a fleeting chemical species long theorized to exist but never confirmed until Olah devised a way to keep them around long enough to study their properties. What he found revolutionized the understanding of organic chemistry, leading to new discoveries, new fields of research and countless applications.

During his career, Olah authored or co-authored 20 books and close to 1,500 scientific publications. He held 160 patents from seven countries, including four for the transformation of natural gas into gasolinerange hydrocarbons.

The pioneering chemist died March 8 at age 89. He is survived by his wife, Judith; their sons, George Jr. MBA ’89 and Ronald MD ’85; daughters-in-law, Sally and Cindy; grandsons Peter ’16 and Justin; and granddaughter Kaitlyn.

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Melanie Lang MS ’07 (ENG) is co-founder of Formalloy, a 3-D metal printing company based in San Diego whose clients include NASA, UC San Diego and several small businesses. She also serves on the executive committee of the San Diego Council of the Navy League as the vice president of legislative affairs.

Nicole Middleton ’07 (LAS) and her partners launched Strategy Squad Insurance Services, a new wealth management firm in Oakland, California.

Judy Stella MSW ’07 (SSW) is a health plan advisor for Stella Health Insurance Agency, an independent agency that provides clients with personalized health care choices, education and enrollment support.

Onder Albayram MS ’08 (PHM), a scientist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, received a three-year Alzheimer’s Association Research Fellowship grant. A member of the Division of Translational Therapeutics, he has received international recognition for his work in developing more effective drugs for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.

Michael Cano MPA ’08 (SPP) is deputy executive officer overseeing Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s new goods movement policy and planning division. He previously served 12 years as deputy supervisor for transportation policy to former L.A. County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich.

Aaron Chan ’09 (BUS) and Stanley Lam ’10 (BUS) published “Data-Driven HR: Creating a Turnover Response Plan Based on the Kaplan-Meier Estimator” in the Journal of the American Water Works Association.

Ray Chase ’09 (DRA) voiced the lead, Noctis Lucis Caelum, in the video game Final Fantasy XV, which was released in 2016.

Bridget Le Loup Collier EdD ’09 (EDU) was appointed interim associate provost and director of the University of Chicago’s Office for Equal Opportunity Programs with duties including oversight of Title IX compliance.

Josie Noah MPA/MPL ’09 (SPP) received the Rising Leader award from the Washington Global Health Alliance, which recognizes creative and inspiring leaders under age 40 who are dedicated to solving global health inequity.

Reynaldo Pacheco MFA ’09 (DRA) was nominated for an Imagen Award in the best supporting actor category for his work in the feature film Our Brand Is Crisis.

Marieclaire St. John ’09 (SCJ), the founder of DRESSHIRT, received Forbes’ “30 Under 30” award in the Art and Style category.

2 0 1 0 s Megan Breen MFA ’10 (DRA) wrote the play Lecherous Honey, a contemporary multimedia adaption of Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts.

It was commissioned by the company Cock and Bull and premiered in Chicago.

Dominique Fong ’10 (SCJ) moved to The Wall Street Journal’s Beijing bureau to cover China’s property market and economy.

Tessa (VanPaepeghem) Gatz MCG ’10 (SCJ) was a 2016 honoree for the Association Forum’s 40 Under 40 Award.

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PHOTO BY JANNA GOULD

Peter Daut ’06 (SCJ), an anchor and reporter at KCBS/KCAL-TV in Los Angeles, received an Emmy Award in the compilation category for outstanding news feature reporting.

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.

KuanFen Liu DMA ’10 (MUS) received the city of Ventura’s 2016 Mayor’s Arts Award recognizing her contributions to the cultural community.

Evelyn McDonnell MA ’10 (SCJ) received tenure and was elected director of the journalism program at Loyola Marymount University.

Laura Riley ’10 (LAW), an attorney with the Art Law Collective LLC and project director with Bet Tzedek Legal Services, returned to USC Gould School of Law to teach the Veterans Legal Practicum.

Maryann Tolano-Leveque EdD ’10 (EDU) was named dean of students at Citrus College in Glendora, California.

Margaret Ivey ’11 (DRA) starred in the comedic, music-filled play The Legend of Georgia McBride at the Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati.

