Trojan Family Magazine Summer 2015 by University of Southern California

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6/22/15 12:15 PM

scene The Trojans go into next season determined to build on their success after another top 10 finish. USC finished 8th at the 2015 NCAA Women’s Swimming and Diving Championships. Diver Haley Ishimatsu ’15 took top USC honors with second place on platform. USC is one of only four schools to post NCAA top 8 finishes in women’s swimming each of the past six years.

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6/26/15 1:11 AM

PHOTO BY JOHN MCGILLEN

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Editor’s Note We’re breathing easier in LA these days.

President’s Page A visionary gift will help USC unlock the greatest mysteries of the human brain.

Mailbag Pats, pride and other observations from our readers.

News The talented Trojans behind Mad Men, an expert’s tips for raising teens, and USC welcomes the Special Olympics.

A Quick Mind By Merrill Balassone Get to know USC’s new provost.

Tools of the Trade Students bring their innovative ideas to life at the USC Iovine and Young Academy.

inside

24 He Takes Everything Into Account By Greg Hardesty Accounting built America and it’s the hidden structure of our daily lives, says one USC scholar.

26 An Injection of Science

By Candace Pearson Keck Medicine of USC physicians do their part to help patients ward off measles, mumps and more.

Before you put off bedtime again, learn how skipping sleep may harm your health. By Esther Landhuis

ILLUSTRATION BY CHRIS GASH

Alumni News Having a ball at the Trojan Family Game Day Experience, doing good on the Alumni Day of SCervice and toasting the 110th anniversary of Town & Gown.

Class Notes Who’s doing what and where?

Ask Tommy Readers remember extraordinary professors and their life-changing lessons.

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The Science of Sleep

Infectious diseases like measles have returned across the U.S., even though they’re largely preventable.

Quest for the Best Whether large or small, gifts to the Campaign for USC build up the university in ways we’d never imagined. By USC Trojan Family Magazine staff

Clear the Air USC air quality researchers see their work making a difference in Southern California. By Katharine Gammon

The Trojan Ticket The Garcias live next to USC, but attending the university was a challenging journey measured by more than city blocks. By Diane Krieger

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6/29/15 2:17 AM

e d i t o r’ s n o t e

Hazy Memories Like many of our readers, I grew up in Southern California when smog was just an accepted part of the landscape. During my teens, I’d finish high school track practice doubled over, unable to take a deep breath thanks to stabbing pain in my chest. It was a part of living in the Los Angeles area that I thought was unchangeable. But I was wrong. A dozen years after I ran my last mile for Culver City High School in the 1980s, I met the Keck School of Medicine of USC researchers I came to call “the smog guys.” These scientists investigated how air quality was affecting kids who grew up in Southern California. What they told me—at that time a medical writer at USC’s Health Sciences Campus—was shocking. Their studies showed that the air we’d breathed as children kept our lungs from growing to their full potential, and we’d never get that lung capacity back. Yet the researchers also inspired me. They used science to illuminate public health issues that matter to people from Los Angeles to Mexico City, from Paris to Beijing. In 2000, their decade-long study in the LA area showed that high air pollution levels could slow children’s lung function growth enough to cause concern from a doctor. That same year, communities in Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside counties had no stage 1 smog alerts—a big gain over the 42 smog-alert days seen in 1990. California now has the strictest air quality standards of any state, and the scientists see clear signs of progress. As you’ll read in our pages, they’ve recently found that Southern California’s children are finally breathing easier thanks to the cleanest air in years, a product of commitment across government, industries and LA’s residents. Now that’s research with consequence.

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

Alicia Di Rado M ANAGI NG E DI TOR

Elisa Huang SE NI O R E DI TO R

Diane Krieger PRO DUCT I O N M ANAG ER

Mary Modina

ART DI RE CTO R

Sheharazad P. Fleming DE SI GN AND PRO DUCTION

Pentagram Design, Austin

CO NT RI BUTO RS

Oswaldo Abreu Laurie Bellman Cheryl Collier Nicole DeRuiter Paul Goldberg Roberto Gomez

Sue Khodarahmi Russ Ono Desa Philadelphia Grace Shiba Holly Wilder Claude Zachary

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

Minne Ho M ARKE T I NG M ANAG ER

Rod Yabut ADVE RT I SI NG I NQ UIRIES

Kristy Day | kday@lamag.com

USC Trojan Family Magazine 3434 S. Grand Ave., CAL 140 Los Angeles, CA 90089-2818 magazines@usc.edu | (213) 740-2684

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USC Trojan Family Magazine (ISSN 8750-7927) is published in March, July, September and December by USC University Communications.

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summer 2015

6/19/15 3:35 AM

p r e s i d e n t’ s p a g e

Mapping the Future

PHOTO BY STEVE COHN

b y c. l. m a x n i k i a s In March, when USC announced that it had received a landmark $50 million gift from longtime benefactors Mark and Mary Stevens, a suite of articles praised their philanthropy. The Los Angeles Times picked up my quote commending the couple’s already spectacular philanthropic legacy at the university, while the Los Angeles Business Journal pointed out that they would endow and name “one of the leading brain research facilities in the nation.” All of this heralded an institute whose scope and significance exceeded the hype: the USC Mark and Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute. But, in reading the coverage, what I found most gratifying was the fact that it never lost sight of the purpose of the Stevenses’ philanthropy. The Almanac, a publication based near their home in Atherton, California, noted that their gift promises to improve the lives of millions of people worldwide, and that it will speed the translation of basic research into new therapies and cures for brain injury and disease. These benefits are very real and will touch countless human beings, with direct implications for those living with Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia, autism, epilepsy, traumatic brain injuries and learning challenges. For the Stevenses, the fight is as personal as it is noble. “My father has Alzheimer’s and one of our sons is dyslexic,” Mark told the Chronicle of Philanthropy. In that same interview, he spoke of the transformative power of the gift and how it would allow USC researchers to use big data to advance their work. “Our understanding of the brain right now is very coarse,” Mark explained. “It’s like looking at the Earth from far away and seeing only the outlines, when what you really want to be able to see are the details.” Indeed, their gift is a tremendous vote of confidence in Professors Arthur Toga and Paul Thompson, two of the world’s most prominent and prolific researchers in the field of neuroimaging. At USC, Professors Toga and Thompson lead a dynamic team of 130 faculty researchers and multidisciplinary staff, and together they have achieved an impressive list of firsts. The team was the first to map the spread of Alzheimer’s disease in the living human brain, and the first to create comprehensive, population-based, digital 3-D atlases of the brain to examine the effects of neurological diseases. This group was also the first to uncover advances that have profound implications for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and HIV, and the first to assemble and integrate large quantities of tfm.usc.edu

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data toward a comprehensive picture of the brain. The Stevenses’ gift—when considered alongside their previous gifts for the USC Stevens Center for Innovation, the Stevens Academic Center for our student-athletes, and the USC Caruso Catholic Center—places them squarely among the most illustrious benefactors in our university’s history, as well as among our nation’s most distinguished philanthropists in the area of higher education. Their gift also puts an exclamation point on an extraordinary semester for our Campaign for USC—and the support shown by our other venerable trustees. As this magazine goes to press, USC received an exceptional $25 million gift from Rick Caruso and his wife, Tina, that names the USC Tina and Rick Caruso Department of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery. The Carusos’ generosity will dramatically accelerate the work of those committed to improving human health. Our university is so fortunate to have the support of the Stevenses and Carusos. Their dedication to USC— and their vision for how philanthropy can translate to compassion, champion research and better society—is as far-reaching as it is stellar.

C. L. Max Nikias (far right) with Mark and Mary Stevens and their children Samantha, Scott and Sean.

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mailbag We welcome your feedback. Submit your letter to the editor at tfm.usc. edu/mailbag or by email at magazines@usc.edu.

Puppy Love I really enjoyed the article about George Tirebiter (“Bite On!” Spring 2015, p. 17), especially because I was at USC at that time. He was a campus favorite and I watched him many times as he attacked the tires on moving cars. I would also like to congratulate all those professors and administrators who have enabled USC to make such remarkable academic progress since the time I attended. Nathan Gainsboro ’49 (ENG)

Granada Hills, CA At last, a photo of George Tirebiter! I had no idea his statue existed on campus. When I was growing up, my father, Charles P. Avery ’42 (SPP), would tell stories about Mr. Tirebiter. I imagined a much more formidable beast than pictured in the article. Like a great small running back, he made his mark, even if it was in rubber. I’ll try to come to Homecoming this year, and if so, make a pilgrimage to Mudd Hall to say hello to the Mutt of Troy. Brad Avery ’79 (LAS)

Los Altos Hills, CA E D I T O R ’ S N OT E : Claude Zachary, USC’s sharp-eyed university archivist, notes that the photo accompanying our story depicted George Tirebiter II, the successor of the original tire-loving pooch and model for the Tirebiter statue. George Tirebiter III followed in 1957 (though he was largely considered unofficial), and the fourth had a one-season stint before the university retired the beloved dog mascot.

Water Wise Thank you for providing more articles on water research and technologies. “On Drier Ground” and “Quenching Their Thirst” (Spring 2015, p. 48) are excellent articles on our global water dilemma. Frederick E. Esters Wellington, FL I enjoyed the article “On Drier Ground.” However, there was a gross inaccuracy in the statistics used regarding water use in California. The article stated that ag-

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riculture uses 80 percent of California’s water. That is factually untrue and this percentage is often thrown around by those with hidden agendas. Agriculture means jobs for many in California, especially those who work the fields. Let’s get the statistics right so we can have an honest conversation! Agriculture uses 42 percent of annual water available in California in any given year, urban use accounts for 11 percent, and the environment utilizes the lion’s share at 47 percent. Look it up! Mic h ael E . Kel l e y ’ 87 (LAS) Fresno, CA (The writer is president and CEO of the Central California Almond Growers Association.) ED I T O R’S N OT E: While some 50 percent of the state’s water is set aside for the environment, this environmental water—required to protect habitat in lakes, rivers and wetlands—is considered an unavailable resource. When looking at available water resources, agriculture accounts for 80 percent of use. As more people recognize that we must prioritize how we use water—watering an ornamental lawn versus growing food and livestock, for example—it’s clear that engineers, policymakers and all Californians must work together to find innovative and realistic solutions to overcome the drought’s hurdles.

Job Well Done I would like to congratulate USC Trojan Family magazine on a professional, fabulous and artistic magazine—Spring 2015. The layout is extraordinary, the photos are sharp and timely, the articles are well written, and the feel of the magazine is truly Trojan. Every inch of the magazine was created with thought and care. A work of art that is professional and yet has the personal touch. Well done. Jennifer Siu ’81, MA ’83 (LAS) Los Angeles, CA

SOCIAL

MEDIA

We’ve been asking Trojans to share their USC love stories using the #USCLoveStory hashtag on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. You’ve delivered, posting pictures ranging from engagement shots at the Coliseum (like Scott Simpson ’06 and Ashley Rogers ’08, above) to wedding portraits in front of Bovard Auditorium. After all, college brings partners together, according to 2013 Facebook research:

28% of married Facebook users who are college graduates wedded a fellow alum.

But one of our favorite posts on Instagram showed that a #USCLoveStory also can be about enduring friendship and the outdoors instead of romance. @jensmidthun and @brianlentz13 met and became best climbing buds on a 40-day expedition in the Himalayas. “Both #USC grads, we were instant friends, whether it was motivating the group through adversity or leading late-night philosophy discussions.”

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autumn 2014

6/19/15 3:39 AM

TROJAN

ILLUSTRATION BY OSWALDO ABREU ’14

END OF AN ERA If you’re a fan of AMC’s Mad Men, you probably watched antihero ad man Don Draper drift peacefully through the dawn of the 1970s in the TV show’s record-setting May finale. Now turn the page to learn about creator Matthew Weiner MFA ’90 and the other Trojan talent behind the show.

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trojan news CREATOR (1)

USC’S MAD WORLD

Matthew Weiner MFA ’90, creator and principal writer for Mad Men, has taught at the USC School of Cinematic Arts (an undergraduate screenwriting course for a semester) and stocked the Mad Men staff with USC graduates. What does he look for when hiring promising talent? Those who are well read and worldly, he says, “curious people who can contribute in ways other than just doing their job.”

Don Draper hung up his fedora for the last time in May, but Mad Men’s legacy lives on. We take a look at talented Trojans who helped make the groundbreaking television series a cultural phenomenon.

Matthew D. Egan MFA ’05 Propmaker

Gary Freund ’49 Prop supplier for period material

PROPS (14-16)

Heather Jeng Bladt ’05 Writer and assistant

WRITING, EDITING AND PRODUCING (2-8)

Melissa Bly McSorley ’85 Food stylist and prop assistant

16 15 Bartholomew Burcham ’04 Assistant editor

2 1 Kendra Shay Clark MFA ’05 Casting associate

14 3 13 4

Stephanie Drake ’05 Actress (played role of Meredith)

Michelle Fellner MFA ’02 Assistant editor

12 5

CASTING AND TALENT (12-13)

Jonathan Igla ’05 Writer and executive story editor

6 10

Carly Wray MFA ’05 Staff writer

7 9

Lindsey Villarreal MFA ’13 Producers’ assistant

*Her role as Don Draper’s clueless but lovable secretary made her a fan favorite.

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Marcy Patterson ’02 Co-producer Haley Willis ’13 Writers’ production assistant

SUPPORT (9-11)

PHOTOS BY ROBERTO GOMEZ

Jenny Koreny MFA ’13 Second assistant

Erin Levy ’05 Writer and supervising producer *She took a rewriting class from Weiner at USC, and in 2010 won an Emmy for writing on his show.

summer 2015

6/19/15 3:39 AM

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trojan news An expert in parent-child relationships offers survival tips for adolescence. By Diane Krieger

HELP! My Teen Hates Me Your silent teenager won’t look up from texting. Your not-so-silent one screams in your face, “I wish I was never born!” Either way, you might be wondering if you’re doing this parenting thing right. For USC’s Julie Cederbaum, the answers require taking a look at the bigger picture. Healthy households grapple with teen angst holistically, says Cederbaum, assistant professor in the USC School of Social Work. That could mean counseling—for everyone in the family. “Otherwise it’s like a game of telephone,” says Cederbaum, whose philosophy draws on her background in public health and social work. “You don’t know how the dialogue in a one-on-one session is being translated later at home.” A specialist in risky teen behaviors, mental health and HIV prevention, Cederbaum understands the challenges facing parents. To nurture a healthy parent-teen relationship, she advises, communicate early and often, especially about uncomfortable coming-of-age topics. Many parents believe teens have already heard it all, but research shows that children make the healthiest decisions about sex and substance use when they hear messages from their parents. “We fail kids when we think that they can navigate an adult world alone,” she says.

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That’s because teens, while highly intuitive and acutely aware of everything around them, wear blinders when it comes to long-term planning. “Adolescents do not have consequential thinking,” Cederbaum says. “They’re very in-the-moment—and that’s totally developmentally appropriate.” Here are some of her tips for dealing with touchy teens: My teenager refuses to talk to me. Now what? It’s not an ego blow. You might not be the person your kid needs to talk to, so find a surrogate. Who would your child feel comfortable getting that message from? An aunt, grandparent, coach or the family doctor? These people can be very influential in giving the same message or supporting the parent’s message. And take the initiative to tell the surrogate the values that are important to you. What if my teenager screams, “I hate you”? That leads to a conversation about respect. Kids are smart. They know your weaknesses. They’ll push your buttons, test your limits. If you’re really angry or hurt, take five minutes to ground yourself. Sometimes that’s the hardest thing to do. But the goal is to have a thoughtful conversation, not a reactive conversation.

Mine is begging for a tattoo. What should I do? The message should be: Your body is yours. Ultimately you’re going to make decisions around it. But there are laws [about being underage], and there’s a reason that there are laws. You don’t need a tattoo of Winnie-the-Pooh. That’s not the permanent choice you want to make. Maybe I’d strike a deal and say, “When you’re 18, we’ll go together to a reputable tattoo parlor,” or “If in a year you still feel this way, we’ll have this conversation again.” I think it’s good to teach our kids self-control. We don’t always have to get everything we want the minute we want it. What are the telltale signs of a moody teen versus one who’s really in trouble? When they isolate themselves from you, I would be concerned. Yes, teens are going to be resistant—they roll their eyes, they think you’re lame. But coming home at the end of day, unwilling to talk about anything that happened to them, spending the evening in their room with the door closed, only coming out to eat dinner and then going back—I think that’s a red flag that something more significant is happening.

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trojan news Game Changers In July, Randy Johnson will be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. He joins two other USC icons who made their mark on the national pastime.

Tom Seaver PITCHER (INDUCTED 1992) USC Posted a 10-2 record after being recruited by legendary Trojan coach Rod Dedeaux BIG LEAGUES Mets, Reds, White Sox, Red Sox CAREER HONORS 10 All-Star teams, 3 Cy Young Awards FOR THE RECORD Fifth player in history to achieve 3,000 strikeouts FUN FACT “Tom Terrific” struck out the last 10 consecutive batters to lead the Mets to a 2-1 win over the Padres in 1970.

Randy Johnson PITCHER (INDUCTED 2015) USC In 1985, led the Trojans with 118.1 innings pitched, 99 strikeouts, 6 starts BIG LEAGUES Expos, Mariners, Astros, Yankees, Diamondbacks, Giants CAREER HONORS 10 All-Star teams, World Series MVP, 5 Cy Young Awards FOR THE RECORD Baseball’s all-time leader in strikeouts per 9 innings, with 10.6 FUN FACT At 6-foot-10, the “Big Unit” attended USC on a joint baseball and basketball scholarship and was the tallest player ever in Major League Baseball when he debuted.

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T R O J A N

T I M E

M A C H I N E

Unveiled in 1930, USC’s Tommy Trojan statue has long served as a handy meeting spot. Known as the Trojan Shrine, the sculpture created by Roger Noble Burnham remains ageless, while fashion, landscaping and students’ preferred modes of transportation shift with the sands of time. See how many differences you can spot between these scenes, photographed in the 1940s and 2014.

VINTAGE PHOTO COURTESY OF USC UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES; PRESENT-DAY PHOTO BY GUS RUELAS

Pat Gillick EXECUTIVE (INDUCTED 2011) USC Pitcher for the Trojan team that won the 1958 College World Series BIG LEAGUES Blue Jays, Orioles, Mariners, Phillies CAREER HONORS 3 World Series titles, Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame, Ontario Sports Hall of Fame FOR THE RECORD In his 27 seasons as a general manager, Gillick led teams to the postseason 11 times and finished with 20 winning records. FUN FACT Gillick earned the nickname “Wolley Segap”— Yellow Pages spelled backward— for his exceptional ability to memorize the phone book.

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trojan news

AB OU T M ICH A E L Q UI CK ROLE Provost and senior vice president of academic affairs PREVIOUS TITLES Interim provost, USC Professor of biological sciences and vice dean for research, USC Dornsife Associate professor of biological sciences, University of Alabama at Birmingham LAB LIFE How drugs alter signaling properties of nerve cells GRADUATE WORK Neuroscience PhD from Emory University and postdoctoral fellowship at Caltech

A Quick Mind USCâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s new provost has advice for students, a vision for the universityâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and a foodie side. interview by merrill balassone

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summer 2015

6/19/15 3:41 AM

Michael Quick might not yet be a household name for the Trojan Family, but give him time. The USC Dornsife professor of biological sciences recently was chosen from more than 200 candidates, including several university presidents, to become USC’s new provost. We sat down with the affable administrator and neuroscientist known for his dry wit to discuss USC’s future, words of wisdom for students and his unintentional route to leadership.

