Trojan Family Magazine Fall 2015 by University of Southern California

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Mark and Mary Stevensâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; gift accelerates USC research into the mysteries of the brain.

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The serene exterior of Birnkrant Residence Hall belies the beehive of social activity inside. Constructed in 1962 with its signature concrete overhangs, the building houses a residential college that provides programming such as field trips to cultural hotspots for students who hold Trustee, Presidential and Mork Family scholarships. USC recently gave all of its residential colleges official crests to celebrate their unique student culture and identities; see the designs on page 10.

PHOTO BY ALLISON V. SMITH

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Editor’s Note The university’s pledge pays dividends for student-athletes. President’s Page A generous gift will help countless people struggling with hearing loss.

USC experts create new ways to visualize vast amounts of information from studies of the human brain.

Seen and Heard Your take on USC stories from our magazine and the social Web.

News LA’s history through its restaurant menus, seven signs of sustainability, and a trio of alumni become trustees. Freeze Frame By Elisa Huang Peter Read Miller ’69 brings 50 years of football into focus.

20 A New Game Plan

By Vanessa Okoth-Obbo At USC, women are prepared to make a mark on the video game industry.

Respect Our Elders By Diane Krieger Meet the doctor advocating for America’s seniors. Hear, and Now By Candace Pearson The USC Caruso Department of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery opens up the world of sound.

USC Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute researchers seek answers in their images. The target: diseases like Alzheimer’s. By Katharine Gammon

COURTESY OF THE LABORATORY OF NEURO IMAGING

Alumni News Adventure with Trojan Travel, fight on forever with USC’s biggest superfans and hear from the president-elect of the USCAA Board of Governors.

Celebrate unsung heroes who make USC’s student experience like no other.

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The Promise

Getting their degree is the ultimate second act for Trojans returning to USC after a professional sports career. By Mike Piellucci

Mind the Map

Experimental maps are transforming how we navigate and understand our world. By Greg Hardesty

Class Notes Who’s doing what and where?

76 Ask Tommy

Data on the Brain

Write On!

Distinguished authors forecast the future of storytelling in a new digital world. Spoiler alert: It thrives. By Diane Krieger usc trojan family

e d i t o r’ s n o t e

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

Alicia Di Rado M ANAGI NG E DI TO R

First Degree for a Second Career

One of the hot debates in the world of sports always seems to build during football season, culminating with the National Football League draft in April. The topic: whether young student-athletes should stay in school to get their degrees or leave college early for a career in the NFL. In basketball, the practice of departing college for the NBA (or even skipping college entirely) spurs such regular yearly discussion on sports talk shows that you can mark your calendar by it. It’s far from a simple issue. Getting a degree is one of the goals inherent in attending college. But pro salaries bring financial security to families, and a pro contract offer can vanish faster than you can say, “ACL tear.” That’s why I’ve been thinking a lot about our illuminating story in this issue of USC Trojan Family Magazine about Trojan pro athletes who come back to college to get their degrees. USC has made a concerted effort to understand the reality of the choices that studentathletes face. For student-athletes in good academic standing who leave early for the pro ranks, the university welcomes them back to the classroom, even many years later. As our story shows, returning Trojans deeply value the opportunity, which they often pursue in relative anonymity. They’ve made a promise to their families or to themselves to get their diploma, whether it’s to start a new career outside sports or to finish their college journey. I hope you enjoy this issue’s window into their experiences. Alicia Di Rado Editor-In-Chief, USC Trojan Family Magazine

Elisa Huang SE NI O R E DI TO R

Diane Krieger PRO DUCT I O N M ANAGE R

Mary Modina

ART DI RE CTO R

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

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PHOTO BY PAMELA MOORE

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

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Partners for Profound Change