Gerald Mitchell EdD ’11 (EDU) is associate dean of University College at Fayetteville State University in North Carolina.

Al Rabanera EdD ’11 (EDU), a math educator at La Vista High School in Fullerton, California, was one of five recipients of the NEA Foundation’s 2017 Horace Mann Award for Teaching Excellence.

Doria Ragland MSW ’11 (SSW) is a mental health therapist working with older adults in the Full Service Partnership program at Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services in Culver City, California. She also works privately as an older adult wellness consultant, health care advocate and care manager.

Amanda Brooke Sayers ’11 (LAS) finished her first year in Billund, Denmark, as a toy designer for LEGO. Her first toy for the “LEGO Friends” line was released in May 2016.

Gabriele Almon MPP ’12 (SPP) was appointed to serve on FEMA’s National Advisory Council, which ensures coordination of federal preparedness for natural disasters and acts of terrorism and other man-made disasters. tfm.usc.edu

Marcello Dubaz ’12 (MUS) was a sound effects editor for Roots—shown on the television channel History—which received a nomination for best sound editing at the 2016 Creative Arts Emmys.

Matthew Howard ’12 (MUS) is principal percussionist of the Los Angeles Philharmonic for the 2016-17 season.

Asma Shabab MA ’12 (SCJ) is marketing and communications leader for IBM’s Watson Internet of Things covering the Middle East, Africa and Turkey. She is a board member for the Chief Marketing Officer Council and of the College of Media and Mass Communications at the American University in the United Arab Emirates.

Carrie St. Louis ’12 (MUS), who played the role of Glinda in Broadway’s Wicked, performed at the White House in September 2016. The audience included the first lady and the spouses of heads of state, along with members of the United Nations General Assembly.

Will Sturgeon ’12 (MUS) and Aman Alem ’14 (MUS) performed at Coachella in 2016 and their band, brightener, placed first in the Tachevah battle of the bands.

Dara Zeehandelaar PhD ’12 (EDU) is executive director for research, data and accountability for the State of Maryland Department of Education.

Joshua Arnold EdD ’13 (EDU) is superintendent of Culver City Unified School District in California.

Aimee House MSW ’13 (SSW) is a social worker at the University of Missouri Women’s and Children’s Hospital, where she is a member of a multidisciplinary team serving several departments, including pediatric diabetes/endocrinology, urology and family medicine.

Tiffany Jones PhD ’13 (EDU) is director of higher education policy at The Education Trust in Washington, D.C.

Chelsea Lloyd ’13 (DRA) was selected as one of Jewish Women’s Theatre’s NEXT @ The Braid Arts Council fellows.

Tonantzin Oseguera EdD ’13 (EDU) was named associate vice president for student affairs at California State University, Fullerton.

Jules Pegram ’13 (MUS) participated in the 2016 ASCAP Film Scoring Workshop in Los Angeles and received the 2016 ASCAP Foundation Harold Arlen Film & TV Award, which recognizes outstanding writers who have participated in the workshop.

Joy Ashcraft MSW ’14 (SSW) is the Maryland state project coordinator for the Building Healthy Military Communities program, a pilot project conducted in seven states with the goal of understanding the unique challenges to the readiness, resiliency and well-being of service members and their families.

A.J. Helfet ’14 (DRA/LAS) appeared in HBO’s All the Way. Jennifer Kranz ’14 (DRA) played the lead role of Jolene Oakes in Musical Theatre West’s production of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels after finishing the workshop for the new musical Recorded in Hollywood.

Elizabeth Trayner EdD ’14 (EDU) was named dean of students at San Francisco Art Institute.

Aaron R. Harris ’15 (ENG) celebrated one year as a software development engineer at Amazon.com.

Brian Robert Jones ’15 (MUS) performed with singer Gwen Stefani at the Aria Resort and Casino in Las Vegas following Stefani’s 28-city “This is What the Truth Feels Like” tour, on which Jones performed from July to October 2016.

Michael Malconian ’15 (DRA) is a voice actor for the “Unsolved Murders” and “Remarkable Lives, Tragic Deaths” podcasts, which are produced by Parcast.com.