PHOTO BY GUS RUELAS

You were a first-generation college student and you put in a lot of sweat equity to pay your own way. Is that what inspired you to make college more accessible? My father worked tunnel construction his whole life. So when I was in college, I needed to pay for it. He was nice enough to get me some tunnel jobs with people he knew. Working in construction taught me a lot. It taught me not to be afraid. It taught me about how to work hard. I feel lucky every day I get up and I don’t have to go down into the tunnels. I went to Oglethorpe University, a small liberal arts college in Atlanta. My high school grades were terrible, but the college saw something in me and said, “You’re worth taking a risk on.” I grew up in college. I’m proud that USC has so many students who come from community college and financially diverse backgrounds. We do anything we can do to find students from a lot of different places. It’s great not only for them, but it’s great for this university. You learn so much by being around people who are not like you.

“You learn so much by being around people who are not like you.” tfm.usc.edu

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Given that USC’s past two provosts became college presidents [C. L. Max Nikias at USC and Elizabeth Garrett at Cornell University], do you see yourself in that role someday? I don’t think about the future that way. Every job I’ve had, I’ve loved, and that was whether I was working construction or stocking grocery shelves. I’ve loved being a scientist. I’ve loved being a teacher. [Quick will continue to teach his undergraduate course on diseases of the nervous system one semester a year.] Being in the provost job, it’s certainly going to be challenging. There’s so much to do at this university, so I’m looking forward to it. How do you balance great research and great teaching at USC? What I love about USC is we have great people who are on different tracks. We have great faculty who purely do research and make amazing discoveries. We have faculty who are predominantly teachers, and they’re great in the classroom. Then we have faculty who mix those things. We want to find people who are passionate about what they do regardless of what that track is. People can contribute to this university, and this goes beyond the faculty, in a million different ways. You’ve often told students that having it all figured out by the time you enter college is a myth. Still true? That is one of the things I absolutely believe, yes. I think students put way too much pressure on themselves, thinking that they’re supposed to have it all figured out by the time they come out of the womb. Take your whole life to figure out what you’re going to do with it. You have a reputation as foodie. Do you have any foodie wishes for the USC campus, if you have any power to make that happen? I wish… There are so many great, sort of mom-and-pop food vendor places that you could bring onto our campuses that serve terrific food from hundreds of different nationalities, that our students should be trying to expand their horizons a little bit. It would be a great opportunity for the community to bond with the university.

THE ROL E O F A PROVO ST

If you’re having trouble visualizing what a university provost does, you’re not alone. Just ask USC Provost Michael Quick. “Even when I was in academia as a scientist, I had no idea what a provost was,” Quick says, and he’s only partly kidding. It’s a critical position. As chief academic officer, the provost is the second-highest-ranking officer and has a hand in budgeting and coordinating everything central to the traditional function of the university. Teaching? Check. The USC Office of the Provost oversees educational policies, deans and more than 6,600 faculty members. It rewards innovative teaching projects, supports mentoring among faculty and recruits top new faculty members. Then there’s learning. The provost makes sure that undergraduates’ courses challenge them and pique their intellectual curiosity. On the graduate and postdoctoral levels, Quick pushes for world-class research opportunities. Speaking of research: That falls under the provost’s purview as well. Quick’s team aims to give investigators the equipment and technology they need to conduct more than $600 million-a-year’s worth of studies. His world also includes medical education and USC’s hospitals, especially when it comes to spurring research projects that link medicine with sciences, humanities and other areas at USC. Spanning across these areas, efforts like Visions and Voices—USC’s arts and humanities initiative—as well as online education and strategic vision all fall to the Office of the Provost. For a neuroscientist like Quick, there’s a lot to learn about unfamiliar territory that stretches from art to humanities—although he’s already earned a track record of recruiting influential faculty who are making a difference across USC schools and programs. Says Quick: “Thank God I’m surrounded by a lot of smart people.”

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Students need no design or 3-D modeling skills to get started with the academyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 3-D printers. Designers upload their digital creations online, and 3-D printers extrude plastic to replicate the designs. These printers can create prototypes and models faster than ever before.

What if you could draw in space? Students use the 3Doodler, a 3-D printing pen (above) to turn scribbles into solid objects made of heated filaments of plastic (right). Credit card-sized, singleboard computers like Raspberry Pi (below) help students learn about coding and spawn tech creations.

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trojan news Tools of the Trade Great products start with a brilliant idea, but it’s a long road from idea to reality. Thanks to the tools available at the USC Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy for Arts, Technology and the Business of Innovation, budding USC designers can bring their concepts to life. From saws and glue guns to 3-D scanners and printers, you’ll find the trappings of plenty of undergraduate creativity in the Garage, the USC Iovine and Young Academy’s 9,000-square-foot “makerspace” in Steven and Kathryn Sample Hall.

Academy students use pastels, paint and other tools from the studio art world to put their vision on paper, fabric and cardboard.

A touchscreen calculator (right) could give school kids a fun way to discover how math works. This prototype was created by students Chloe Chan, Jennifer Haack, Chris Han and Riley Koidahl.

Traditional tools are often just as important to creators as high-tech ones. Soldering irons, tape measures, calipers and twine are a must for makers.

PHOTO BY MEIKO TAKECHI ARQUILLOS

Students use a compact projector (below) to quickly prototype augmented-reality exhibits, including a recent one on the history of American television.

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The head (right) was part of a presentation for an Innovators Roundtable featuring Autodesk “technology whisperer” Tatjana Dzambazova. Innovators Roundtables and Innovators Forums bring inventors, entrepreneurs and artists to the USC Iovine and Young Academy.

3-D printers make it easy for students to create complex objects out of plastic.

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trojan news

Academic All-Stars

ECO A DVOCAT E

Kaitlin Mogentale ’15 Major and minors Environmental studies; social entrepreneurship and urban policy and planning Claim to fame Proposes her social enterprise, “Pulp Pantry,” to address inefficiencies in the food system. It transforms fruit and vegetable pulp from commercial juice makers into healthy snacks. In her spare time Scuba diving, learning to surf and being in the great outdoors

G R A P HI C D E S I G NE R

Natasha Cirisano ’15 Major Fine art (design) Claim to fame Worked on projects for clients ranging from Infiniti to Crate and Barrel through an internship at advertising uber-agency TBWA\Chiat\Day Quotable quote “I love steampunk, trance music and punk rock, snorkeling, Americana, reading, the art of Assassin’s Creed and anything mango-flavored.”

RO C K E T MAN

Jason Silverman ’15, MS ’15 Major Astronautical engineering Claim to fame Earned prestigious $10,000 scholarship from the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation and worked as chief design engineer at the USC Rocket Propulsion Laboratory What’s next Engineering lifesupport systems for the Dragon Version 2 crew spacecraft at SpaceX

Speak Up Does speaking in front of a crowd make you sweat? Help might be on the way in the form of an electronic tool called Cicero. Named after the Roman rhetorician, Cicero enables people to practice speaking in front of a virtual audience. Users get the feedback of a live crowd, but without the bruised ego. Cicero’s master is Stefan Scherer, research assistant professor at USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) and USC Viterbi School of Engineering. The project combines machine-learning models and Toastmasters tips to automatically evaluate a person’s delivery and provide constructive critiques. To train Cicero, USC researchers recorded people speaking in public and monitored a menu of characteristics associated with good performances, like making eye contact, and bad ones, like speaking in a monotone. People make these judgments automatically, and the researchers discovered that computers can be taught to do the same. The initial Cicero prototype recognized properties of effective speeches nearly as accurately as the trained Toastmasters who volunteered to appraise the talks. ICT has long specialized in training systems to improve interpersonal skills. The U.S. Army is sponsoring Cicero to help develop leaders who are confident speaking in front of a crowd, and the National Science Foundation provides additional funding. The team sees other potential applications that can improve how people present themselves, like preparing politicians for press conferences or job candidates for interviews. They hope to roll out the project to the public within five years. But Scherer cautions that practice is just one part of delivering a crowd-pleasing presentation. “People project more confidence when they are enthusiastic about the message they want to deliver,” Scherer says. “There may be people who have plenty of training but they don’t believe in what they are saying.” And that may be the most valuable feedback of all. ORLI BELMAN

CICERO ILLUSTRATION BY KATHERINE DUFFY

The first class of USC Mork Family Scholars just closed the book on their undergraduate careers thanks to their scholarships—and their hard work. The full-tuition undergraduate scholarship program was made possible through a $110 million gift in 2011 from John Mork, chair of the USC Board of Trustees, and his wife, Julie. The graduates’ interests and experience vary widely, but they’re united in their academic excellence. Meet three of the first 19 scholars taking their Trojan talents out into the world, and read more at bit.ly/MorkScholars.

NO SUFFERING ARTISTS Maybe it’s a sign of the rise of the arts at USC: Students who get injured while dancing or performing onstage now have a fast lane to Keck Medicine of USC orthopaedic specialists, just like athletes do. A dedicated medical hotline for USC performing arts students is the brainchild of Jay Lieberman, professor and chair of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery. So dancers, keep twirling, and comic actors, keep the pratfalls coming. You’re in good hands.

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HEA LT H FIL ES If scientists have their way, our bodies’ immune system could clear away the brain plaques typical of Alzheimer’s disease. The research is still far from reaching patients, but Keck School of Medicine of USC researchers showed in the lab that blocking the protein interleukin-10 rallies the immune system to fight the sticky plaques related to Alzheimer’s, potentially reversing brain damage.

Stem cells might be the key to life for babies born with an abnormally short small intestine. Scientists at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles engineered stem cells to grow tissue that looks and acts like functioning small intestine. That feat brings doctors closer to a solution for intestinal failure beyond transplantation from donors. Currently, a third of babies with the condition don’t survive past five years.

Exercise is critical to keeping the weight off and preventing Type 2 diabetes. Now USC researchers think a newly discovered hormone could help too. When they injected mice with the hormone MOTS-c, the mice gained less weight and had betterregulated blood sugar than other mice eating the same fatty diet—no treadmill required.

PHOTO COURTESY OF SPECIAL OLYMPICS

MATCHED

LA Gets Into the Olympic Spirit This summer, USC will help more than 7,000 athletes with intellectual disabilities show that determination and the spirit of sportsmanship know no boundaries. Los Angeles will serve as host city for the 14th annual Special Olympics World Games from July 25 through Aug. 2, and USC will play a key role in hosting 25 Olympic-style sports that include gymnastics, basketball, judo, volleyball, triathlon and powerlifting. “For more than 43 years, the Special Olympics have been a shining symbol of the triumph of the human spirit,” noted USC President C. L. Max Nikias at a press conference announcing the event. Nikias served on LA’s Special Olympics bid committee. With more than 30,000 volunteers and an anticipated 500,000 spectators, the Special Olympics will be the world’s largest sports and humanitarian event this year—and the biggest event in Los Angeles since the 1984 Olympic Games. The July 25 opening ceremony will be held at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and is expected to draw 80,000 spectators and a worldwide audience as ESPN beams the event internationally. In addition to hosting events at the Galen Center, the Uytengsu Aquatics Center and Cromwell Field, the University Park Campus will serve as one of the Olympic Villages for visiting athletes, coaches, families and staff from 177 countries. Created in 1968 by Eunice Kennedy Shriver, the Special Olympics brings public attention to the capabilities of people with intellectual disabilities, helping to foster inclusion and acceptance.

Three decades after the 1984 Olympics, international athletes will descend on Los Angeles this summer.

Only 35 to 40 percent of patients who need bone marrow transplants end up with a donor who’s a perfect match. But thanks to medical advances, Keck Medical Center of USC can now use “half-matched” tissue for transplants. The transplants carry a higher risk of infection, but outcomes are nearly the same as in traditional transplants, and the procedures are less costly.

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trojan news 1976 GERALD R. FORD As the 38th U.S. president, Ford visited the University Park Campus during his election campaign. A few weeks after Ford lost the election, the University of Michigan, his alma mater, lost to USC in the 1977 Rose Bowl. Ford sent a $10 bill to USC President John Hubbard to settle a wager over the game.

Hail to the Chiefs U.S. presidents have a long history of visits to Trojan territory. By David Medzerian We haven’t had a Trojan in the White House—yet. But USC has had more than its share of memorable visits by past, present and future U.S. commanders in chief.

1911

1984 RONALD REAGAN Los Angeles hosted the 1984 Olympics during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, and he visited the campus before officially opening the Games. It wasn’t his first time at USC, though: As a young actor, Reagan had modeled for USC art students in a sculpture class as an example of the “ideal male physique.”

WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT The 27th president of the United States—who later served on the Supreme Court as its 10th chief justice— toured the University Park Campus during a visit to Los Angeles.

1935 FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT During his first term in office, Franklin D. Roosevelt and his wife, Eleanor, stopped by the USC administration building, where he was given an honorary degree. His motorcade then headed to the Coliseum, where he gave a speech to the assembled crowd.

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1960 RICHARD M. NIXON The 1960 presidential campaign brought two future presidents to USC as candidates participating in the university’s First-Time Voter Convocation.

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PHOTO BY KAREN BALLARD

2014 2013

1960 JOHN F. KENNEDY U.S. Sen. John F. Kennedy spoke to a crowd of some 15,000 students shortly before he was elected. A few weeks before the Kennedy visit, Vice President Richard M. Nixon spoke to supporters on campus. Nixon, a Southern California native, was elected to the nation’s highest office eight years later.

2000 GEORGE H.W. BUSH George H.W. Bush, the 41st U.S. president, was a guest speaker in the USC President’s Distinguished Lecture Series.

GEORGE W. BUSH Thirteen years after his father visited USC, George W. Bush spoke as part of the same lecture series. He and his wife, Laura, addressed students, faculty, guests and Widney Society members in Bovard Auditorium.

BILL CLINTON Bill Clinton, the 42nd president, took the Bovard stage at another USC President’s Distinguished Lecture Series event. “I wish I were your age,” Clinton told students in the audience. “I’d love to see what’s going to happen. We’re entering an age of unprecedented discovery. … It’s going to be an amazing time to be alive.”

PHOTO BY STEVE COHN

2010

BARACK OBAMA The nation’s 44th president visited the University Park Campus in 2010. His speech in front of Doheny Memorial Library—a rally just before the November midterm elections— drew about 37,500 people.

PHOTO BY PETE SOUZA

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F Ar C UoL Tj Ya Pn R O Fn I Le E w J As C O B t

S O L L

He Takes Everything Into Account For one USC professor, it’s time good accountants get the respect—and historical spotlight—they deserve.

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and things making sense.” Here are a few of his thoughts about the philosophy of good accounting and why accountants deserve rock-god status:

sen scandal in 1999, and the economic crash in 2007–2008, which had a lot to do with how mortgage bundles were valued and with individuals who were taking out mortgages they couldn’t understand or afford.”

A BLUEPRINT FOR AMERICA IS GOD RUNNING “People built countries with THE NUMBERS? accounting. Benjamin Franklin “In Dutch and Old English, acwas obsessed with it. He kept counting ledgers were called account books. He wrote his autobiography in a ledger on the ‘reckoning books.’ In the Bible, God is the final accountant who debit side. He wrote a book of balances the books of life and moral accounts. He wrote about death. He tallies your sins and how important accounting was does the reckoning and decides and came up with a scheme to whether you go to heaven or hell. teach accounting to all AmeriGod is a big-time accountant.” cans. America was built on accounting.” THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM “No one wants to talk about acTHE HIGH COST OF counting, because that’s where FINANCIAL INSTABILITY the books are, that’s where “Countries that have clear acthe secrets are. But we need counting, like Britain, have better long-term prospects. The U.S. some clarity. Everyone gets audited—you figure out what does not have good accounting. is wrong and then you fix it. If And the American economy you want to have an economy has been destabilized twice that grows and works, you need in the last 20 years by accompetent financial managecounting scandals—the Enron, ment mixed with transparency, WorldCom and Arthur Ander-

competent bookkeeping mixed with auditing. If you want to reform yourself, the tool you use is accounting.” MORE THAN BEAN COUNTERS “There are no accounting leaders, and there should be. Accountants need to be involved in culture, they need to read, and they need to explain to people what accounting is. They can’t just keep the books. Benjamin Franklin saw accounting as part of a leadership culture. It should be on everyone’s lips when there’s a problem.” PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER © 2015. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Jacob Soll packs up to leave a café in West Los Angeles, and suddenly stops. He forgot something: his receipt. After all, his snack was a business expense, Soll says, hailing a server. “You need to think like an accountant,” he adds. And he always does. For Soll, 46, tracking money is about more than staving off a tax audit. “Accounting is the hidden structure behind our entire lives,” he explains. In other words, it’s an accountant’s world; we just live in it. In 2014, the scholar of accounting and MacArthur “Genius Grant” recipient published The Reckoning, a cultural history about the craft of crunching numbers and how openness in bookkeeping is crucial to government. The book earned widespread acclaim. “Accounting is a very lofty idea,” says Soll, professor of history and accounting at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and the USC Leventhal School of Accounting. “It’s about balance, transparency

GREG HARDESTY

One reviewer recommended that Jacob Soll’s book be required reading for everyone.

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BEYOND EXCEPTIONAL MEDICINE TM

Listening. Learning. Leading. On a quest to make health care better for everyone. Unwavering in our desire to heal. Unrelenting in the face of challenges. United for the greater good. At Keck Medicine of USC, we are not practicing medicine, we are redefining it. For appointments, call: (800) USC-CARE See how we’re improving lives: KeckMedicine.org/beyond

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An Injection of Science Everything you need to know about one of the most powerful tools for public health. by candace pearson illustrations by chris gash

Name one scientific advance that has radically transformed public health and protected people from blindness, hearing loss, brain damage, paralysis, miscarriage, birth defects and, yes, even death. If you answered vaccines, go to the head of the class. Nearly 220 years after British country doctor Edward Jenner discovered a vaccine for smallpox, immunization now saves about 9 million lives a year worldwide, according to UNICEF. In the past 20 years alone, routine vaccination in the United States has saved 732,000 children and kept 322 million kids from getting sick, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced in 2014. Yet these reports come at a time when some members of the public doubt vaccinesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; value or believe theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re better off without them. In some ways, vaccines have been too good at their job. Most parents have never encountered once-terrifying childhood diseases such as measles, mumps and polio, and most young doctors have never seen a case.

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trojan health discredited the claim, the original research was withdrawn from the journal that published it, and the author was stripped of his medical license. Still, the myth persists—“probably because it’s like the bogeyman,” says Laura Mosqueda MD ’87, chair of the Department of Family Medicine at the Keck School of Medicine. “It gets to your most primal fear on behalf of your kid.” For most people, the risk of serious health problems from a vaccine is tiny, says D. Steven Fox, assistant professor of clinical medicine at the Keck School of Medicine and the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics. “Statistically we know that someone who gets the measles or rubella is far more likely to get harmed by the disease,” he says. “Trust the science.”