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What Will Your Trojan Legacy Be? For Sophia Balakrishnan, honoring her late husband by making a gift through her estate to endow a USC Viterbi School of Engineering academic chair was an easy decision. Never mind that Professor A.V. “Bal” Balakrishnan MS ’50, PhD ’54—who was a pioneer in engineering—taught at UCLA for 50 years.

Bal was always a Trojan.

“My gift to USC ensures Bal’s legacy will live on in the research and teachings of exceptional professors.”

Sophia Balakrishnan

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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summer 2017

family class notes Eve Turner MBT ’15 (ACC) is principal and CPA of ETC Consulting Inc., an accounting, auditing and tax firm.

Patricia Brent-Sanco EdD ’16 (EDU) is director of equity at Lynwood Unified School District in California.

Julio Vincent Gambuto MFA ’16 (SCA) published Freelance Heaven, an e-book with 100 tips for freelancers to start a business or find new ways to grow one.

Alex Hahn MM ’16 (MUS), a saxophonist, and trombonist Jon Hatamiya MM ’16 (MUS) received full scholarships for the highly regarded Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance.

Kelly Merritt ’16 (DRA) was a production assistant for Center Theatre Group’s production of the musical Zoot Suit.

Emmanuel Najera MSW ’16 (SSW) is a mental health therapist with the outpatient team at The Guidance Center in Long Beach, California, where she provides mental health services to disadvantaged families.

Chantal Nchako MFA ’16 (DRA) worked opposite James Franco, Camille Belle and Summer Phoenix in The Mad Whale. She also performed in a workshop of the play BLKS for the Ojai Playwrights’ Festival.

Pallavi Srinivasan ’16 (DRA) was associate choreographer for the Kingsmen Shakespeare Company and also played the roles of Alice in Henry V and Peaseblossom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

M A R R I A G E S Jaime Colmenares ’95 (BUS) and Cecily Olson ’99 (SCJ).

PHOTO BY JON VIDAR

Daisy Ruiz ’01 (SCJ) and Steven Purcell ’02 (ENG).

Glennon Stratton ’04 (SCJ), MBA ’12 (BUS) and Kaitlyn Ramirez ’05 (SCA), MBA ’13 (BUS).

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Beccy Aldrich ’05, MA ’06 (OST) and Rob Moreland.

Jennifer Brienen ’06 (SDA) and Gregory Sarvas.

Irma Vargas ’09 (LAS), JD ’14 (LAW) and Juan Rodarte ’14 (LAS).

Rebekah Sick Olkowski ’09 (LAS) and Gary Olkowski, a son, Robin Alexander.

He joins twin brothers Darin and David.

Clint Sylvestre MS ’09 (ENG) and Nereida Sylvestre, a daughter, Leah. She joins brother Matthew.

Bob Nolte ME ’12 (EDU) and Kate Gruenewald.

Peter Chiu MBA ’13 (BUS) and Lily Zapata MBA ’13 (BUS).

Victoria Nicole Flores MD ’16 (MED) and Kenneth Moses.

Kristin Geiling EdD ’16 (EDU) and John Walje IV EdD ’16 (EDU).

B I R T H S T R O J A N Gwen (Huling) Lopez Ozieblo ’96 (BUS) and Rob Lopez Ozieblo, a daughter, Gemma Snow.

Alison Peck ’05 (SCA) and Daniel Rose ’02 (SCA), a son, Adam Jacob.

Shiloh Winder ’05 (LAS) and Myka Winder ’07 (LAS), MA ’10, OTD ’11 (OST), a daughter, Amelia Jane.

Jeff Prugh MFA ’07 (SCA) and Karen R. Prugh, a daughter, Quincy James.

Elizabeth Kuhn ’07 (LAS) and Andrew Green ’07 (MUS), MAT ’08 (EDU), a son, Christopher Michael Nagem.

Paul Giuliano ’08 (ENG) and Jaclyn (Kilfoyle) Giuliano ’09 (ART), a daughter, Margaux Ann. Annelise (King) McQuay ’08 and Colin McQuay ’09, MBA ’16, a daughter, Molly Elizabeth. Grandfather is William King ’74 (SCJ) and great-grandfather is Clark McQuay DDS ’50 (DEN).

T R I B U T E

Kevin Starr As a fourth-generation San Franciscan, historian Kevin Starr knew California like few others, and he brought the state’s stories to life in the pages of his influential books.

Starr joined the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences in 1989. A professor of history and policy, planning and development, he held the title of University Professor, reserved for faculty of great accomplishment.

Starr attended the University of San Francisco. He served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army from 1962 to 1964. He went on to Harvard University, where he earned his doctorate in English and American literature and honed his interest in California history from an insider’s perspective. He also earned a master’s in library science from UC Berkeley.

A sought-after lecturer and writer, he was known for his rich explorations of life in California. He wrote the renowned eight-volume series Americans and the California Dream, which chronicles the social and cultural history of the state. He served as State Librarian of California from 1994 to 2004.

His most recent book, Continental Ambitions: Roman Catholics in North America, the Colonial Experience, was published last November. He received the Presidential Medal from USC, the National Humanities Medal from President George W. Bush and the Centennial Medal from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard. In 2010, he was inducted into the California Hall of Fame.

Starr died Jan. 17 at age 76. He is survived by his wife of 53 years, Sheila; daughters Jessica and Marian; and seven grandchildren.

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Reunion. (we can’t have a reunion without “u”)

We’re celebrating Reunion Weekend 2017 on November 3-4. If you graduated in 1967, 1977, 1982, 1987, 1992, 1997, 2002 or 2007, it’s your year to come back to campus ― to see old friends, experience Homecoming and relive your USC memories!

For details, registration and reunion class giving information, visit reunions.usc.edu or call (213) 740-2300.

ALUMNI.USC.EDU | ALUMNI@USC.EDU | TEL: 213 740 2300

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Obituaries of members of the Trojan Family appear online at tfm.usc.edu/tributes.

family class notes Sara Arias MSW ’15 (SSW) and Victor Arias, a daughter, Claire Lynette Louise.

Anne Clements Clark Eldred ’53 (LAS), MM ’57 (MUS) of Sierraville, California; Sept. 19, 2016, at the age of 84.

I N

Robert J. Morrow ’55 (ACC) of Austin, Texas; Nov. 16, 2016, at the age of 88.

M E M O R I A M

A L U M N I Fred Keenan ’37 (BUS) of Glendale, California; Aug. 17, 2016, at the age of 101.

Carl M. Rodarty ’43 (ENG) of Ventura, California; Aug. 19, 2015, at the age of 93.

Marvin Leaf DDS ’44 (DEN) of Rancho Mirage, California; Dec. 10, 2016, at the age of 95.

Tom Nickoloff ’55 (BUS) of Woodland Hills, California; Oct. 23, 2016, at the age of 84.

Robert Tiemann MFA ’60 (ART) of Odessa, Texas; Dec. 29, 2016, at the age of 81.

June Brown MSW ’61, DSW ’70 (SSW) of Culver City, California; Sept. 11, 2016, at the age of 88.

FA C U LT Y A N D F R I E N D S Lester T. Hibbard of Carmel, California; Oct. 3, 2016, at the age of 97.

William Rideout of Raleigh, North Carolina; Mar. 14, 2016 at the age of 86.

Robert W. Roberts of San Diego, California; Nov. 8, 2016, at the age of 84.

L E G E N D

LAS

ACC ARC BUS SCA SCJ

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

DNC DEN DRA EDU ENG ART GRN LAW MED MUS OST

USC Kaufman School of Dance 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 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

Thomas R. Spooner ’84 (BUS) of Newport Beach, California; Sept. 27, 2016, at the age of 55.

SPP SSW

USC Price School of Public Policy USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work

Herbert Whitehead ’50 (ENG) of Temecula, California; Aug. 25, 2016, at the age of 91.

Kent C. Kirkpatrick ’89 (BUS) of Manhattan Beach, California; Aug. 31, 2016, at the age of 49.

Frances Rothschild ’52 (EDU) of Louisville, Kentucky; Aug. 31, 2016, at the age of 87.

Shan Clawson ’90 (BUS) of Peoria, Arizona; Sept. 15, 2016, at the age of 47.