So some parents, fearful that vaccines may be unsafe, skip or delay routine shots for their children. Other adults don’t realize they need certain vaccinations after childhood, or they object to putting anything in their bodies they think isn’t holistic. Some abstain based on religious views or distrust of drug companies. “We’ve failed in educating people about the importance and effectiveness of vaccines,” says David A. Goldstein, an internist with Keck Medicine of USC and co-director of the USC Gould Pacific Center for Health Policy and Ethics. Part of the problem can be traced to a 1998 British study that used fake data to link the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine to autism. Several studies have since

HOW VACCINES ARE MADE Vaccines work by stimulating the body’s immune system into producing antibodies to fight an injected virus that’s been manipulated so it isn’t harmful. Thanks to these primed antibodies, the body can better fight the real version of the virus during a future infection. Vaccines are produced in several ways. Some use viruses that are weakened or viruses that are inactivated by a chemical. Others use only a chunk of the virus. Before any vaccine is licensed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, it’s tested extensively in labs. Then it undergoes testing in humans in rigorous, three-phase clinical trials before it can be licensed for the public. This can take 10 years or longer. What would happen if enough people stopped vaccinations? Outbreaks or even epidemics of diseases we thought were conquered decades ago, Fox says. Measles is a case in point. In 2000, public health officials declared measles eradicated from the United States. Yet by 2014, there were 644 cases, the most in 20 years. This year, more than 150 people from eight states, Mexico and Canada were infected by an outbreak that started in Disneyland in Orange County—something Goldstein calls “a teachable moment.”

Vaxx Facts Vaccines aren’t just for kids. Adults need them, too, whether it’s a booster for tetanus, protection against shingles or extra safeguards when traveling. Some key recommendations from physicians:

EVERY ADULT Influenza All adults, yearly, to build immunity Tetanus and diphtheria All adults at least once, then a booster shot every 10 years. One booster should be a Tdap vaccine, which includes pertussis, also known as whooping cough.

SOME ADULTS Chickenpox Adults born in 1980 or later who didn’t get two doses of the vaccine or never had chickenpox Measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) Adults born in U.S. in 1957 or later who’ve never had the MMR vaccine. (Born before 1957? You’re considered immune.) It’s also recommended for women planning to become pregnant who have no evidence of immunity against rubella. Human papillomavirus (HPV) Women under 26 who didn’t get the three-shot series when they were younger, and men 21 and younger, or 26 and younger in certain special cases Shingles (Zoster), same virus behind chickenpox Adults 60 and older Pneumococcal Adults 65 and older to protect against pneumonia, meningitis and sepsis (bloodstream infection); series of two shots (PCV 13 and PCV 23)

GLOBAL TRAVELERS Typhoid, rabies and Japanese encephalitis Especially before traveling to developing countries Other vaccination recommendations depend on where you’re going. Consult your doctor, the CDC at cdc.gov/travel or the USC School of Pharmacy International Health Clinic at pharmacyschool.usc.edu/travel.

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FROM TOP: David Goldstein, Jonathan Song, Laura Mosqueda, Steven Fox

ONE FOR ALL, ALL FOR ONE Turning the measles trend around will take herd immunity, which works much like a protective shield. If enough people are vaccinated, it puts a sort of force field around those who can’t safely be immunized. Herd immunity happens when so few people are susceptible to a virus, it becomes difficult for the virus to spread. “The issue isn’t just about what you want for your kids, it’s about your neighbors and their kids too,” says Jehni Robinson, associate professor and vice chair for clinical affairs in the Department of Family Medicine at the Keck School of Medicine. “Vaccination is a social responsibility. We have to try keep our communities healthy.” Due to a less robust immune system, older adults don’t have the same ability as their younger counterparts to mount a response to an infection, which underscores the value of herd immunity, notes Mosqueda. “If I get the flu, I’ll feel miserable, and I’m a pretty healthy 55-year-old,” she says. “But if I’m a pretty healthy 95-year-old and I get the flu, I could die.” Some diseases are so infectious that herd immunity is achieved only if nearly everyone is vaccinated. For measles, which is considered more transmittable than Ebola, 94 percent of people summer 2015

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Learn about vaccination schedules at cdc.gov/ vaccines. To make a doctor’s appointment to discuss immunizations, visit keckmedicine.org.

have to be vaccinated for ideal protection. The disease is spread by coughing, sneezing or simply talking, and its droplets hang in the air for two hours. Children can suffer such complications as brain damage and hearing loss. Less widely known are measles’ severe vision complications, says Jonathan Song, Keck Medicine ophthalmologist and director of cornea services at the USC Eye Institute. These include conjunctivitis, or pink eye, which can lead to corneal infections, ulcerations, perforations and scarring. At stake: permanent vision loss and blindness. Song is even more worried about rubella, a contagious virus that can cause fetal malformation if a mother contracts the disease in early pregnancy. It can also result in corneal cloudiness, glaucoma and cataracts if you’re infected. Worse, it stays in your system “for many, many years,” Song says, “with lifetime consequences.” FUTURE SHOTS Misunderstanding vaccines is one barrier. Access to health care is another. “The issue’s the same in a sprawling city like LA or a rural area,” Goldstein says. “We need to make sure all people can get the vaccines they need.” Robinson would like to see more vaccines, not just the flu shot, available at community sites like pharmacies, schools, grocery stores and sporting events. In the meantime, innovative techniques are opening up delivery options that make immunization easier—think nasal-spray vaccines—along with experimental DNA vaccines that target a microbe’s genetic material. While physicians and public health experts try to encourage more vaccine use among the public, their research partners are trying to create new vaccines. It can be a tough road. For Ebola, for example, the many obstacles include infrastructure and the cost of drug development. Ebola requires a Biosafety Level-4 lab—the highest contaminant protection—and these facilities are rare. At the same time, pharmaceutical companies are reluctant to invest decades and dollars to produce a drug with little commercial reward. With 10,000 people already lost to Ebola in West Africa,

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A Thousand Years of Prevention For more than a millennium, people have been trying to protect themselves against infectious diseases. 1000 1633 1798 1865

Chinese experiment with inoculation for smallpox Smallpox epidemic in America Edward Jenner produces smallpox vaccine Cause of death for two-thirds of soldiers in Civil War: uncontrolled infectious diseases

1918 1924 1946 1955 1958 1964

Influenza epidemic claims 16 million lives worldwide Tuberculosis vaccine introduced Influenza vaccine approved for civilian use Jonas Salk’s injectable polio vaccine licensed First measles vaccine tested Rubella epidemic infects 12 million Americans, causing 11,000 miscarriages

1969 1980 1983

First rubella vaccine licensed Smallpox is the first (and only) eradicated viral disease Research links human papillomavirus (HPV) to cervical cancer

2002 Polio declared eliminated from Americas 2006 First HPV vaccine licensed 2015 Measles outbreak spreads from Disneyland in California

a handful of vaccines are entering human clinical trials—but these studies face challenges, such as mistrust, the ethics of using placebo vaccinations in areas of high Ebola risk and even how to keep heat from ruining vaccines. Other viruses seem to defy vaccination. For HIV, the disease itself is elusive, making small genetic changes every time it replicates. Embedded in the immune system, HIV disables the very cells that should be attacking it, says Paula Cannon, associate professor of microbiology at the Keck School, who studies how viruses work and how to block them. “It’s a chess game,” she says, “where HIV easily stays one step ahead of our natural immune defenses and certainly any single-shot vaccine we can currently produce.” Even as this bold search continues, USC experts say it’s time to stop taking vaccines for granted. On April 17, California health officials declared the measles outbreak that began at Disneyland officially over. At the same time, they issued a caution: With vaccination rates still too low, our defenses are down. Measles is just waiting for its chance to make a comeback. usc trojan family

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The Science of Sleep In the classic fairy tale, Snow White bites into an apple and slips into a state of suspended animation. For her fellow figment of fiction, man-about-the-Catskills character Rip Van Winkle, a sip of moonshine affords the luxury of sleeping through the American Revolutionary War. Sleep has long featured in our collective storybook as an enigmatic netherworld, a faraway place where strange things happen and then are forgotten upon our return to reality. Turns out there’s a reason for the mythology. Left to investigate why humans spend nearly a third of our lives in slumber —and what sleep is—scientists don’t have a simple answer. “Why we sleep is still one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of science,” says Terese Hammond, Keck Medicine of USC pulmonary critical care physician and director of the USC Sleep Disorders Center. “No one yet knows the true purpose and nature of the state of sleep.” We may not know the reasons behind it, but here’s what’s clear: Many of us don’t get enough of it. More than a third of Americans get less than the needed seven hours of snoozing a day, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease tfm.usc.edu

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Control and Prevention. Over time, lack of sleep takes a toll on our well-being—so much so that the CDC calls it a public health epidemic. That makes the field a formidable frontier for scientists and physicians. “This is a very exciting time for sleep research,” says Steve Kay, dean of the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and a biologist who has long studied the sleep-wake cycle. It’s also a growing area for USC physicians and other health care professionals who see the wider effects of poor sleep among the patients in their clinics and exam rooms. UNDERSTANDING SLEEP What happens to us in those wee hours as we lie unconscious in our beds? Quite a lot. After drifting off, we go through several cycles of what’s called non-rapid eye movement (non-REM) sleep, followed by cycles of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. During non-REM sleep, the body repairs and restores itself—building bone and muscle, healing wounds and bolstering immune defenses. In REM sleep, body temperature drops and blood thickens. Blood pressure and pulse become erratic. Muscles turn off.

From neuroscientists to engineers, USC researchers delve into what happens during slumber—and how to help us get more of it. By Esther Landhuis Illustrations by Oscar Bolton Green

The brain, however, buzzes with activity. Cholinergic neurons, which help store memories, fire during REM, says Julie Dopheide, a professor of clinical pharmacy, psychiatry and the behavioral sciences at the USC School of Pharmacy and Keck School of Medicine. REM is when dreams occur. And it may be during this time that the brain tries to interpret and organize information. USC Dornsife neuroscientists and USC Viterbi engineers are trying to uncover what happens in the brain during sleep. Thanks to leaps in imaging technology and a $9.7 million National Institutes of Health grant, the USC research team is mapping neurons in the brains of live zebrafish to see how their activity patterns change as the animals sleep or form new memories. “Brain circuitry underlies the complexity of human consciousness,” Kay says, so breaking through imaging barriers will be critical to “seeing” sleep. Research by Kay and others has improved our understanding of the natural timing system that regulates when we fall asleep and when we wake. Known as the circadian system, this internal clock maintains 24-hour sleep-wake cycles through usc trojan family

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signals from the brain’s hypothalamus. Our circadian system responds to environmental cues such as darkness and light, using hormones to spur drowsiness or wake us up. If circadian rhythms fall out of sync with day-night cycles—after an overseas flight or a graveyard shift, for example— the system usually realigns in a few days. Sometimes life gets in the way of biology, though, and systems go awry. TOO BUSY TO SLEEP With mobile devices that allow 24/7 communication and unlimited movies and shows available digitally at the touch of a button, it’s easy to stay up late bingewatching a series or updating a report for the boss. It’s no wonder that so many of us fail to get the recommended seven to nine hours of sleep a night. Among teens, snooze time dropped steadily between 1991 and 2012, with 10 percent of high school students claiming they get only five hours of sleep per night. “We wear our lack of sleep like a badge of honor,” says Keck Medicine sleep specialist Raj Dasgupta. As a nation, we’re not just losing sleep time—we’re missing the health benefits

Good Night, Sleep Tight Expert tips for a better night’s sleep AVOID L ATE N IG H T ME A LS A N D A LCO H O L . “Some people love that glass of wine before going to bed,” says Raj Dasgupta, assistant professor of clinical medicine at the Keck School. “While alcohol may knock you out and make you fall asleep faster, the downside is you’ll wake multiple times throughout the night.”

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“We wear our lack of sleep like a badge of honor.”

that sleep brings. Inadequate sleep is linked to nearly a fifth of serious car crashes. It also seems to weaken a person’s willpower to eat normal portions and choose healthful food instead of junk, according to research. If scant sleep becomes the norm, consequences can mount. Long-term sleep-wake cycle troubles can disrupt the activity of genes that govern metabolism and immunity, leading to potential trouble by spurring diseases like Type 2 diabetes. Several years ago, Kay and his colleagues found a key biochemical link between circadian rhythms and diabetes. In their studies with mice, they discovered that the same protein that regulates the circadian clock also controls the liver’s production of glucose. Too much glucose in the blood is a serious complication of diabetes. Kay’s team found a way to harness that clock protein to slow glucose production, making diabetic mice healthier. But there’s more to it than diabetes.

C LEAR YO UR MIN D. “Sleep experts recommend cognitive behavioral therapy—changing negative thought patterns and behaviors—as the first line of treatment for insomnia,” says neuropsychiatric pharmacist Julie Dopheide. “People are worried about finances, worried about their kids, worried about emails from their boss. Writing those thoughts in a journal can help free their minds.” Meditation and yoga can also ease the transition to sleep.

CR E AT E A CO M FO RTA BL E E N VI RO N M E N T. “Avoid cell phones, computers and TV in bed,” Dasgupta suggests. “Keep the room cool and dark.”

“Chronic disruption of sleep patterns is strongly linked to cardiovascular disease and to a sharp increase in the incidence of breast cancer,” Kay says, citing findings from large studies in the United States and Japan. Other studies done in the lab suggest that staying awake too long can kill brain cells and impair clearance of toxic proteins—including amyloid beta, which builds up in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease. SLEEP, INTERRUPTED Many people come to the USC Sleep Disorders Center after years, often decades, of struggle, Hammond says. Indeed, about 50 million to 70 million U.S. adults suffer chronic sleep disorders. Typically, it should take less than 15 minutes to fall asleep. “If it takes longer than a half hour and impairs your function the next day, it’s considered insomnia,” Dopheide explains. People with insomnia not only struggle to drift off, but also wake up repeatedly. If tossing and turning is part of your nightly routine, don’t just dismiss it, Dopheide warns. Causes range from simple factors like

EXERCISE IS G O O D BUT N OT RIG HT BEFO RE BEDTIME. Core body temperature increases during exercise. During sleep, though, your body needs to cool down, Dasgupta says.

SEE A SLEEP SP ECIALIST. If symptoms persist more than two weeks and you’re relying on medicine to fall asleep, get help. “If you’re not dealing with the core causes of your sleep problem, relying on medications could be doing more harm than good,” Dopheide says.

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Reach out to Keck Medicine of USC sleep specialists at 800-USC-CARE or keckmedicine.org/sleep-disorders.

room temperature to serious issues like sleep apnea or depression. “One of the first things to go wrong when you’re having a psychological or physical problem is your sleep,” she says. “Insomnia is a marker for poor health.” Just ask Jennifer Ailshire, a sociologist at the USC Davis School of Gerontology and Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center. She studies how family relationships affect health, including sleep quality. In a 2012 study, she found that demanding relationships with family members can hurt sleep—and it’s about more than just having a fight with your spouse before bed. Even regular contact with a challenging parent or child living outside the home can cause sleep trouble. There’s another modern-day culprit for sleeplessness: artificial light. Nighttime light suppresses the body’s production of melatonin, a hormone that promotes sleep, and the blue light emanating from computers and other electronic devices is particularly harmful. A recent study conducted at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston bore this out. It showed that young adults who read on a tablet for four hours before bedtime took longer to fall asleep, spent less time in REM cycles and woke the next day feeling groggier than those who read a printed book. Scientists who analyzed the volunteers’ blood samples found that the tablet group had lower levels of melatonin. “This work is really solid,” Kay says. “My kids aren’t allowed to use iPads after 6 p.m. now.” Some 20 million U.S. adults can blame another problem for their sleeplessness: sleep apnea. Every night, they snore, wake up and gasp for air over and over again, notes Eric Kezirian, an otolaryngologist with Keck Medicine and an international expert in treating snoring and obstructive sleep apnea. “Your throat is basically a tube surrounded by muscle,” Kezirian says. “It can collapse during deep sleep and block your

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“One of the first things to go wrong when you’re having a psychological or physical problem is your sleep.”

breathing.” People with severe sleep apnea may wake 30 or more times per hour, increasing their risk for heart attack and stroke. SNOOZE SOLUTIONS Fortunately, innovations are helping doctors like Kezirian treat sleep apnea. While many patients breathe better by using what’s called a continuous positive airway pressure device, or CPAP, others can’t sleep comfortably while wearing one. Some have found relief from a new sleep apnea treatment approved by the Food and Drug Administration last year. Called the Inspire Upper Airway Stimulation System, this surgically implantable device keeps the airway open by electrically stimulating the nerve that controls tongue movement. Keck Medicine was the first group in Los Angeles (and one of the relatively few around the world) to offer the Inspire treatment. Sometimes apnea is mysterious. Kezirian is an international leader in a test called drug-induced sleep endoscopy, which allows him to use a tiny camera to observe nasal cavity positioning during sleep. “If we can figure out what’s causing the blockage of breathing, we can hopefully give more targeted and effective treatment,” he says. That’s also why a trio of USC investigators recently developed a new imaging tool for children with sleep apnea. Patients undergo specialized MRI scans that produce a real-time video of the airway opening and closing during natural sleep, and that can help doctors pinpoint the source of breathing problems, says Krishna Nayak, a professor in USC Viterbi’s Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering.

He worked with Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and Keck Medicine pediatric pulmonologist Sally Ward and USC Viterbi biomedical engineer Michael Khoo to develop and test the new technique. About 50 people have received the procedure so far, Nayak says. Khoo and others are also studying how a tool called electroencephalography (EEG) can illuminate the quality of sleep. Electrodes placed on the head can record brain wave patterns, while other sensors detect eye movements, limb movements, heart rate and breathing patterns while a person sleeps. These measurements reveal sleep patterns and arousals, which can help clinicians diagnose sleep disorders and gain insight into potential causes. The USC Sleep Disorders Center treats rare conditions as well, including narcolepsy, sleep walking, sleep talking and sleep-associated movement disorders such as restless legs syndrome. “A thorough sleep evaluation can be very good for patients, especially those with longstanding sleep complaints, because it may well identify targets for therapy that will improve daytime functioning and well-being,” Hammond says. Outside the sleep clinic, there may be a much cheaper, albeit lower-resolution, way to measure sleep: using off-the-shelf wearable monitors and mobile health apps you can download on your smartphone. “We’re going to go through a ‘big data’ era for collecting sleep-wake patterns,” Kay says. He notes, however, that “while this allows us to go ‘wide’ on understanding sleep behaviors, it does not go ‘deep’ in the same way an EEG collects interesting data on much smaller numbers of individuals. So one does not replace the other.” Ultimately, you don’t need the latest wearables or phone apps to prioritize sleep. “Treat it like you treat exercise and diet,” Kezirian says. “It’s important for your health and for getting the most out of life.” summer 2015

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The Stuff of Dreams USC experts weigh in on a question that has intrigued humans for centuries: Why do we dream?

W E N DY WOOD Provost Professor of Psychology and Business at USC Dornsife

“Psychologists since Freud have argued about what dreams mean. Although Freud famously termed them ‘the royal road to the unconscious,’ more likely they are snippets of perception, urges that we are experiencing or an aspect of problem solving. We remember very few of our dreams, and what we remember is mostly a construal of what happened in the dream. When we wake, we are imposing an interpretation on fragments of a dream. To modern-day psychologists, that interpretation might be one of the most meaningful parts of our dreams.”

T E RE SE H AMMON D

JULIE DOP HEIDE

Critical care physician and director of the USC Sleep Disorders Center

Professor of clinical pharmacy at the USC School of Pharmacy

“When I think about dreams, I picture the wooden library card catalog cabinet of my youth, organized with the Dewey Decimal System. In my view, dreams exist to bring distinct thoughts into proximity so that our brains can make connections between things that we wish or need to remember and past events already ‘filed’ in certain locations in our brain as memories. Dreams can be chaotic because they often combine elements of reality, fantasy and conjecture. But this is the process required to make associations between seemingly unrelated things and allow memories to be sorted, stored and ultimately retrieved when we need to find the ‘card’ that points us to the proper place on the proper shelf.”

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“Dreams are always about the dreamer. If individuals recall their dreams, it can help a therapist identify key psychological issues that need attention. For example, if a person dreams of an apocalyptic scenario and being separated from loved ones, this may signify an unconscious fear that could disrupt daytime function. Dream review is especially useful in therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder. Image rehearsal therapy—in which the person writes down the nightmare, changes the story to a more positive one and rehearses the rewritten positive story each day—can lessen or extinguish the nightmare.”

DANA GIOIA Poet and USC Judge Widney Professor of Poetry and Public Culture

“Poets have always believed in the connection between dreams and reality. In ancient cultures, the poet was a shaman whose sacred and civic responsibility was to create a road between the dream world and the waking world. There are some truths, the myths tell us, that only the world of darkness knows. All epic heroes visit the underworld to find their way in a dangerous and complicated world. Poets still feel that way. Dreams are the most direct road to the imagination. They bring us to our uncensored fears and desires as well as touch our deepest memories.”

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FAS

R EG NA

TRO JAE

Quest for the Best The university is transforming in remarkable ways thanks to supporters of the Campaign for USC. 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

evin Xu ’11 and Leah Yang MA ’13 have a passion to support the elderly. And they know that USC students have great business ideas. They wondered: What they could do to inspire students to develop businesses that could improve life for senior citizens? So Xu and Yang made a gift to support the university’s efforts to improve life for the aging through innovation. It makes perfect sense: Xu is an entrepreneur who studied neuroscience at USC, while Yang earned a master’s in aging services management. They created a fund at USC that grants $20,000 each year to students who incorporate elder-friendly elements into their business plans. Xu hopes that the Brighten Award for Entrepreneurial Gerontology will encourage promising innovators for decades to come as the nation ages. Spurring entrepreneurship to encourage better care and quality of life is so typical of USC alumni. And it’s just one

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example of how supporters are shaping the work and achievements of the university through the Campaign for USC. When the Campaign for USC launched in 2011, few could have predicted that the university’s landmark $6 billion fundraising effort would result in this sort of student entrepreneurship award. Yet that’s far from the only surprising outgrowth of the campaign. Across USC, the campaign has enabled the university and its scholars to grow in unexpected ways that reflect the commitment of its alumni, trustees and other supporters and the turning wheels of science, technology, economics, the arts and our community. At schools and institutes across the university, Trojan Family generosity and a desire to make a difference have carried USC’s campaign across the $4.2 billion mark. “This extraordinary support is a tremendous vote of confidence in the work we do every day at USC,” says USC President

C. L. Max Nikias. “It reflects the passion of our wider community and its immense desire to see the university’s scholarly and creative work benefit society.” Whether gifts come in the form of annual smaller gifts or multimillion-dollar contributions, what matters is how they transform today’s and tomorrow’s USC. “This campaign isn’t about the money, it’s about what the money enables USC to do,” says Al Checcio, senior vice president for university advancement. The “to-do” list includes advancing current university priorities, such as biomedical advances, policy research, or programs that open the humanities and arts to more students and to the community. It also encompasses endowment—funds that enable USC to attract top faculty or create scholarships in perpetuity. Finally, it includes buildings and equipment, the kind of capital investments that provide students with an enriching residential life

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or scientists with new lab space and stateof-the-art technology. CURRENT UNIVERSITY PRIORITIES Universities like USC make a difference in society by asking difficult questions—and they’re using the support they receive to find answers. Take USC’s work in economics. The global financial crisis of the 2000s caused many to question long-held economic assumptions and call for ways to stabilize international markets. The New York-based Institute for New Economic Thinking, or INET, saw potential for important, creative ideas from economists at USC Dornsife, so it threw its support behind these financial scholars, funding a new research institute in the college’s Department of Economics. Today, the USC Dornsife Institute for New Economic Thinking encourages research on tools outside standard economic theory—such as what social scientists call decision theory—to address problems like unemployment and economic inequality. Funding from groups like INET supports the day-in, day-out studies that expand economics’ body of knowledge and USC’s contributions to the field. At the same time, grants from foundations and individuals promote advances in hard sciences and engineering and foster early work from next generation of biologists, chemists and physicists. The Hearst Foundations and the Broad Foundation, for example, support up-and-coming researchers at USC in Since 2010, donors stem cell science. to the USC School of The funds not only Cinematic Arts have jump-start the reendowed 10 new faculty chairs. searchers’ careers,

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but they also give scientists an avenue to pursue stem cell studies that might one day pay off in therapies for patients with neurodegenerative diseases. ENDOWMENTS Each school at USC depends on endowments to create faculty professorships and chairs, which attract and retain great thinkers and teachers. It’s an area where the USC School of Cinematic Arts has especially flourished. Since 2010, the school has created 10 new endowed faculty positions focused on areas from cinematic design to visual effects. A few of those positions are attached to familiar names, like director Steven Spielberg, who gave through his Wunderkinder Foundation to create the Michael Kahn Endowed Chair in Editing. It honors his longtime collaborator, who worked with him on films from Raiders of the Lost Ark to Schindler’s List. Filmmaker George Lucas ’66 endowed three new chairs, each named for a cinematic pioneer. These named chairs will help future filmmakers remember the basics of cinema—a point critical to Lucas. Endowed chairs often echo the passions and interests of a donor. At USC Shoah Foundation — The Institute for Visual History and Education, for example, the new Andrew J. and Erna Finci Viterbi Executive Director Chair will honor a committed pair of supporters while it amplifies efforts to share testimonies of Holocaust and genocide survivors around the world. As a child, the late Erna Viterbi, wife of USC Trustee Andrew Viterbi PhD ’62, fled what was then Yugoslavia with her family during World War II due to growing anti-Semitism, so the couple understood all too well the importance of preserving history to avoid repeating it. Endowment also makes college accessible to more students. The Heritage Initiative added $50 million to USC Athletics’ endowment, which translates to many more scholarships for student-athletes across USC’s Division I sports. A variety of new endowed scholarship programs within schools bring a USC degree that much closer for students

with unique goals, whether they’re aspiring to lead nonprofit organizations (USC Price School of Public Policy) or become school principals (USC Rossier School of Education). BUILDINGS AND EQUIPMENT At the beginning of the Campaign for USC, few could have envisioned how science and engineering would come to intertwine at the university. But they’ll soon come together at the USC Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience, on the southwest corner of the University Park Campus. Backed by a major gift from philanthropist Gary Michelson and his wife, Alya Michelson, the planned building will house biologists, chemists, computer scientists, engineers and other researchers who want to work together to answer big questions, spurring advances in areas from biomedical devices to genomics. Then there’s USC Village. In 2011, the University Village shopping center—a fixture in the memories of generations of Trojans—stood on the north side of Jefferson Boulevard. Today, it’s no more. Steel columns shoot skyward from the earth as construction accelerates at the site, hinting at the new USC Village complex to come. The $650 million living-learning community will house nine residential colleges for students and provide shops and a market for the neighborhood. Three of the residential colleges at USC Village already have been named thanks to gifts from donors, with more expected. Ultimately, the enthusiasm of USC donors and supporters goes a long way toward shaping how the university’s programs and campuses evolve. Vietnam War veteran Chuck Spielman and his wife, Amy, for example, donate to the USC Center for Innovation and Research on Veterans & Military Families to help veterans transition back into their communities. While USC has had a long relationship with the military, its veterans’ programs have expanded dramatically in the past four years. That’s partly due to a happy congruence of the university’s priorities and the interest of donors like the Spielmans. “I have a link to USC through my own personal passion. That’s a strong catalyst,” Spielman says. “When we write a check, we speak from our hearts.”

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CAMPAIGN BY THE NUMBERS We’re in select company: Only six universities across the nation have ever raised $4 billion in a campaign, and USC is one of them. Besides supporting new buildings and equipment, donors have directed giving to these areas:

Support USC students, faculty and research at campaign.usc.edu.

Faculty, students, researchers, patients and others across USC are benefiting from donors’ gifts and foundation grants large and small. Here are a few examples.

RESEARCH Programs that advance new knowledge in the humanities, social sciences, physical sciences and beyond

SCHOOLS Rewards for great teaching and innovative ideas from professors, as well as schools’ community outreach

CAMPUS LI FE Athletics, libraries and services for students

STUDEN T AI D Scholarships and aid that give more talented students access to USC than ever

Campaign giving supports arts and humanities programs, bringing performances, lectures and other events to students.

GI V I N G BY SOU RC E

FAC U LT Y

• Support for the USC Marshall Brittingham Social Enterprise Lab enables faculty to inspire the next generation of business leaders and social entrepreneurs to use business principles to alleviate poverty. • Thanks to longtime USC Thornton School of Music Professor Alice Schoenfeld, USC has a new symphonic music hall and talented string-instrument students will be able to attend USC through scholarships. • Law students will learn the intricacies of avoiding the courtroom through a new program in arbitration and mediation funded through a gift from Judith O. Hollinger ’61, a retired judge. • The Otis Booth Foundation supports a community service program enabling student-athletes to volunteer across Los Angeles.

• Gifts to the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics enable researchers to study how to make the nation’s health care dollars go further. • The California Social Welfare Archives at the USC School of Social Work, which chronicles the history and diversity of social welfare in California, will benefit from a significant gift from David Kuroda MSW ’72. • A gift from Linda ’69 and Harlan Martens ’70, JD ’74 advances the understanding of global history from the 15th to 19th centuries through the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute.

PAT IEN T S • A grant from the faith-based organization QueensCare will help needy patients with blood disorders receive critical bone marrow transplantation at Keck Medicine of USC. • Through USC Trustee Daniel Tsai, the USC School of Pharmacy is working with Taiwanese researchers to explore potentially cancer-fighting therapies. • Support from the Helen Diller Family Foundation backs an innovative study testing whether a substance from fermented soybeans can boost cardiovascular health and reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s.

Alumni and parents

Corporations and foundations

Others

40%

44%

16%

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ST U D EN T S

Endowed Chairs Endowed chairs are an academic tradition going back to the Academy of Athens in ancient Greece, where Marcus Aurelius created four chairs of philosophy. During England’s intellectual and artistic bloom in the 16th century, stellar faculty were granted an actual chair—a valuable, prized piece of furniture. Today, universities attract and retain world-class faculty with endowed chairs, which provide a permanent source of financial support for salaries, academic activities and research.

N EW EN D OWED P O SITIO N S

77 FACULTY CHAIRS

Non-alumni support USC’s future. They’ve given billion.

$2.59

Trustees have donated more than billion.

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On Trojan Ground USC Village construction is on a roll, as are gifts to support and enhance student life. At the intersection of Jefferson Boulevard and Hoover Street, a checkerboard of concrete slabs and steel columns is on the rise. Five days a week, 10 hours a day, rumbling earthmovers and overhead tower cranes are steadily transforming a dusty 15-acre patch of earth into USC Village, a landmark project that will redefine student life at USC. “USC Village signals our commitment to bolstering the overall student experience and to becoming a fully residential university,” says USC President C. L. Max Nikias. Ten months after its groundbreaking, USC Village is starting to take shape—and so is the giving to support it, all part of the Campaign for USC. In March, two gifts were announced: An anonymous donor gave $15 million to endow a USC Village residential college; and Ray Irani PhD ’57 pledged $20 million to the university, with $15 million dedicated to create the Ray Irani Residential College and $5 million to endow two faculty chairs

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and establish a student support fund. Irani College will be a supportive community that integrates living, learning and extracurricular activities for as many as 320 students. These two gifts follow the lead of Kathleen Leavey McCarthy ’57, who donated $30 million in 2014 to name McCarthy Honors College, which will integrate USC’s undergraduate scholarship and honors programs to establish a community of exceptional scholars at USC Village. These three newly endowed residential colleges will be part of the nine residential colleges that comprise the $650 million USC Village project, which will house up to 2,700 students on the north side of the University Park Campus. The gifts come as construction ramps up on the residential-retail center. The development’s scale dwarfs any single building project the university has ever created. The biggest structure—for now simply known as Building 9—is the size of a full-service hotel.

Crews have already finished excavating and shoring up a two-level, 466-space underground parking structure for USC Village shoppers visiting retailers like Trader Joe’s. The underground structure will have bright lighting and security cameras throughout, and Department of Public Safety staff will be stationed onsite. The development also will provide 20,000 square feet of covered bike parking. As USC Village steadily progresses, so does USC’s vision for enriching student life and academic endeavor. Says Nikias: “It is a testament to the vibrancy of our intellectual community and will nurture generations of young Trojan scholars.” DIANE KRIEGER

See more stories, pictures and videos about USC Village at village.usc.edu.

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Scientists are just starting to understand the tiny particles in air pollution and how they damage the body.

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USC scientists help Angelenos breathe a little easierâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and healthier. by katharine gammon

Clear the Air

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When Ed Avol races 5Ks around Southern California, the avid runner sees more than the competitors he’s passing. He thinks about the area’s roadways, the heat, the humidity and the air he’s breathing— and what’s in it. More than most athletes, Avol understands the ins and outs of air quality. He knows how far Los Angeles has come in cleaning up the air, and how much still needs to be done. He’s seen it firsthand not only as a runner and an LA resident for 50 years, but also as a USC scientist who studies air quality and its effects on people and the environment. Avol and his fellow researchers in the Department of Preventive Medicine at Keck School of Medicine of USC have studied the impact of air pollution on the health of kids in Southern California since the early 1990s. Supported by some $30 million in research grants, their decades of work have shed light on smog as an urgent, chronic health concern. It has given objective scientific evidence to clean-air advocates working to tighten emissions standards and bring clear skies back to Southern California. The researchers do more than publish their science: They use their expertise to improve and protect public health.

Ed Avol, left, and James Gauderman have air quality down to a science.

FROM IDEA TO ANSWERS Years ago, Southern Californians suffered through hundreds of days a year of eye-stinging, chest-burning smog. Researchers then mostly looked at air pollution’s acute health effects—what happens to lungs within minutes or hours of breathing smoggy air, Avol says.

The Gray Years It wasn’t until the 1940s that Angelenos began to suspect that the haze over their city might be more than odd weather. By the 1950s, scientists pursued fossil-fuel emissions from factories and cars as culprits, launching a battle for cleaner air that’s still underway today. While LA still leads the nation in high levels of particulate matter, it’s also at the forefront of research and legislation to ensure that clearer days lie ahead.

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1988

California names diesel particulate matter a toxic air contaminant, with strict regulations to follow.

But USC scientists suspected pollution’s deeper impact lay in its effects over the long term, especially in kids. What would years of exposure to air pollution do to children as they grew up? How would breathing this air affect the rest of their lives? To answer these questions, the late John Peters, director of the environmental and occupational health division at the Keck School of Medicine, proposed the Children’s Health Study. In 1993, Peters assembled a group of researchers and started the project with state funding. They enrolled 3,600 fourth-graders from 12 Southern California communities ranging from San Diego to San Luis Obispo counties. Some children lived in areas with more air pollution, like Long Beach and Riverside, while others grew up in lower-pollution areas like Lompoc and Santa Maria. Each year, the children’s families answered health questions—whether their child had a respiratory infection or developed asthma, for example—and each child took an annual breathing test in school. The researchers also continuously monitored air quality in the communities, measuring key pollutants such as ozone, particle matter and nitrogen dioxide. The study focused on children because their bodies are still in development and they’re typically more active and spend more time outdoors than adults. Lung deficits early in life can lead to a cascade of health effects later, including heart and lung problems and even early death from heart or lung disease. It took only a few years to start to see some patterns in the data that caused concern, says W. James Gauderman, a biostatistics professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine and 19-year veteran researcher on the study. In 2004, the group found that children from communities with poor air quality had less-developed lungs during their teen years than kids who grew up in cleaner areas. In 2007, they showed that lung function development among children living close to roads was especially stunted. The results got worldwide attention. There were other unexpected findings along the way. “We were surprised to find in our unique scientific study that ozone wasn’t the biggest problem,” says Frank Gilliland, Hastings Professor of Preventive Medicine and director of the Southern California Environmental Health Sciences Center, which is funded by the

2000

Air Quality Management District (AQMD) research shows diesel particulates are behind 71 percent of the cancer risk from all air pollution in LA.

2001

The USC-led Children’s Health Study finds that when children moved from areas with polluted air to ones with cleaner air, their lungs began to grow more quickly, proving that air pollution can slow lung growth.

2004

USC researchers find that kids in communities with high levels of nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter had reduced lung function and growth.

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FINE PARTICLES • From combustion, organic compounds and the like • Less than 2.5 micrometers wide

IMAGE COURTESY OF THE U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY

HUMAN HAIR 50-70 micrometers wide

National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. “It was this mixture of nitrogen dioxide and fine particulate matter that had long-term effects on children, especially on their lung development and with asthma exacerbations.” Researchers are still learning how exactly air pollution causes an assault on the lungs. “We suspect that there is chronic inflammation in the lung tissue due to breathing polluted air,” Gauderman says. Regardless of how air pollution wreaks its damage, the researchers see reason for optimism. Their most recent findings, published in the New England Journal of Medicine earlier this year, showed that improvements in air quality have finally paid off in better respiratory health for children. Since the mid-1990s, levels of particulate air pollution in Southern California have dropped by 50 percent, Gauderman says, because of the efforts of the city, state and ports to crack down on dirty cars, trucks and ships. “So this provided an ideal backdrop to see if better air led to bigger, healthier lungs,” he says. Indeed it did. When the researchers looked at data from 2,000 children in five cities, they saw that as air pollutant levels dropped, fewer kids had low lung function. The percentage of children in the study with abnormally low lung function at age 15 dropped from nearly 8 percent (for a group of children followed from 1994 to 1998) to less than 4 percent (for children followed between 2007 and 2011). They saw improvements across all ethnic groups, even among kids without asthma or other respiratory conditions. “This suggests that all children benefit from breathing cleaner air,” Gauderman says. OUTREACH MATTERS The USC researchers have gone beyond using science to illuminate a health problem: They’re about practical solutions and interventions. Today, they continue to educate Southern Californians about air quality and advocate for health.

2005

The Southern California Environmental Health Sciences Center’s outreach program joins in a coalition of groups called THE Impact Project to cut air pollution around ports and freight transport hubs.

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2006

USC researchers report that children living near major roads face increased asthma risk.

2011

California implements low-carbon fuel standard to improve existing fuels and develop cleaner ones. The state also works with federal agencies to implement greenhouse gas and fuel economy standards for 2017–2025 model year cars.

COARSE PARTICLES • Dust, pollen and mold • 2.5 to 10 micrometers wide

FINE BEACH SAND 90 micrometers wide

A Particular Problem Nitrogen oxides, ozone and airborne particles are common air pollutants in cities. Burning fuels can release nitrogen oxides, but ozone usually forms when fuel byproducts burn in direct sunlight. Airborne particles are more complicated: They come from a variety of sources beyond fuels. Scientists are starting to get to know this particulate matter better, and it’s proving a challenge. Ultrafine particulate matter can comprise hundreds of different chemicals, including toxic organic compounds or heavy metals. “This makes it complicated and puts the properties and health effects of particulates beyond the typical air pollutants,” says Arian Saffari, a doctoral student in the USC Aerosol Lab led by Constantinos Sioutas, professor of civil and environmental engineering at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. Here’s a primer on particle types. COARSE PARTICLES

FINE PARTICLES

ULTRAFINE PARTICLES

These are due mostly to dust particles between 2.5 and 10 micrometers wide, thinner than human hair. They can travel into the lungs and spur health problems.