Matt DeGrushe, Michelle Dumas, James Feigert, Harmony Frederick, Wendy Gragg, Katherine Griffiths, Leticia Lozoya, Mike McNulty, Jane Ong, Kristi Patton, Stacey Wang Rizzo, Nicole Stark and Deann Webb contributed to this section.

Richard Zigrang ’52 (LAS), DDS ’54 (DEN) of Rancho Palos Verdes, California; Jan. 3, 2017, at the age of 88.

Clinton La Grange MD ’92 (MED) of Santa Barbara, California; Nov. 16, 2016, at the age of 50.

William “Bill” Frederick Smith ’45 (ENG) of Rancho Palos Verdes, California; Dec. 8, 2016, at the age of 91.

Jean Mildred Watson Wright ’46 (EDU) of Grants Pass, Oregon; July 15, 2016, at the age of 92.

Norman Ward ’49 (BUS) of Laguna Niguel, California; Sept. 10, 2016, at the age of 91.

Robert Brooks Chamberlain Barnhill ’50 (BUS) of Seal Beach, California; June 6, 2016, at the age of 91.

Jordan Turk Eliades MS ’50 (EDU) of Bakersfield, California; Dec. 15, 2016, at the age of 93.

Malcolm Lucas ’50 (LAS), LLB ’53 (LAW) of Los Angeles; Sept. 28, 2016, at the age of 89.

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James W. Kinney ’61 (LAS), MS ’68 (EDU) of Palos Verdes Estates, California; Oct. 18, 2016, at the age of 77.

Stephen T. Cirillo ’68, MA ’70 (ARC) of Henderson, Nevada; Nov. 28, 2015, at the age of 69.

Bette Kroening MSW ’69 (SSW) of Berkeley, California; Feb. 16, 2017, at the age of 71.

Barry Socher ’69 (MUS) of Los Angeles; Oct. 22, 2016, at the age of 68.

John Ross Boyd ’70 (LAS) of Rosamond, California; July 9, 2016, at the age of 69.

Titsa Panayota Papantoni-Kazakos PhD ’73 (ENG) of Denver; July 8, 2016, at the age of 71.

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Have a photo to share? Send it to 3434 S. Grand Ave., CAL 140, Los Angeles, CA, 90089-2818 or magazines@usc.edu.

Timeless Tommy

In the inset photo from 1930, costumed dance students from the Department of Physical Education salute the then-new Trojan Shrine, which was officially unveiled in June of that year.

Just two years earlier, building a warrior statue was an idea that had popular support, but not much traction. James McCoy ’06, president of USC’s alumni association, decided to take charge.

Determined to create a “permanent manifestation of the Trojan Spirit,” McCoy organized a committee and launched a search for a sculptor.

He found Roger Noble Burnham, a noted Los Angeles artist with studios on the corner of Vermont Avenue and Third Street, who shared his vision.

Burnham quickly began work, and Trojan football

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players served as models for the life-size bronze statue.

To cover the $10,000 project, the university agreed to add $1 to each alumni season football ticket for two years.

The Trojan Shrine was presented during the university’s weeklong 50th anniversary celebration and has come to fulfill the role McCoy envisioned eight decades ago: “The symbol ‘Trojan’ should be perpetuated in the form of a Trojan Warrior, set up on the campus and so located that it would constitute a rallying point for the student body.”

BEHIND THE SCENES

Ever wonder what it takes to get just the right shot for the “Now and Again” column in USC Trojan Family Magazine?

Find out by watching an exclusive video of a shoot at bit.ly/TFMNowAndAgain.

ELISA HUANG

summer 2017

PHOTO BY DUSTIN SNIPES

now and again

THE KECK EFFECT: MORE SWEET SONGS As one of the nation’s top academic medical centers, Keck Medicine of USC is leading the way in delivering more medical breakthroughs. Our experts provide health-care excellence through research and clinical trials, while ensuring each patient receives the latest comprehensive, personalized treatments. That’s The Keck Effect — more expertise to get you back to doing what you love, faster.

With locations throughout Southern California, exceptional care is close to you. See how we’re redefining medicine.

Get expert health tips

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