Less than 2.5 micrometers wide, these particles can stay airborne for weeks and travel hundreds of miles. In the body, they can move deeper into the lungs and harm health more than coarse particles.

The smallest and most toxic group of airborne particles, they can go deep into lungs, enter the bloodstream and tissues and cause severe health problems.

2013

2014

2015

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration confirms that LA’s tailpipe emission regulations have dramatically reduced the eye-stinging organic nitrate component of air pollution.

AQMD research shows that cancer risk from toxic emissions in LA has been cut in half since 2005. Cancer risks remain higher in certain areas such as the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach and near freeways.

USC researchers’ study finds that LA children have healthier lungs than they did two decades ago due to improved air quality.

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Scott Fruin maps pollution using the most Angeleno of tools: a car.

On the Road Again Scott Fruin is on a mission to study the ways pollution can creep into every part of our lives. He targets a form of pollution that Angelenos are all too familiar with— the daily commute. “If you have a long, typical morning rush-hour commute on freeways, you can get half or a third of your entire daily air pollution exposure in that commute,” says Fruin, assistant professor of preventive medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. Measurements show that rolling up car windows cuts exposure, but benefits vary widely from car to car and by ventilation setting. To learn more, Fruin outfitted a Honda Insight hybrid with specialized instruments so that his team could measure air pollution while driving a typical commute on freeways and main roads. With a car packed tight with wiring, bulky air quality monitors and a three-pronged weather station on top, “people do look at us when we’re driving around,” Fruin says. The car even has ducts in the back windows to make sure it only samples outdoor air and isn’t contaminated with carbon dioxide from the driver’s breath. After testing 60 cars with many of the same instruments, the message became clear: The best way to breathe cleaner air is to drive with the windows up and the fan on the recirculate setting. That dropped air pollution by as much as 80 percent for newer cars at freeway speeds, he says. Besides measuring driving exposures, the car’s mobility makes it a good complement to the system of

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30 fixed air quality monitors around Los Angeles. It was critical to a 2014 study that found that airplane landings and takeoffs at Los Angeles International Airport worsen air quality more than 10 miles east of the airport, a far larger area than previously assumed. Fruin and his colleagues discovered that ultrafine particle concentrations are routinely doubled over a 25-square-mile area east and downwind from the airport boundary. To continuously monitor air quality downwind of the airport, they covered the area by car, sucking in air samples for five to six hours at a time. They’re now trying to follow up their airport work to see if people in the zone are at increased risk for asthma, and they’re also looking for differences in the chemical makeup of airport and freeway particles. “If the composition is similar enough, that’s cause for concern, since studies have shown a higher disease risk for those living close to freeways and busy roads,” Fruin says. They’re also studying people with asthma living both under and away from the flight paths. Fruin warns that although scientists tend to focus on air pollution outdoors, exposure to bad air from indoor sources can be surprisingly high. “Anytime there’s anything you can smell,” he says—whether scented candles, household cleaners or cooking with natural gas from the stove—“you can end up getting very high exposures, because indoor air doesn’t circulate and turn over as much.”

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Andrea Hricko has seen the scientists’ work alter environmental policy in the Los Angeles region for the better. Hricko directs community outreach and engagement programs for the USC Children’s Environmental Health Center and the Southern California Environmental Health Sciences Center. Fourteen years ago, the centers’ outreach program organized a community meeting to listen to hundreds of residents’ concerns about air quality in their neighborhoods. “For the first time, we started hearing a lot about ship emissions from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach,” says Hricko, professor of clinical preventive medicine. “Residents near the ports and alongside the 710 Freeway complained that trucks were suffocating their communities.” That meeting spurred the scientists and outreach staff to focus new research and education efforts on reducing pollution from transporting freight—mostly containers packed with consumer goods from Asia that arrive on ships and end up on trains and trucks. Since then, USC has regularly submitted studies on air pollution’s health effects to the harbor commissions of both ports to ensure that officials factor in public health and air pollution when considering expansion. The centers’ outreach staff translate new scientific research to community members who, in turn, fight to cut air pollution. A combination of research findings and work by well-informed community advocates and environmental groups prompted the ports to enact new programs: Trucks must have cleaner-burning engines, and ships now plug into electrical power when in the harbor, improving air quality for millions of people. A half-dozen community conferences followed the 2001 meeting, including scientists like the Keck School of Medicine’s Avol, Gauderman, Gilliland and Rob McConnell, deputy director of the Children’s Environmental Health Center. In one recent meeting, 710 Freeway-area residents shared concerns about freeway expansion projects. The USC team presented residents’ public comments to Caltrans, the state transportation agency. “We try to have the transportation agencies understand that expanding freeways to handle more cars and trucks is not a 21st-century solution to reducing congestion and air pollution,” Hricko says. Gilliland notes that the region’s air quality still fails to meet Environmental Protection Agency standards, and health can still suffer. But there’s reason for optimism. “I think this is a ‘good news’ story,” Gilliland says. “We still have a long way to go for clean air in Southern California, but we have environmental health problems we can fix through sciencebased interventions, and it illustrates that taking a scientific approach works.” Southern California can be an example for the rest of the world, he adds. “What we’ve done is show that the interventions are worth it in the long run,” Gilliland says, “and USC has the opportunity to continue to be a world leader in developing the science to support continued improvement in the air we all breathe.” tfm.usc.edu

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Frank Gilliland, left, and Andrea Hricko bring science to the air quality conversation.

Beyond Breathing Air enters and exits the lungs some 20,000 times a day, so lungs are ground zero for the health effects of air quality. But there might be effects in other parts of the body, too, say USC scientists. Smog exposure may speed the hardening of arteries and worsen cardiovascular disease, for one. Howard N. Hodis, professor of preventive medicine and director of the Atherosclerosis Research Unit at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, and colleagues have shown that artery walls are thicker among people living close to busy roadways. A 2010 study from the group showed that people living within about 100 yards of a Los Angeles freeway had artery walls that were thickening at twice the average rate. “Living away from major thoroughfares is the best way to reduce this particular risk factor for cardiovascular disease,” at least while vehicles run on fossil fuels, Hodis says. What affects the heart also may affect the brain. Fetuses exposed in late pregnancy to high levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons—chemicals from incompletely burned coal, gas and oil—go on to have less white matter on the left side of the brain in early childhood, according to a recent study led by Bradley Peterson, director of the Institute of the Developing Mind at The Saban Research Institute of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. White matter transmits signals from one part of the brain to another, and these changes in white matter are linked with slower information processing, aggression and symptoms of attention deficit and hyperactivity disorders. “Our findings raise important concerns about the effects of air pollutants on brain development in children, and the consequences of those brain effects on cognition and behavior,” says Peterson, director of the Division of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. For older people, exposure to air pollution accelerates inflammatory changes that act like aging in the brain. It also alters receptors on neurons that are associated with memory. “This matches what epidemiologists have been describing: People living in zones with more air pollution have worse cognitive aging than those in the less polluted areas,” says Caleb Finch, University Professor and ARCO/William F. Kieschnick Chair in the Neurobiology of Aging at the USC Davis School of Gerontology and USC Dornsife. In 2011, Finch co-authored a report showing that after short-term exposure to vehicle pollution, mice showed significant brain damage—including changes associated with memory loss and Alzheimer’s disease. His group used polluted air from the 110 Freeway gathered by Constantinos Sioutas, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, and exposed mice to it for five hours, three times a week. “It may not sound like that much,” Finch says, “but that’s enough to cause disturbances in brain development and brain aging.”

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The Trojan Ticket Three LA siblings become first-generation college students thanks to the success of USCâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Neighborhood Academic Initiative. BY DIANE KRIEGER 46

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PHOTO BY GUS RUELAS

endy Garcia-Nava treasures a faded snapshot taken when she was a fourth grader. She’s standing in Pardee Plaza, shyly waving at the camera. Her T-shirt reads: “I’m going to college at USC.” It was admittedly a boast. Though she lived only a mile from the USC University Park Campus, the gulf between home and higher education spanned far beyond a few city blocks. Her family squeaked by mostly on her father’s income as a gardener. Neither of her parents had studied past elementary school. Yet in May, she marched with cap and gown as a graduating senior alongside her Trojan classmates at USC’s 132nd Commencement. An honors student majoring in psychology at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, the 22-year-old also completed three minors: forensics and criminality, Spanish, and computer and digital forensics. She hopes to study law next year. Her two younger brothers aren’t far behind. Jesus Garcia Jr. begins his senior year as a computer science major at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering this fall, and Bryan Garcia, undeclared but leaning toward economics, heads into his sophomore year. How did one family send three children—their first generation to go to college—to USC on a gardener’s salary? The Garcia children are products of the Neighborhood Academic Initiative (NAI), USC’s college-access program run in partnership with the Los Angeles Unified School District, which includes Murchison Elementary and El Sereno Middle School in east LA and the James A. Foshay Learning Center, a K-12 public school in south LA. Upon graduation from Foshay, all three siblings received admissions offers from USC. They also earned a full-tuition scholarship—the program’s biggest perk. “I am forever in debt to them,” Wendy says of the program, passion flooding through her voice.

Only one in every 12 students from low-income families in the United States completes a four-year college degree by age 24, according to the National College Access Network. NAI has changed that in the neightfm.usc.edu

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borhoods around USC. Established in 1991, the program guides students through seven years of rigorous after-school tutoring, Saturday classes and summer sessions. In ninth grade, students start four years of honors and Advanced Placement classes, which are taught daily at USC, often barely after sunrise. Over the program’s life, 99 percent of its students have graduated high school and entered college, and 83 percent have entered four-year colleges as freshmen. Many of them stay on at USC. Last year, 118 NAI graduates were enrolled as Trojans, including 20 freshmen, making Foshay USC’s No. 3 feeder school for 2014. NAI’s most remarkable feature, according to Thomas S. Sayles, USC’s senior vice president for university relations and himself a south LA native, is that it “doesn’t cherry-pick the best students.” It’s open to almost anyone. A minimum 2.75 GPA is all students need to be in the program. Academic excellence is the goal, not a prerequisite. “I remember the first time that I got straight A’s,” recalls Wendy, who had started high school with mostly B’s. “I thought, Oh my God, I can do this!” Kim Thomas-Barrios ’84, who has been running NAI since 2002, often sees students like the Garcias seize the college-prep opportunity and go on to university success. Asked to name NAI’s most impressive graduates, Thomas-Barrios balks. “There are so many who have done so much,” she protests. But Sierra Williams is surely one. In 2014, she got offers from 10 schools, including New York University and Carnegie Mellon. She chose USC. In 2012, twin brothers Jesus and Arnulfo Moran were scooped up by Harvard and West Point, respectively. More than 800 NAI graduates have finished college and now work in fields from law to medicine, from dentistry to social work. Many are giving back to the south LA community as well.

NAI BY THE NUMBERS USC’s Neighborhood Academic Initiative brings opportunity to hundreds of Los Angeles students.

GRADUATES NAI scholars who graduated high school in May

63 All NAI graduates

871 USC alumni who are NAI graduates

357 CURRENT STUDENTS University Park Campus area

630 Health Sciences Campus area

170 Projected annual NAI enrollment by 2020

1,100 INVESTING IN THE FUTURE Cost to teach an NAI scholar for one year

$1,480

You could call the Garcias the unofficial poster family for the program. Bryan and Jesus Jr. tutor NAI scholars in the afternoons and teach pre-calculus and calculus in the biweekly Saturday Academy. Jesus Jr., who played trombone at Foshay, volunteers his time building a website for usc trojan family

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DEGREES IN PREPARATION the school’s music department. Each fall Wendy talks about the realities of college life with Foshay’s roughly 160 graduating seniors. She’s also involved with the USCNAI Theater Workshop, an outgrowth of the NAI Advanced Placement English class held at the University Park Campus every morning. All three Garcias fell in love with the stage through this program, which is why Jesus Jr. founded a USC booster club to support it. Their mom, Isidra Nava, is equally committed. She serves on the NAI Parents Leadership Board, and on Saturday Academy days, you’ll find her at the parent sign-in table doling out advice—even though her own children have already moved on to USC. “They’re just stellar,” says ThomasBarrios of the Garcia family. “If there’s something to do, they’re there.”

Isidra beams as she welcomes a guest into her one-bedroom cottage about a mile west of USC. She and her husband raised four children here. Academic medals and trophies adorn every nook. She flashes a jaunty grin, though life hasn’t always given her reason to smile. She made her way alone from Mexico 30 years ago seeking a better life, leaving behind two young children. In LA, she had another child before she met and married Jesus Garcia. The couple had three children of their own. When her older kids joined them, the large family squeezed into a succession of small apartments. The Garcias were close and those were happy times, she says. But after a serious workplace accident left Isidra needing surgery and unable to use her arm, Jesus had to stop working to look after her and the four youngest kids still at home. Money grew tight. When Wendy, Jesus Jr. and Bryan were recruited into NAI, they discovered the program would require discipline and sacrifice. Wendy’s passion for Mexican folk singing was the first thing to go: Rehearsals conflicted with NAI’s afternoon tutoring sessions and half-day Saturday Academy. Every night, the children took over the apartment, spreading their binders and textbooks on the coffee table that doubled as the family dinner table. Studying, always studying, their mom recalls.

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Joan Payden’s $5 million gift supports college readiness in east Los Angeles. When USC expanded the Neighborhood Academic Initiative (NAI) to about 100 sixth graders from Murchison Elementary and El Sereno Middle School in 2013, east Los Angeles families around USC’s Health Sciences Campus embraced the program. But program director Kim Thomas-Barrios soon grew worried: How would USC pay for the students’ expanded coursework when they reached high school? Enter USC Trustee Joan Payden, whose $5 million endowment gift in February ensures that NAI will flourish. “It’s such a blessing,” Thomas-Barrios says of the gift. Payden, a member of the USC Board of Trustees since 2000, is a passionate advocate for education and has supported several schools and programs targeting underserved communities. “NAI has had remarkable successes over the past two decades,” says Payden, who is president and CEO of Payden & Rygel, a Los-Angeles based global investment management firm she founded in 1983. “I’m thrilled to play a part in expanding its scope and ensuring that even more students have access to this life-changing educational experience.” Income from the Payden endowment will allow the east LA NAI program to grow to 600 students by 2020, the year it reaches full capacity and graduates its inaugural class. In all, about 800 students are part of NAI programs around the University Park and Health Sciences campuses, a number that will eventually grow to 1,100.

“It was a lot of work,” Wendy says. “Friends who weren’t in the program would want to hang out or do other things, and we couldn’t.” When they weren’t home, the Garcia kids were at the public library. If they needed a computer, they waited their turn for a public terminal. Limited to one hour of computing time a day, they planned ahead for their term papers, pooling and rationing their library login privileges. They worked efficiently—and stayed ruthlessly on task. All three became excellent students, taking many AP courses and earning mostly

A’s. When report cards came home, Mom gave each child a kiss on the cheek and rewarded them with a trip to the 99 Cents Only Store to buy more school supplies.

Getting NAI students ready for college takes seven full-time staff and 120 part-time staff, including instructors, mentors and tutors. Thomas-Barrios makes a point of hiring tutors who are NAI graduates. They bring an insider’s perspective. “They sat in the same seats, and now they’re teaching. The younger kids see that, and it builds confidence,” Thomas-Barrios says. NAI graduates are expected to volunteer at least 20 hours a year with current NAI students. But the Garcias give much more than that. “When we were in the program, we always had alumni coming back to help us,” Bryan says. “That’s why we do the same. We do it naturally, like you would help your family.” Things could have turned out very differently for the Garcias. When they moved to the neighborhood 20 years ago, their father had no idea there was a university nearby. Looking back, it feels like they won the lottery. “I can’t believe that all this happened,” Isidra marvels. “I’m very happy.” As a girl, she had dreamed of becoming a teacher, but she never had a chance to finish school. “Seeing my children’s achievements,” Isidra says, her eyes glistening, “they feel like my achievements.”

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Wendy Garcia-Nava, center, paved the way for brothers Jesus Garcia Jr., left, and Bryan Garcia; The family proudly displays the siblings’ medals and ribbons at home; Like his siblings, Jesus Jr. mentors students going through the Neighborhood Academic Initiative; Wendy honed her tutoring and mentoring skills from a young age; Isidra Nava is grateful for the opportunities her children received; When not studying, Bryan practiced the trumpet after school; Wendy received an academic achievement award in 2014 and, in May, was the first in her family to get a USC degree.

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For Every Celebration Unique wines crafted exclusively for the Trojan Family. Taste-tested and recommended by wine industry experts, the Trojan Wine Collection features exceptional vintages custom-labeled with iconic USC imagery. TrojanWineCollection.com

Proceeds support the programs and services of the USC Alumni Association. In partnership with

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

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FA M I LY

PHOTO BY NELSON TIFFANY/LOS ANGELES TIMES

SPACE CRAFT Designed by the late Robert Kinoshita ’40, Robot B9 had superhuman strength and used his considerable computer brainpower for comedic effect on the 1960s TV series Lost in Space. Perhaps that’s how he charmed this fashion model in a 1965 photo shoot for the Los Angeles Times. The robot is still beloved by nostalgic sci-fi fans four decades later. Read about Kinoshita’s life on page 63.

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family news

With sparkling chandeliers, grand vaulted ceilings and room for 700, the ballroom of Town and Gown is probably a little bigger than your living room. But for the members of Town & Gown of USC, the oldest women’s philanthropic group at USC, it feels like a familiar haven. “In one sense, our gift of the Town and Gown building in 1935 created the heart of the campus for the past 80 years,” says Town & Gown of USC President Jane Bensussen. Town and Gown has hosted Trojan Family events ranging from fundraisers to a Nobel Prize press conference. Yet Town & Gown is about more than its namesake building. It’s a nonprofit

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organization that’s 900-women strong— and it’s celebrating its 110th anniversary. Town & Gown began as the Women’s Club of the University of Southern California, but the group changed its name in 1922 to reflect the collaboration between the local community—the “town”—and the university’s academic, research and professional members—the “gown.” “Early in the 20th century, we supported young women who needed to know that a women’s group felt they were ‘worthy’ of a good education,” says Bensussen, a 15-year member. “Gradually, we added more to our endowment so we now have the means to award merit scholarships to

150 young men and women each year.” Its annual $1.5 million scholarship budget helps recruit top students. The organization continues to grow and evolve. It added 80 new members in 2014–15 and launched its Town & Gown Scholar Network to mentor graduating students. It also puts on monthly luncheons and community service events, as well as sponsoring the USC Women’s Conference, Alumni Awards Gala and a major fundraiser each year. “We are a vital philanthropic women’s group,” Bensussen says, “and our membership makes us the perfect conduit for engaging women to support USC.”

PHOTOS COURTESY OF USC UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES

A League of Extraordinary Women

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Check out photos from recent USC alumni events at flickr.com/usc_alumni.

Day of SCervice 2015 Alumni Day of SCervice highlights:

Trojans all over the world took part in the annual Alumni Day of SCervice on March 14 to improve their communities. Here are a few ways the Trojan Family took part:

35 states and 14 countries represented

COUNTRIES INCLUDED: Mexico, France, South Africa, Chile, China, Thailand, U.K.

#1 CAN-DO SPIRIT The USC Alumni Club of Washington, D.C., sorted food at the Capital Area Food Bank.

U.S. CITIES INCLUDED: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Denver More than 2,400 participants

103 service projects

#3 COMMUNITY CARE The USC Alumni Club of Thailand brought smiles and Trojan spirit to Ban Bang Khae Elderly Home in Bangkok.

More than 7,500 hours of community service Projects with the highest attendance:

PHOTOS BY BILL DENISON; JOY ALBRITTEN; NUTTAPON KONGKITIMANON; ARMANDO BROWN

167 volunteers for Town & Gown of USC created “Fight On!” bead necklaces for cancer patients

144 volunteers for USC Alumni Club of San Diego served at the San Diego Food Bank Next year’s Alumni Day of SCervice:

#2 GROWING POWER More than 280 native plants were planted in the Los Cerritos Wetlands by the USC Alumni Club of LA Beach Cities.

#4 FOOD FOR ALL Half Century Trojans and USC Caruso Catholic Center volunteers pitched in at the LA Regional Food Bank. #5 WISE WORDS The USC Education Alumni Network inspired students at the Wisdom Academy for Young Scientists School in LA.

March 12, 2016 Learn more at dayofservice.usc. edu.

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family news

Tailgating, Trojan-Style There’s nothing like a Trojan tailgating party, so imagine strolling on to campus a few hours before a home game and finding a shaded, safe space, well stocked with tables, chairs, umbrellas and big-screen TVs, and freshly grilled hot dogs and cold beer ready and waiting. Fans, meet the Trojan Family Game Day Experience. “We’ve carved out a space in the center of campus—Alumni Park—that’s a family-friendly zone,” says Adam Rosen, assistant vice president for cultural relations and university events. Designed with alumni and families in mind, the Trojan Family Game Day Experience is free of charge and open to everyone. It offers ample shaded seating, a variety of inexpensive foods and drinks, big-screen TVs tuned to other college games, and plenty of wholesome diversions for the kids. After pilot testing last season, the Trojan Family Game Day Experience is ready for prime time this fall. “It’s a safe area where fans can come and enjoy themselves, where they don’t have to bring everything with them. Plus it’s easy to make their way over to the game,” Rosen says. Developed in partnership with the Office of Student Affairs, the family-friendly tailgating area is part of a campus-wide push to bring memorable experiences to Trojans. “Delivering the experiences that our stakeholders expect—and surpassing those expectations whenever possible—is paramount to USC’s viability and ascent,” said President C. L. Max Nikias at a staff retreat last November. That’s where he unveiled “The USC Experience,” an initiative to deliver quality and unique value to everyone who interacts with USC. It takes

its cue from the best-selling book The Experience Economy. The Trojan Family Game Day Experience advances that goal. Four hours before kickoff, guests will find an area set up for the perfect family tailgate. USC Hospitality provides libations with several bars serving beer and wine—plus mimosas for those early-morning games. There’s an assortment of food booths, plus a ballpark-style food truck. Nachos, hot dogs, hamburgers and beer cost $5 each. “We didn’t want people to feel they had to pay a premium to be in the space,” Rosen says. His team experimented with different layouts and menu options until they got the mix just right. “There was almost never a line at the bars,” he says. Last year, the Trojan Family Game Day Experience drew about 700 guests each game, culminating with the Notre Dame contest, which pulled in nearly 1,000 people. Word spread fast—quite a few of them were Fighting Irish fans. The atmosphere in Alumni Park remained respectful and friendly. While parents sipped drinks and watched 55-inch LED screens tuned to live games around the country, children massed to the arts and crafts tables to make their own penalty flags, Traveler’s tails and Trojan “fun loop” bracelets. Older kids (and some adults) took a turn at running a training camp-style obstacle course, throwing touchdowns to Trojan receivers or kicking footballs through miniature uprights. Members of USC Men’s Crew worked each game last fall teaching kids the fundamentals. When it comes to attending a USC football game, national publications already rank the experience as among the best in the country, according to Ainsley Carry, vice provost for student affairs at USC.

“The sights, sounds, band and fans make coming to USC on game day a moment to remember and treasure,” he says. “The impetus behind the new Trojan Family Game Day Experience was to make it even better.” The event will be offered to fans before each home game except the Oct. 8 matchup against Washington, which falls on a Thursday night, and the Nov. 7 showdown against Arizona, which falls on Homecoming weekend. Next up: Making an attractive space for USC undergraduates. “We’ll be tailoring the program so that it’s a safe and comfortable environment where students can celebrate the university, which is what they really want to do,” Rosen says. DIANE KRIEGER

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Check out photos from recent USC alumni events at flickr.com/usc_alumni.

The 82nd Annual USC Alumni Awards The USC Alumni Association rolled out the red carpet on April 25 to honor exceptional Trojans at its yearly recognition gala in Los Angeles. #1 TROJAN LUMINARIES Top row, from left: George Stoneman MD ’65, Dalila Corral Lyons ’81, C. L. Max Nikias and Niki Nikias, Mark Stevens ’81, MS ’84, Curtis Conway ’94. Bottom row: Patrick Auerbach EdD ’08, Joanne Rogers ’60, Lizette Salas ’11, Ivy and Leo Chu, Dickran Tevrizian ’62, JD ’65, Amy Ross PhD ’86

#2 TROJAN TIES Darnell Bing ’13 and Rachal Berry celebrate the Trojan Family. #3 VICTORY Dalila Corral Lyons is one of three alumni recognized with the Alumni Merit Award.

#4 STRONG SUPPORTERS The president poses with Mark Stevens, a USC trustee honored with the Asa V. Call Alumni Achievement Award. #5 THOUGHTFUL THANKS Fellow Trojans honor Dickran Tevrizian with the Alumni Merit Award.

PHOTOS BY RON MURRAY

#6 ON THE MARCH The Spirit of Troy bring their signature groove.

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Scholarships change lives. Every gift counts. giveto.usc.edu “ I was in the very first cohort of Mork Scholars. When I’m 50 years old, it will be really interesting to look around and see what all the hundreds of us Mork Scholars have done.” Steven Strozza Mork Family Scholar Double major in biological sciences and international relations, Class of 2015

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Class notes appear online. Read news about each graduate at tfm.usc.edu/classnotes and send your news for consideration to classnotes@usc.edu.

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Frank C. Christi ’43 (LAS) was presented with the Congressional Gold Medal on Jan. 16 for his service in the Montford Point Marines during World War II.

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Ralph Mauriello ’61 (ENG), a former professional baseball player, played for eight years in the Los Angeles Dodgers organization and appeared in three big league games in 1958. As an engineer, he spent more than 30 years with Litton Industries as a computer designer/systems analyst and nine years running his own consulting firm. He is now retired and involved in singing. He also has been a featured soloist.

family class notes

Garry Schyman ’78 (MUS) received a British Academy of Film and Television Award (BAFTA) nomination for best original music for his work on the video game Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor.

Mark Sahlin ’86 (ENG) graduated from MIT with a certificate in systems design management and is a technical leader in model-based system design at John Deere in Urbandale, Iowa.

Billy Childs ’79 (MUS) won a Grammy for best arrangement, instrumental and vocals, for the song “New York Tendaberry” featuring Alison Krauss and Jerry Douglas. He was also nominated for best jazz vocal album and best American roots performance. He previously won three Grammys for instrumental composition and arrangement.

Laura Skandera Trombley PhD ’89 (LAS) was elected incoming president of The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens, in San Marino, California, and vice chair of the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board. Since July 2002, she has served as president of Pitzer College in Claremont, California, and is a noted Mark Twain scholar.

Lisa Middleton MPA ’79 (SPP) was recently appointed to the planning commission for the city of Palm Springs, California.

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Chapman Cox ’62 (LAS), retired assistant secretary of the United States Navy and former attorney general counsel for the U.S. Department of Defense, is now chairman of the governing board of Alliance Defending Freedom.

Crowin “Al” Bell MS ’80 (ENG) released his second book, “Saltiest Sailor” & Other Sketches, which is in the same vein as his earlier book, “Sea Story!” & Other Sketches. Both are collections of essays and stories, many of them humorous.

Howard G. Franklin ’63 (LAS) released his novel, Gideon’s Children, in March. The story focuses on five young public defenders who staff the newly formed and expanded public defender offices after the Supreme Court’s 1963 decision mandating the right to counsel when charged with a crime.

Denise Eger ’82 (LAS) became president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the world’s largest organization of rabbis. She is the first openly gay rabbi to fill that position.

Peter Read Miller ’69 (LAS), was recognized by the Los Angeles City Council on his 50th anniversary of photographing USC football. During his more than 40 years in photojournalism, he worked for 30 years as a staff and contract photographer at Sports Illustrated.

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Ralph Buie MS ’75 (ENG) received a Doctor of Education degree from the University of Louisiana at Monroe in 2014, graduating magna cum laude.

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Karen Carr-Crawford MPA ’83 (SPP) was awarded the Golden Root Award by the Taproot Foundation for her marketing work. She completed a Key Messages and Brand Strategy Service Grant with the YWCA Greater Los Angeles, and is currently the account director on another Key Messages and Brand Strategy Service Grant with College Bound. Laurie Lustig-Bower ’85 (BUS), executive vice president of the commercial real estate services firm CBRE, was nominated as one of LA’s Power Women in Bisnow. George J. Chambers MS ’86 (ENG) retired from Raytheon. He is completing a history of the 83 U.S. Navy cruisers that served during World War II.

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Robert Binder ’90 (ENG) is a Los Angeles Police Department lieutenant with the Hollywood Division. As a helicopter pilot and Air Support Division watch commander, he helps USC’s Department of Public Safety office and the LAPD Southwest Division keep the University Park Campus safe. He received two postgraduate certificates from the USC Viterbi Aviation Safety and Security Program. Rachel Isgar MPA ’90, PhD ’93 (SPP) recently started an etiquette business called Please Pass the Manners in El Segundo, California. She has been featured on CNBC, NPR and Yahoo! Parenting and in Reader’s Digest. Jean-Pierre Abello MS ’92 (ENG) is director of product engineering at Nielsen Global Technology & Innovation Center. He served as a judge for the 2015 CES Innovation Awards in the embedded technologies category, and is an active member of the Television Academy in the Interactive Media Peer Group. Christoph Bull MM ’93 (MUS) joined USC Thornton organ studies faculty member Cherry Rhodes and an elite group of organists in concert as they celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Walt Disney Concert Hall’s famous organ, “Hurricane Mama,” in November 2014.

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Thomas Kenna MS ’93 (ENG) was recently appointed director of transportation and parking services at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He also serves on the Chancellor’s Staff Advisory Council.

Rebecca Shore EdD ’96 (EDU) was awarded permanent tenure and promoted to associate professor in the Department of Educational Leadership at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

Dorene Lehavi PhD ’95 (SSW), who studied social work and business, wrote the book Business Partnership Essentials: A Step-byStep Action Plan for Succeeding in Business with a Partner.

Matthew Harper ’97 (SPP) is California assemblyman for the 74th District, serving Huntington Beach, Costa Mesa, Newport Beach, Irvine, Laguna Woods and Laguna Beach. Previously, he served as mayor and a city council member in Huntington Beach. In college, he was president of the USC Student Senate and was in the USC College Republicans.

Robert N. Llewellyn Sr. EMBA ’95 (BUS) has written Leadership for the Recovering Quantoid, which emphasizes right-brain skills for left-brain leaders. The book features a self-test of “The Eight Qualities of Leadership Rightness” and illustrates “The Twelve Skills of Leadership Readiness.” Alma Martinez MFA ’95 (DRA) has supporting roles in the feature films Cake, starring Jennifer Aniston; Strike One, starring Danny Trejo; 6 Miranda Drive, starring Kevin Bacon; and Selling Rosario, the Napa Valley Film Festival award-winning short. Additionally, Broadway World Awards nominated her for best supporting actress in Just Like Us at the Denver Center Theatre Company.

Nikki Michelini Nikki Michelini ’95 (ACC), MS ’97 (BUS) was named one of Financial Times’ “Top 100 Women Financial Advisors.” A former president of Women in Accounting at USC, she is a principal and director of wealth management for the firm Aspiriant. She is a member of the American Institute of CPAs and a former member of the AICPA Personal Financial Planning Executive Committee. She specializes in family office services, acting as the primary relationship contact for many clients and leading a multidisciplinary team in planning and consulting services. Tim Dowling ’96 (LAS) wrote the screenplay for Columbia Pictures’ upcoming 3-D movie Pixels, starring Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Peter Dinklage and Sean Bean.

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Seth Cover BFA ’98 (DRA) is the CEO of Mycotoo Inc., a themed entertainment development company specializing in locationbased and live entertainment. He worked with Warner Bros.’ The Making of Harry Potter studio tour, designed and developed Motiongate and Bollywood Parks theme parks in Dubai, and worked with Thor Equities on the historic Coney Island property. Marisa Perez Medrano MPP ’98 (SPP) was named secretary of the board of trustees for the Cerritos Community College District. She was elected to the board in 2012. Nancy Pfeffer MPP ’99 (SPP) has been appointed to the board of Long Beach Transit, which serves Long Beach, California, and several surrounding cities with bus and waterborne services.

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Seaton J. Curran MBA ’00 (BUS) became a shareholder of Howard & Howard Attorneys PLLC. He concentrates his practice on intellectual property and has experience preparing and prosecuting U.S. and foreign patent applications with a focus on mechanical, electrical and computer technologies. Jeremy Pivnick ’01 (DRA) received an Ovation Award for his recent work on Everything You Touch at The Theatre @ Boston Court. He was also nominated for two other awards in the lighting design for intimate theatre category.

Cory Smythe MM ’01 (MUS) won a Grammy for best chamber music/small ensemble performance for the album In 27 Pieces: The Hilary Hahn Encores with violinist Hilary Hahn. More than a decade in the making, the album is the result of the celebrated violinist commissioning more than 24 composers to write short-form pieces for acoustic violin and piano. Dana Parker Trujillo MPP ’01 (SPP) is director of housing development for Skid Row Housing Trust. She was one of six individuals nationally to receive the Young Leaders Award from Affordable Housing Finance magazine in 2014. She was also elected to the board of directors of the Southern California Association of Nonprofit Housing. Chuck Hinman EdD ’02 (EDU) was appointed superintendent of the West Covina Unified School District in West Covina, California. Haroot Abramian MS ’03 (ENG) is working in USC Information Technology Services as a data warehouse architect and ETL (extract-transform-load) developer. Kate Cannova ’03 (DRA) produced Kander and Ebb’s play The Scottsboro Boys in the West End last fall and winter, after a successful 2013 run at London’s renowned Young Vic. She was part of the team that brought the show to Broadway in 2010, for which she received a Tony nomination. Sahar Fathi ’04 (LAS), Seattle Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs policy analyst, was named a “Rising Star” by Women of Color Empowered. As legal clerk for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, she has worked on immigrant and refugee issues for 10 years. She was named one of The Stranger’s “Smartest People in Seattle Politics” and Seattle Globalist’s “Seattle’s Smartest Global Women.” Christina Bernstein MS ’05 (ENG) is founder of BB Medical Surgical, which specializes in medical device commercialization. The company acts as a U.S. agent and filer for small U.S. and foreign medical device companies in addition to producing medical supplies in the U.S.

PHOTO BY WILLIAM MERCER MCLEOD

family class notes

We welcome updates from our fellow Trojans. Go to tfm.usc.edu/classnotes to submit news for consideration through your school’s online form or to your school’s listed contact.

summer 2015

6/27/15 8:28 AM

A LU M N I

P R O F I L E

V I E T

LU O N G

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A Trojan Earns His Star

PHOTO COURTESY OF VIET LUONG

Viet Luong ’87 makes history as the first Vietnamese-born U.S. military general.

Viet Luong ’87 was only 9 years old when his family barely escaped war-torn Vietnam. Along with hundreds of other Vietnamese fleeing Communist reprisal, Luong, his parents and seven sisters found refuge aboard an American aircraft carrier. “My sisters and I were scared to death,” Luong recalls. “When we landed on the USS Hancock, it was so big. … We asked our father, ‘Dad, where are we?’ He said, ‘We’re on a U.S. carrier.’ We said, ‘What does that mean?’ And he replied, ‘It means nothing in the world can harm you now.’” The following day, Saigon fell. Luong still gets choked up thinking about his family’s harrowing experience, but he has come a long way from that fateful day: In 2014, Luong became the first Vietnamese-born officer in the U.S. military to achieve the rank of brigadier general. Today, Luong is the 1st Cavalry Division’s deputy commanding general for maneuver and most recently was in Afghanistan. The infantry officer commanded a battalion of 82nd Airborne Division paratroopers in Iraq in 2007–08, and led the 101st Airborne Division’s 3rd Brigade Combat Team, the storied Rakkasans, into combat in Afghanistan in 2010–11. He has also served in Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo. He credits his fellow Army officers for helping him get his first brigadier general’s star. “I just try and do the best I can in every job given,” Luong says. “I would not be where I am today without all the help I have received from my subordinates and superiors.” His hardscrabble upbringing also played a role. After their escape, the Luongs relocated to Los Angeles and started from nothing to build a life. His father, who had majored in English literature and served as a senior officer in the South Vietnamese infantry, found work as an armed security guard, while Luong’s mother worked in a fast food restaurant. Luong’s older sisters worked too, but when one was robbed at gunpoint

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during a shift at a Hollywood gas station, Luong’s father decided all his children were going to college. Luong applied to USC thinking he’d never be able to attend, and set his hopes on state universities. A chance encounter with a Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) instructor at USC opened his eyes to new possibilities. The instructor had served in Vietnam and was a paratrooper—exactly what Luong hoped to one day become. In 1983,

Luong was accepted at USC with a full ROTC scholarship. “It was a bold move to go to USC,” Luong says. “I chose USC not only for its legacy of academic excellence, but also because of how its alumni have fared in Southern California.” Luong majored in biological sciences at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. “Being a science major taught me to think critically,” he says. “I can cut through a lot of fluff and get to the root of the problem, and

that has been one of my greatest strengths in my career.” He feels tremendous patriotism for the country that not only saved his life but also gave his family a chance to fulfill their aspirations through education. His career is a thank-you from that 9-year-old boy on the USS Hancock. “At the end of the day,” Luong says, “you have to ask yourself: What are you doing to contribute to our nation?” SUSAN BELL

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P R O F I L E

To Catch a Thief With help from a USC Viterbi alumnus, it’s game over for slot machine scammers.

The speed, the challenge, the thrill—John D. Lastusky ’05 loves to hop on his dirt bike and hit the trails outside Las Vegas to unwind from his job as a computer engineer. But this clean-cut 30-yearold USC Viterbi School of Engineering alum is no ordinary tech geek looking for an outlet. Agent Lastusky carries a badge. And though he works out of a nondescript office near McCarran International Airport, some of his work generates the same adrenaline-soaked buzz he feels when he chews through dusty off-road trails. He’s an engineer in the Nevada State Gaming Control Board’s technology division, a law enforcement team that uses computer forensics to track down evidence on seized electronics like computers and

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J O H N

L A S T U S K Y

gaming machines. They sniff out bugs in digital poker and other slot machines to keep scammers and cheats at bay and to make sure machines pay out as advertised. In a case that made national news in 2009, Lastusky helped take down John Kane and Andre Nestor, two gamblers who cleaned out hundreds of thousands of dollars from Vegas casinos. When Kane was arrested after a particularly profitable— and suspicious—video poker session, Lastusky meticulously uncovered how the pair exploited a software bug in the popular Game King machines to spur big payouts. His work led to the gamblers’ prosecution and a massive industry-wide replacement program to patch the faulty programming. “Cases like that don’t happen often, so it was exciting,” Lastusky says. “It was definitely satisfying figuring out the details and being able to articulate what exactly was taking place, which was criti-

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cal to prosecuting the case.” That Lastusky ended up in Las Vegas, working out of a slotmachine filled lab and regularly roaming the floors of casinos, is a fluke. He was into electronics growing up in Long Beach, California, but wasn’t what he calls a “programmer kid.” He used the family computer but it wasn’t until he was a junior at Loyola High School in Los Angeles that he even knew computer engineering was a college major. So off he went to USC. After graduating in 2005, Lastusky worked as a programmer for a small defense contractor that was absorbed into Lockheed Martin, where he worked from 2006 to 2008. Las Vegas was barely on his radar before Lastusky relocated there with his then-girlfriend (now wife), who thought Vegas would be a promising place to pursue her planned career in theater production. Lastusky stumbled across the engineering job at the

Gaming Control Board while reading a Wikipedia entry on gambling. He’s never been much of a gambler himself, which is a good thing: His job forbids him from wagering in Nevada. Not that he’s got much time for it. His hands are full sifting through the guts of seized electronic devices to gather evidence for new probes, including ones attacking illegal gambling, regulatory violations and the growing problem of employees stealing intellectual property. “I think of myself as an investigator more than an engineer,” Lastusky says. “And my job is always changing. I enjoy the human element of what I do. People are unpredictable.” Just like a day at the slot machines.

LASTUSKY PHOTO COURTESY OF JOHN LASTUSKY

A LU M N I

GREG HARDESTY

summer 2015

7/2/15 8:17 AM

family class notes Ted Kaiser ’05 (BUS) was named a “Rising Star” under the age of 40 by Plastics News for his work as owner and founder of Dock 7 Materials Group LLC. Dock 7 is a global import/export business dealing in scrap and recycled plastic, with more than $4 million in annual sales.

the continued development and placement of Latino educational leaders who are committed to quality public education.

end. He is on the USC Thornton School of Music faculty and serves as director of USC Thornton’s Music Industry program.

Robert Istad DMA ’06 (MUS) was appointed the Pacific Chorale’s new artistic director, beginning with the 2017–18 season.

Sarah Peyre ME ’05, EdD ’08 (EDU) was named assistant dean for interprofessional education at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry in Rochester, New York.

Neil Mehta MS ’06 (ENG) worked as an electrical engineer in Southern California upon graduation. After moving to Singapore to pursue his MBA, he created a technology startup that develops hardware and software. His company recently closed seed funding and seeks partnerships with software/data scientists and professors with expertise in machine learning, analytics and the Internet of Things.

Mark Carbonella ’07 (ENG) works for the large property insurance carrier FM Global and was recently promoted. He is now a manager of new field engineers and helps hire new candidates within the company.

Linda Thomas MS ’05 (ENG) is a Boeing associate technical fellow who was profiled in the company’s 2014 environment report for her work in chemical risk management. David Verdugo EdD ’05 (EDU) was named executive director for the California Association of Latino Superintendents and Administrators (CALSA). CALSA is a professional association that advocates for

Paul Young MM ’06, DMA ’09 (MUS) was selected as one of the recipients of the 2014 Steven B. Sample Teaching & Mentoring Award, which honors faculty members who have been nominated by parents and is given during USC Trojan Family Week-

Austin Wintory ’07 (MUS) was nominated for two 2015 BAFTA British Academy Games Awards for his musical composition on the video game The Banner Saga. Ching-Chien Cheng MS ’08 (ENG) is a senior application consultant at Synopsys Inc. Jacquelynne Fontaine MM ’08 (MUS) is starring as Carlotta Giudicelli in the North American tour of Cameron Mackintosh’s production of The Phantom of the Opera. Dyrell Foster EdD ’08 (EDU) was named vice president of student services at Moreno

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family class notes Valley College. He will serve as the chief student services officer and will be responsible for comprehensive planning, policy development, and budget development and management. Brandon Bernstein DMA ’09 (MUS) and Terry Carter MM ’02 (MUS) developed an app for Music Lifeboat, a globally focused nonprofit organization. The app uses teachings from world-class philharmonic and studio musicians to provide easily accessible music education for everyone. Colin Davin ’09 (MUS) performed the folk-blues classic “Midnight Special” with Grammy Award-winning contemporary opera singer Jessye Norman on the Late Show with David Letterman in November 2014. Matt Lewis ’09, MS ’13 (ENG) was promoted to systems engineer for automated and autonomous vehicles at Delphi Automotive’s Silicon Valley lab. Delphi’s vehicle platform debuted at CES 2015, won Mashable’s Best of CES Award, and was featured in ABC News, Popular Science, CNET, PBS and several international news outlets. Julie Taiwo Oni MFA ’09 (DRA) saw her play Denim produced in Los Angeles. It featured alumni Eric Schulman MFA ’11 (DRA) and Taylor Hawthorne ’08 (DRA). John Valdovinos ’09 (ENG) received a PhD in biomedical engineering at UCLA in June 2014. Currently, he is a postdoctoral fellow at the Yale School of Medicine Department of Surgery.

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Grissel Granados MSW ’10 (SSW) and John Thompson ’13 (SSW) are making a documentary called We’re Still Here about the first generation of children who were born with HIV in the 1980s and ’90s. Granados, who is part of that generation, is a member of the Los Angeles County Commission on HIV and the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS.

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Ben Bram ’10 (MUS) and Scott Hoying (MUS) won a Grammy for best arrangement, instrumental or a cappella, for “Daft Punk” from Pentatonix’s PTX, Vol. 2. Pentatonix formed in 2011 and came to prominence by winning the third season of NBC’s The Sing-Off. Victoria Pilko MS ’10 (ENG) received the Public Sector Engineer of Merit from the American Society of Civil Engineers’ (ASCE) Orange County Chapter, Orange County Engineering Council’s Project Achievement Award and the ASCE’s Construction Project Award. She is a scholarship chair for the Alumni Club of South Orange County and vice president for the Orange County Science Engineering Fair. Tomm Polos BFA ’10 (DRA) wrote Holding Pattern: Limericks for Air Travel, a satirical safety card filled with lively limericks about air travel. Since graduation, he has worked in television, radio and print. Robert Sandberg ’10, MS ’11 (ENG) left his position at Clark Construction Group to become assistant project manager for the Los Angeles-based general contractor and construction services provider C.W. Driver, where he will be working on a life sciences building at Loyola Marymount University. Suhas Rao MS ’10 (ENG) joined Sempra U.S. Gas & Power as a strategic procurement analyst. Mark Johnson EdD ’11 (EDU) was appointed superintendent of the Fountain Valley School District in Fountain Valley, California. Shivani Joshi MS ’11 (ENG) is a systems engineer at Siemens Rail Automation. Recently she decided to pursue her lifelong ambition of learning filmmaking and has been accepted into the USC School of Cinematic Arts’ summer program. Crystal Anthony MSW ’12 (SSW) of Carlsbad, California, developed the anti-human trafficking program Project LIFE (Living in Freedom from Exploitation) for North County Lifeline in Vista, California.

Alfredo Avila MA ’12 (DRA) works with homeless people, students and communities on issues of land rights and justice. He works with students at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and sailors and Marines through the U.S. Navy. He is a founding member of the Liberation Arts & Community Engagement Center. Rafi Halajian ’12, MS ’13 (ENG) was an onsite project engineer for Swinerton Builders Construction Co. With a master’s degree in civil engineering from USC Viterbi and two Los Angeles Unified School District high school development projects under his belt, he moved to Hathaway Dinwiddie Construction Co. and is senior project engineer on the USC Village project. Ebony Lewis MHA ’12 (SPP) was appointed to the California Architects Board by Gov. Jerry Brown. Rick Bagley EdD ’13 (EDU) was appointed superintendent of the Ross Valley School District in Marin County, California. Wanling Jiang MS ’13 (ENG) is pursuing a PhD at Purdue University in electrical and computer engineering, communication, networking, and image and signal processing. Prasanna Kumar Dhandapani MS ’14 (ENG) is an app integration specialist at Bitium. Nick Helmer ’14 MS ’14 (ENG) is enrolled in the United States Air Force fighter pilot training program at Sheppard Air Force Base in Texas. He is part of the EuroNATO Joint Jet Pilot Training program. Sarah Rommel GCRT ’14 (MUS) won third prize at the George Enescu International Cello Competition in Bucharest, Romania. A USC Thornton graduate student studying with cellist Ralph Kirshbaum, she also took home the Kronberg Prize from the competition. Kristina Ronnquist MSW ’14 (SSW) spoke about human rights violations in Los Angeles County prisons at the 85th International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination in Geneva, Switzerland. summer 2015

6/27/15 8:29 AM

usc marketplace

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You can have Traveler® at your party or event, or stop outside Gate 11 at the Los Angeles Coliseum before every home football game to say hello and take a photo. Check out our merchandise at uscmascot.com or fill out a request form. Contact: Joanne Asman.

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News to inform and inspire Trojans is now available—any time, from any place via mobile web. Visit us online and sign up for a free email subscription.

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M A R R I A G E S

B I R T H S

I N

Ebrahim “Abe” Kazemzadeh MS ’05, PhD ’13 (ENG) and Elly Setiadi.

Rosa Martinez-Genzon ’00 (LAS), JD ’03 (LAW) and Leonardo Genzon ’00 (SCA), a daughter, Sofia Grace.

A L U M N I

Kathryn Patricia Briscoe ’06 (LAS) and Adam Wilde Hahn. Gina Dearth ’07 (MUS) and Benjamin Frazier.

KINOSHITA PHOTO BY MARIO GERSHOM REYES/RAFU SHIMPO

Andrew M. Bauer ’08 (ENG) and Eileen A. Penner. Anthony Gentile ’11 (LAS) and Paige Thompson ’11, MA ’12 (OST). Lauren Perez ’11 (LAS) and Jonathan Gilde ’11 (LAS). Mandy Lai ’12 (ENG) and Travis Peterson.

Ryan J. Bache ’96 (SCJ) and Jamie Bache, a daughter, Jemma Reagan. She joins brother Renner James. Natalie (Trask) McDonald ’97, JD ’00 (LAW) and James McDonald, a son, John Robert. He joins sisters Julia and Rebecca. He is the nephew of Grover “Trey” Trask III ’98 (SCJ) and great-grandson of the late Robert Williamson ’48 (ENG). Jon H. Steen ’97 (LAS) and Meredith S. Steen, a son, Graydon Maverick. He joins brother Tristan Andrew and sister Leyna Isabel. He is the grandson of Charles R. Steen ’56 (BUS). Margarita (Aibkhanova) Wadher ’06 (LAS) and Sujay Wadher ’06 (LAS), a son, Zen Petros. He joins sister Maya Karina.

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M E M O R I A M

Robert Kinoshita, 100

Robert Kinoshita ’40 (ARC) of Torrance, California; Dec. 9, 2014, at the age of 100. He was a production designer and art director who designed the iconic robots for the 1956 science fiction classic Forbidden Planet and the 1960s TV series Lost in Space. Born in Los Angeles on Feb. 24, 1914, Kinoshita grew up in the Boyle Heights area. He attended Maryknoll Japanese usc trojan family

6/29/15 4:10 AM

Reunion Weekend... One Great Moment after Another! If you graduated in 1965, 1975, 1985, 1990, 1995 or 2005, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s your year to come back to campus on November 6-7 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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6/19/15 3:55 AM

CHAMBERS PHOTO BY LYNN SEEDEN/THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER; BOYD PHOTO COURTESY OF USC ATHLETICS

family class notes Catholic School, Roosevelt High School and USC School of Architecture, and became interested in the movies, receiving his first practical experience on the 1937 film 100 Men and a Girl. He and his wife, Lillian, were sent to a Japanese internment camp in Arizona during World War II, but a sponsor allowed the couple to leave before the war’s end and move to Wisconsin, where he became proficient in industrial design and fabricating products out of plastic. After the war, the pair returned to Los Angeles, where he worked in the film and TV industry. For Robby the Robot on Forbidden Planet, he cobbled together several concepts contributed by MGM’s art and special effects departments and made a miniature prototype of wood and plastic. The model, with a domed head of clear plastic, was quickly approved, and he completed its construction. The film received an Academy Award nomination for special effects. He was in the work pool of 20th Century Fox’s art department in the mid-1960s when producer Irwin Allen selected him to become the first-season art director for Lost in Space, which aired for three seasons on CBS, from 1965 to 1968. His bubble-brained robot—a late addition to the cast whose famous line was “Danger! Danger, Will Robinson!”—featured a metallic barrel chest, light-up voice panel and rubberized legs. He rushed to deliver the complicated costume shortly before the show entered production. The robot would go on to receive as much fan mail as the human cast, and a fan organization, The B9 Robot Builders, built more than 100 full-size robot replicas. For the series, Kinoshita also modified the Robinson family’s spacecraft, designed for the pilot by Bill Creber, to include a lower deck with living quarters, dining room, lab and robot dock. He stretched the production budget by creatively raiding props and discards from the Fox backlot. He is preceded in death by his wife, Lillian Matsuyama. He is survived by his daughter, Pat Aoki, two grandchildren, four great-grandchildren and one greatgreat-grandchild.

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Obituaries of members of the Trojan Family appear online at tfm.usc.edu/ inmemoriam.

Emmy and Golden Mike awards and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He is survived by his wife, Gege, 11 children, 38 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren. Doris (Wycoff) Roose ’47 (EDU) of Capistrano Beach, California; Dec. 4, 2014, at the age of 90.

Stan Chambers, 91

Stan Chambers ’44 (LAS) of Los Angeles; Feb. 13, at the age of 91. He was a veteran Los Angeles news reporter whose decadeslong broadcasting career began at USC. He joined the military after graduating from USC with a bachelor’s degree in international relations, but returned to the university after World War II intending to study law. Long registration lines deterred him, however, and after passing a building bearing the KUSC-FM call letters, he decided that radio would make for a more interesting career. In 1947, he launched Campus Magazine on the Air, a radio version of the print magazine he helped edit. He soon joined KTLA-TV as a production assistant, less than a year after the station went on the air as the first commercially licensed television station in the West. His 1949 on-scene 27½-hour report of the unsuccessful attempt to rescue a 3-year-old girl from an abandoned well in San Marino, California, prompted the sale of hundreds of TV sets in the Los Angeles area. His report has been recognized as the first live TV coverage of breaking news. In 1952, Chambers was involved in the first live telecast of an atomic bomb test at the Nevada Test Site. Among other stories he covered are the 1961 Bel Air fires, the 1963 Baldwin Hills Reservoir dam break, the 1963 kidnapping of Frank Sinatra Jr., the 1965 Watts riots, the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, the Tate-LaBianca murders by the Manson family, and the 1971 Sylmar and 1994 Northridge earthquakes. He also broke the story on the beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles Police Department officers. He worked at KTLA for 63 years and covered more than 22,000 stories, retiring on his 87th birthday. He earned several

Harriett Kalpakian Donnell ’56 (LAS) of Ojai, California; July 7, 2014, at the age of 78. James Young ’66, MA ’68, PhD ’71 (LAS) of Los Angeles; Dec. 19, 2014, at the age of 71. William “Bill” King Roose ’78 (BUS) of Rancho Cucamonga, California; Dec. 21, 2013, at the age of 58. Stephen Ray Fuller DMA ’80 (MUS) of St. Cloud, Minnesota; Feb. 6, at the age of 71. David Scott Latter ’89 (LAS) of Phoenix; Oct. 27, 2014, at the age of 48. Alberto Behar MS ’94, PhD ’98 (ENG) of Scottsdale, Arizona; Jan. 9, 2014, at the age of 47. Andrew Manning ’94, PhD ’01 (LAS) of Long Beach, California; Dec. 25, 2014, at the age of 42.

FA C U LT Y, S TA F F & F R I E N D S

Bob Boyd, 84

Bob Boyd of Palm Desert, California; Jan. 14, at the age of 84. He led the USC men’s basketball program to great heights as its head coach for 13 years in the 1960s and 1970s usc trojan family

6/27/15 8:30 AM

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family class notes

VITERBI PHOTO BY ZIVA SANTOP/STEVE COHN PHOTOGRAPHY

after a stellar playing career at the university. As USC’s head coach, Boyd spearheaded his teams to a record of 216-131 from 1967 through 1979 and four postseason runs (the 1979 NCAA playoffs, 1973 NIT and 1974 and 1975 Commissioner’s Conference tourney). His 1971 team, which went 24-2 and was ranked No. 5 nationally, is regarded as among USC’s best. He also won 24 games in 1974. His wins over UCLA in 1969 and 1970 were the Bruins’ first losses in Pauley Pavilion. He was twice named the conference Coach of the Year, and he sent 10 Trojans into the NBA, including Paul Westphal and Gus Williams. As a student, he was a three-year letterman (1950–52) and was USC’s most valuable player as a senior in 1952. He began his coaching career in the high school ranks at El Segundo and Alhambra high schools. He followed that with stints at Santa Ana College and Seattle University, where he went 41-13 in two seasons (1964–65). After a year out of coaching while working for Converse, he became USC’s head coach. After leaving USC, he went on to be the head coach at Mississippi State (1982– 86), Riverside Community College (1989) and Chapman University (1990–92), and then was an assistant at Louisiana State University and Utah State. He was inducted into the USC Athletic Hall of Fame in 2001 and the Pac-12 Basketball Hall of Honor in 2004. He was preceded in death by his wife, Betty, and a son, Bruce. He is survived by sons Bill, who played basketball at USC under his father from 1973 to 1976, Jim and John, and 10 grandchildren. Leonard “Len” Marvin of Los Angeles; Dec. 24, 2014, at the age of 61. Ann Neville-Jan of Los Angeles; Feb. 1, at the age of 64. Patricia “Pat” Volland Plumtree of Garden City, Idaho; Jan. 10, at the age of 73.

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Erna Viterbi, 81

Erna Viterbi, a philanthropist and joint namesake of USC Viterbi School of Engineering, died in San Diego on Feb. 17 at the age of 81. Married to USC Trustee Andrew Viterbi PhD ’62, she held leadership roles at philanthropies around the world, in addition to her unwavering support of USC Viterbi and USC Shoah Foundation—The Institute for Visual History and Education. Together with Andrew, she gave generously to educational institutions, health sciences research, veterans’ causes and arts organizations. Erna was born in Sarajevo in the former Yugoslavia in 1934. During World War II, she and her brother and parents fled the city and waited out the war in Switzerland. They settled in California in 1950. She would meet her future husband in 1956, when Andrew Viterbi was working in the communications research group at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory ( JPL) in Pasadena, California. They married in 1958, a year after Andrew began his association with USC by pursuing a PhD in electrical engineering while continuing his research at JPL. Erna would be at Andrew’s side through the wireless revolution, which for the Viterbis culminated with the founding of San Diego-based Qualcomm, the first wireless communications company to incorporate the Viterbi algorithm. In 2004, Erna and Andrew decided to make a naming gift to the institution where he earned his doctorate: USC’s School of Engineering. Thanks to the couple’s historic $52 million gift, at that time the largest for any engineering school in the nation, the USC Viterbi School of Engineering took its new name on March 2, 2004. The Viterbis continued to support the school and university over the next 10 years,

giving $2 million in 1999 to endow a chair in communications at USC Viterbi, and another $15 million in 2014 to support scholarship in engineering and genocide studies, including five endowed chairs and five graduate student fellowships at USC Viterbi. The gift also created the Andrew J. and Erna Finci Viterbi Executive Director Chair at USC Shoah Foundation — The Institute for Visual History and Education, part of the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. Erna is survived by her husband, Andrew, of La Jolla, California; son, Alan, and daughter, Audrey; and numerous grandchildren.

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LAS ACC ARC BUS SCA SCJ DNC DEN DRA EDU ENG ART GRN LAW LIB MED MUS OST PHM BPT SPP SSW

USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences USC Leventhal School of Accounting USC School of Architecture USC Marshall School of Business USC School of Cinematic Arts USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism USC Kaufman School of Dance 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 USC Libraries Keck School of Medicine of USC USC Thornton School of Music USC Chan Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy USC School of Pharmacy Division of Biokinesiology and Physical Therapy USC Price School of Public Policy USC School of Social Work

Susan Bell, Matt DeGrushe, James Feigert, Wendy Gragg, Katherine Griffiths, Maya Meinert, Mike McNulty, James Morse, Erin Nogle, Jane Ong, Kristi Patton, Kathleen Rayburn, Jennifer Town, Mara SimonMeyer and Stacey Wang Rizzo contributed to this section. usc trojan family

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An Urban Legend Design maverick Jon Jerde ’66 changed how we visualize our world.

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Experience in Las Vegas. Jerde was a member of the USC School of Architecture’s Board of Councilors and is the namesake of one of the school’s endowed chairs. A fellow of the American Institute of Architects since 1990, he was the first Distinguished Alumnus of the USC School of Architecture, receiving that honor in 1985. Jerde taught design studios at the University Park Campus and at an international campus in France.

JERDE PHOTO BY GINA SABATELLA PHOTOGRAPHY

When Los Angeles was selected to host the 1984 Summer Olympics, the event was suffering from a slump. A dark shadow still hung over the Olympics following the terrorist attack at the 1972 Munich Games. Despite an economic downturn and the financial failure of the Montreal Games in 1976, Los Angeles agreed to stage the event—without any government funding. Los Angeles Games organizer and USC Trustee Peter V. Ueberroth turned to architect Jon Jerde ’66 to reinvigorate the atmosphere of the Games. Jerde would go on to leave a mark on the Olympics and Los Angeles that lasted beyond his lifetime. A graduate of the USC School of Architecture, Jerde died Feb. 9 at age 75. Jerde began his career as a young architect in the 1960s for a group that created shopping malls. Inspired by the vibe of Europe’s bustling plazas and town squares, he grew intrigued with the potential of transforming public spaces into entertainment destinations. His designs were colorful and lively. The feeling echoed throughout his work for the 1984 Olympics. He teamed with designer and celebrated color expert Deborah Sussman to welcome the world to LA by ingeniously using inexpensive fabric, cardboard and temporary aluminum scaffolding for all the banners, signs, columns and entryways. Incorporating an eye-popping color scheme and “supergraphics”—large-scale typographic designs that have since become ubiquitous around the world— they unified the visitor experience at the Games. In the years that followed, Sussman—a visiting critic at the USC School of Architecture from 1963 to 1973—designed projects around the globe. She died in August 2014 at age 83. After winning global acclaim for the Olympics, Jerde designed innovative retailentertainment complexes like CityWalk in Los Angeles, the Bellagio hotel complex in Las Vegas and the Fremont Street

Bold shapes, typography and colors unified the visitor experience at the 1984 Summer Olympics.

summer 2015

6/19/15 3:56 AM

SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

FIVE STAR WEALTH MANAGERS YOU NEED TO KNOW Meet These Southern California

Like all Trojans, you work hard and expect your money to work hard for you with solid investments and financial strategies that fit your family and your situation. These days, finding the right wealth manager is an integral part of one’s financial freedom and well-being. But where should you turn to find the advisor who can start working for you?

Award Winners

Five Star Professional employed a rigorous research process to identify Five Star Wealth Manager award winners in Southern California. The select list of award winners was recently announced in Los Angeles magazine and Palm Springs Life magazine. Award-winning professionals were carefully selected from among thousands of wealth managers for their knowledge, service and experience. Winners featured here represent some of Southern California’s most dedicated wealth managers, each committed to pursuing professional excellence and providing exceptional service to their clients.

“If you’re in this business for money alone, you will never make it. You have to genuinely want to make a difference in your clients’ lives.” — Five Star award winner

An Exclusive Award

Five Star Professional identified award candidates based on industry data and nominations received from industry firms and peers in the Los Angeles and Palm Spring areas (self-nominations were not accepted). Only candidates who satisfied 10 objective eligibility and evaluation criteria were named Five Star Wealth Managers. Among many distinguishing attributes, the average one-year client retention rate for this year’s Southern California award winners is more than 96 percent and the average assets under management is more than $100 million. For the full list of Five Star Wealth Managers by region and an overview of the research methodology, visit fivestarprofessional.com.

Research

• Wealth managers do not pay a fee to be considered or placed on the final list of Five Star Wealth Managers. • The Five Star award is not indicative of the wealth manager’s future performance. • Wealth managers may or may not use discretion in their practice and therefore may not manage their clients’ assets. • The inclusion of a wealth manager on the Five Star Wealth Manager list should not be construed as an endorsement of the wealth manager by Five Star Professional, USC Trojan Family Magazine, Los Angeles magazine or Palm Springs Life magazine. • Working with a Five Star Wealth Manager or any wealth manager is no guarantee as to future investment success, nor is there any guarantee that the selected wealth managers will be awarded this accomplishment by Five Star Professional in the future. • Five Star Professional is not an advisory firm, and the content of this article should not be considered financial advice. For more information on the Five Star award and the research/selection methodology, go to www.fivestarprofessional.com. • 3,105 award candidates in the Los Angeles area were considered for the Five Star Wealth Manager award. 327 (approximately 11 percent of the award candidates) were named 2015 Five Star Wealth Managers. • 420 award candidates in the Palm Springs area were considered for the Five Star Wealth Manager award. 61 (approximately 15 percent of the award candidates) were named 2015 Five Star Wealth Managers.

Disclosures

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6/19/15 3:56 AM

SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

FIVE STAR WEALTH MANAGERS Rick Rivera

Registered Investment Advisor, Safeguard Investment Advisory Group, LLC, Lic. OB51891

4160 Temescal Canyon Road, Suite 307 Corona, CA 92883 Phone: 877-213-7233 Fax: 951-667-4970 rick@safeguardinvestment.com www.safeguardinvestment.com

• Rick is the host of “The Big Picture Retirement Show” on AM590 (KTIE radio) which airs weekly, every Saturday at 12:30 p.m. • Rick is a mentor and advisor to a number of financial advisors around the country • His educational seminars have been attended by thousands of California residents • He holds an MBA • Rick’s undergraduate degree is in Business Administration with a concentration in marketing • He has been a California-based retirement advisor since 1996

Rick Rivera is a partner at Safeguard Investment Advisory Group, LLC with over 18 years of experience in the financial industry providing guidance to those planning for retirement. Rick’s specialty includes educating clients on the financial planning process, insurance, investments and estate planning. Rick’s no-nonsense approach to financial planning and commitment to objectivity has been the cornerstone to his successful strategies. “It’s always a great feeling knowing that I’ve met the expectations of my clients. I know that times are tough and the process of planning for retirement can be daunting, but by just coming in to see me, people take the first and most important step in financial success: education.” Rick attributes his success from years of hard work, as well as the love and support of his family and friends. When Rick is not working, he enjoys scuba diving, fishing and, most of all, riding his Harley with his wonderful wife Shawna. Rick also enjoys a good game of golf (not claiming to be good at it).

Your Best Is Yet to Come The Five Star Wealth Manager award, administered by Crescendo Business Services, LLC (dba Five Star Professional), is based on 10 objective criteria. Eligibility criteria – required: 1. Credentialed as a registered investment adviser or a registered investment adviser representative; 2. Active as a credentialed professional in the financial services industry for a minimum of 5 years; 3. Favorable regulatory and complaint history review (As defined by Five Star Professional, the wealth manager has not: A. Been subject to a regulatory action that resulted in a license being suspended or revoked, or payment of a fine; B. Had more than a total of three customer complaints filed against them [settled or pending] with any regulatory authority or Five Star Professional’s consumer complaint process. Unfavorable feedback may have been discovered through a check of complaints registered with a regulatory authority or complaints registered through Five Star Professional’s consumer complaint process; feedback may not be representative of any one client’s experience; C. Individually contributed to a financial settlement of a customer complaint filed with a regulatory authority; D. Filed for personal bankruptcy; E. Been convicted of a felony); 4. Fulfilled their firm review based on internal standards; 5. Accepting new clients. Evaluation criteria – considered: 6. One-year client retention rate; 7. Five-year client retention rate; 8. Non-institutional discretionary and/or non-discretionary client assets administered; 9. Number of client households served; 10. Education and professional designations. Wealth managers do not pay a fee to be considered or placed on the final list of Five Star Wealth Managers. Award does not evaluate quality of services provided to clients. Once awarded, wealth managers may purchase additional profile ad space or promotional products. The Five Star award is not indicative of the wealth manager’s future performance. Wealth managers may or may not use discretion in their practice and therefore may not manage their client’s assets. The inclusion of a wealth manager on the Five Star Wealth Manager list should not be construed as an endorsement of the wealth manager by Five Star Professional or this publication. Working with a Five Star Wealth Manager or any wealth manager is no guarantee as to future investment success, nor is there any guarantee that the selected wealth managers will be awarded this accomplishment by Five Star Professional in the future. For more information on the Five Star award and the research/selection methodology, go to fivestarprofessional.com. 3,105 Los Angeles wealth managers were considered autumn for the award;2014 327 (11 percent usc2015 trojan of candidates) were named Five Starfamily Wealth Managers. 420 Palm Springs wealth managers were considered for the award; 61 (15 percent of candidates) were named 2015 Five Star Wealth Managers.

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6/19/15 3:57 AM

SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

FIVE STAR WEALTH MANAGERS Christiane Tomasi CFP®, MBT, EA, CEO • Investment advisory services • Financial planning with tax-efficient strategies • Wealth accumulation and asset management A USC master’s degree in business taxation helped Christiane launch a tax and accounting firm that eventually led to financial planning and wealth management. For more than 16 years, Christiane Tomasi has been building relationships with individuals and their families, professionals and small businesses working closely with them to help them with their financial goals through financial planning, retirement planning, estate planning and asset management.

THREE-YEAR WINNER

CS TOMASI Wealth Management 100 Oceangate, Suite 1450 | Long Beach, CA 90802 Phone: 562-901-9005 christiane@cstomasi.com | www.cstomasi.com

CS TOMASI Wealth Management today is successful and dedicated to all our clients as we assist them through the years in accumulating wealth and protecting it through major life transitions to maintain quality of life. We have a personal commitment to the client that their financial well-being is our top priority. Christiane Tomasi is a Registered Principal with, and Securities and Advisory Services offered through, LPL Financial, a Registered Investment Advisor, member FINRA/SIPC.

Integrity, Wisdom and Skill

Matthew D. Heller Partner

15760 Ventura Boulevard, Suite 2026 Encino, CA 91436 Phone: 818-501-7590 matt@whria.com www.willnerheller.com TWO-YEAR WINNER

Matthew D. Heller graduated from USC in 1989. Matt was one of the founding alumni mentors with the Career Advantage Program in the Marshall School of Business when the program began in the 1990s. Matt recently served as giving co-chair on his reunion committee for the class of 1989’s 25th reunion. Matt was recognized by USC when he received the Widney Alumni House Volunteer Award in 2014. Matt was named a “Trusted Advisor” by the San Fernando Valley Business Journal in 2013 and a Five Star Wealth Manager award winner in 2014 and 2015.

Matt founded Willner Heller LLC, a registered investment advisor, in 2003. The firm manages customized portfolios of equity and fixed income instruments for a variety of clients including families, corporations, nonprofits and foundations. Willner Heller utilizes a variety of independent research to create unique, taxefficient portfolios that are designed to maximize returns while minimizing risk through dynamic asset allocation and diversification strategies.

Customized Investment Solutions With an Independent Approach to Managing Wealth The Five Star Wealth Manager award, administered by Crescendo Business Services, LLC (dba Five Star Professional), is based on 10 objective criteria. Eligibility criteria – required: 1. Credentialed as a registered investment adviser or a registered investment adviser representative; 2. Active as a credentialed professional in the financial services industry for a minimum of 5 years; 3. Favorable regulatory and complaint history review (As defined by Five Star Professional, the wealth manager has not: A. Been subject to a regulatory action that resulted in a license being suspended or revoked, or payment of a fine; B. Had more than a total of three customer complaints filed against them [settled or pending] with any regulatory authority or Five Star Professional’s consumer complaint process. Unfavorable feedback may have been discovered through a check of complaints registered with a regulatory authority or complaints registered through Five Star Professional’s consumer complaint process; feedback may not be representative of any one client’s experience; C. Individually contributed to a financial settlement of a customer complaint filed with a regulatory authority; D. Filed for personal bankruptcy; E. Been convicted of a felony); 4. Fulfilled their firm review based on internal standards; 5. Accepting new clients. Evaluation criteria – considered: 6. One-year client retention rate; 7. Five-year client retention rate; 8. Non-institutional discretionary and/or non-discretionary client assets administered; 9. Number of client households served; 10. Education and professional designations. Wealth managers do not pay a fee to be considered or placed on the final list of Five Star Wealth Managers. Award does not evaluate quality of services provided to clients. Once awarded, wealth managers may purchase additional profile ad space or promotional products. The Five Star award is not indicative of the wealth manager’s future performance. Wealth managers may or may not use discretion in their practice and therefore may not manage their client’s assets. The inclusion of a wealth manager on the Five Star Wealth Manager list should not be construed as an endorsement of the wealth manager by Five Star Professional or this publication. Working with a Five Star Wealth Manager or any wealth manager is no guarantee as to future investment success, nor is there any guarantee that the selected wealth managers will be awarded this accomplishment by Five Star Professional in the future. Fortfm.usc.edu more information on the Five Star award and the research/selection methodology, go to fivestarprofessional.com. 3,105 Los Angeles wealth managers considered for the award; 327 (11 percent uscwere trojan family of candidates) were named 2015 Five Star Wealth Managers. 420 Palm Springs wealth managers were considered for the award; 61 (15 percent of candidates) were named 2015 Five Star Wealth Managers.

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6/19/15 3:57 AM

family q & a

Send your questions or memories to Ask Tommy at magazines@usc.edu. Include your name, degree, class year and a way to contact you. Questions may be edited for space.

Ask Tommy Questions and answers with Tommy Trojan Dear Readers,

The 2014–15 school year has officially come to a close, and as I look back, I’m still impressed with some of the new courses this year. I always love reliving the great Greek and Roman epics in classics classes, of course. But how about a course that taught storytelling through Google Glass? Another one explored how discoveries in stem cell biology could venture into science fiction. College is the place to dive into new technology and discuss big issues, and professors make these lively discussions happen. Every generation at USC has its legendary instructors, and in our Winter 2014 issue, I asked you to share your stories about them. Here are a few of your memories. [The late] Dr. Patrick Rooney will always remain my favorite USC professor! He was my mentor and doctoral advise r from 1990 to 1993. While I was taking my doctoral, Doc Rooney dropped in to see how I was doing and I asked him to complete some forms so I could begin my dissertation. He said OK and left. The next day, prior to my trip back to Milwaukee, I bumped into his secretary and asked about my forms. She said, “The forms have all been taken care of. Dr. Rooney would never forget your request.” At that moment, I pledged always to follow through promptly whenever someone asked me to complete a request. I have always tried to live up to Dr. Rooney’s example. M A RK P I EN KO S E D D ’93 There were many professors who touched my life when I was earning my master of professional writing degree. My nominee is undoubtedly Ben Masselink, who died in the early aughts, tied with Shelly Lowenkopf. Shelly because he is Shelly and encouraged me to finish the novel I started in his Literary Marketplace class. We disagree about the brilliance of Charles Krauthammer, but I ac-

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knowledge that Shelly influenced my life. Then there was dear Ben. Ben always typed—with a typewriter—the feedback notes for class. He carried his distinguished cane and welcomed, with his lovely wife, Dee, students to his Pacific Palisades home. He was one of the gentlest people I’ve ever known, with some unexpectedly risqué stories about Hollywood. Everyone loved Ben. I hope he is typing away in heaven. K RI ST I N J O H N S O N MPW ’99 I took Richard Dekmejian’s political science class, Terrorism and Genocide. One afternoon, as lecture was starting, four people burst into Taper Hall 101 screaming, wearing ski masks and brandishing knives. They ordered the professor down on his knees. He complied. I reached for my phone to call 911. Then Professor Dekmejian and the masked intruders began laughing. The people took off their masks and we realized they were classmates. Professor Dekmejian assured us everything we witnessed

was a fake terrorist attack. He then introduced a director of the Department of Homeland Security who presented a talk on possible future attacks. We were hooked and engaged. Now, as a teacher, I try to hook my students in an engaging lesson just like Professor Dekmejian. N I C K B RO W N ’12

Dear Readers,

With summer here, I’ve got my sights set on my next adventure before the fall semester starts. Should I hike up to Machu Picchu, or maybe assist on a dig in Macedonia? One thing I know is that wherever I go—no matter how far-flung, remote or cosmopolitan—I always bump into fellow Trojans. Share your story about the most unexpected place you’ve stumbled upon a fellow member of the Trojan Family at magazines@usc.edu, and you might see your letter in an upcoming issue. summer 2015

6/30/15 5:20 PM

BEYOND EXCEPTIONAL MEDICINE TM

Other oncologists told Mary Kay nothing could be done. We told her we had a plan. When Mary Kay came to us, she was facing a rare form of stage IV rectal cancer and a grim prognosis from four separate physicians. As a single mother to three daughters, she was desperate for hope. She found it with Heinz-Josef Lenz, MD, and the multidisciplinary GI oncology team at USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center. In conjunction with the USC Digestive Heath Center, our oncologists and surgeons partnered with Mary Kay to map out a plan. With tailored chemotherapy based on molecular testing available at USC Norris, we were able to treat Mary Kay’s cancer and provide surgery to remove her tumors. Today, Mary Kay is cancer-free, and free to spend time with her girls instead of in a chemo chair. She never gave up, and we’ll never stop pioneering the research that leads to new cures. Read Mary Kay’s story and see how we’re going beyond exceptional medicine: KeckMedicine.org/beyond

For appointments, call: (800) USC-CARE

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6/29/15 6:09 AM

USC Trojan Family Magazine University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA 90089-2818 Change Service Requested

N ON -PROFIT ORGAN IZATION U.S. POSTAGE PAID UN IVERSIT Y OF SOUTHERN CALIFORN IA

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7/3/15 12:50 PM