PHOTO BY GUS RUELAS

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

when i speak with our trustees about their philanthropy, I am always amazed by their dedication to USC and their commitment to seeing the university advance its mission. But what is most gratifying is when they find a way to align USC’s work with a passion that touches them personally. Niki and I saw this wonderfully reflected in a recent gift from Rick Caruso and his wife, Tina. The Carusos’ daughter, Gianna, had struggled with hearing loss since birth, limiting her experience of the world in subtle but significant ways. To compensate, she long relied on external hearing aids and learned to read lips, but some experiences still eluded her. As the Carusos recalled, when Gianna attended sleepovers with friends, she would be unwittingly excluded when their conversations continued after the lights went out. Last year, Keck Medicine of USC doctors changed Gianna’s life. Dr. John Niparko inserted an innovative device directly into her ear canal, dramatically improving her ability to discern sounds. “The minute the hearing device went in, there was a huge difference,” Mr. Caruso recalled to a reporter. “Gianna immediately started crying—all of us started crying. It is so profound how hearing loss affects everything in your life. I still can’t fully appreciate all of the challenges, even though I saw Gianna live with it every day. And it also was what she was missing—she had never heard a bird chirping before this device.” Gianna’s experience inspired Rick and Tina Caruso to make a transformative $25 million gift to USC, one that would benefit our renowned ear, nose and throat program. The gift named and established the USC Tina and Rick Caruso Department of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery, as well as its affiliated center, the USC Caruso Family Center for Childhood Communication. For this gift, our gratitude to the Carusos runs particularly deep, as they have long been exceptional supporters of USC. The couple’s previous naming gift established the USC Caruso Catholic Center, a center for spiritual support for our community, and a home away from home for many of our students. The Carusos’ lifetime giving to the university is well over $35 million, tfm.usc.edu

and includes generous support for USC Athletics as well as our Keck School of Medicine of USC and USC Price School of Public Policy. Mr. Caruso’s own relationship with USC dates back nearly four decades, as he earned his bachelor’s degree with honors from the USC Marshall School of Business. In 2007, he joined our USC Board of Trustees, and he brings his vast professional experience to this role. He founded Caruso Affiliated, one of our nation’s largest privately held real estate companies; the company’s holdings—which include The Grove, The Americana at Brand, The Commons at Calabasas, The Promenade at Westlake, Waterside at Marina Del Rey, and 8500 Burton Way—have transformed the landscape of Southern California and revitalized entire neighborhoods. With this most recent gift from the Carusos, USC will have the potential to help thousands—or perhaps millions—of people hear for the first time, while significantly bolstering the work of our worldclass doctors. Together, we also take a giant step toward finding answers for hearing loss.

Rick Caruso with C. L. Max Nikias

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seen and heard

Inspiring Words

When Maria Popova (a.k.a. @brainpicker) tweeted to her nearly 600,000 followers to “stop what you’re doing and watch Pico Iyer’s magnificent @USC commencement address,” we had to agree. Iyer, a celebrated author and travel writer, was USC’s baccalaureate speaker in May and his poignant speech about finding meaning in life’s parodoxes struck a chord across the Internet. (Watch it at bit.ly/PicoIyerUSC.) The speech, deemed “brilliant” by online zine BoingBoing, has since racked up more than 11,000 views on YouTube.

Don Weir EdD ’91 was happy to see praise for the late Patrick Rooney in the Summer 2015 issue’s “Ask Tommy” column. He emailed to share his own memory of the USC education professor, who introduced Weir to his classmates when Weir arrived at his first class. The connection would lead to a lifetime bond forged in the classroom and on the playing field. He added that I had played football at the University of Hawaii. With eyes twinkling, he said that when he played for Nebraska, their only defeat was to Hawaii’s Rainbow Warriors. He was my dissertation chair and became a very good friend. Up until his passing he’d call every year to talk about NCAA football for an hour.

Our Town

We asked fans on Facebook to share their can’t-miss LA spots, and you proved that Trojans know USC’s hometown better than just about anyone. Famed sights like the La Brea Tar Pits, Griffith Observatory and Dodger Stadium got shout-outs, but so did places off the beaten tourist track. “Experience the east side with Boyle Heights culture, food and, best of all, the people,” urged Danny Castro. Maryanne DeCandia ’89 offered directions to a good local hiking trail. And should we be surprised that Trojans know where to chow down? (Check out the list to the right for some suggested favorites). Dereck Andrade ’90 may have said it best, though, with his simple recommendation for a must-see: “every USC football game.”

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Our 500th picture on Instagram featured the indomitable Tommy Trojan at sunrise. Share your own Tommy or Traveler pic and tag us at @uscedu.

TOP EATING SPOTS In-N-Out Original Tommy’s El Cholo Mexican Restaurant Philippe the Original Pink’s Hot Dogs Roscoe’s House of Chicken and Waffles The Farmers Market at The Grove

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TOMMY EVERLASTING

Dog Gone

Though it’s been decades since George Tirebiter chased his last car, readers can’t get enough of USC’s first mascot. Our Spring 2015 issue included a short history of the loveable pooch. The story brought back fond memories for alumna Susan Haney, who wrote to us about the mutt: Thank you for your article (“Bite On!” Spring 2015, p.17) and “Mailbag” (Summer 2015, p. 6) responses about George Tirebiter. My father, John Klinepeter ’49, attended USC during the time of George. An avid Trojan, my father fully educated me on all things USC, which included numerous stories about the scruffy and tenacious George. I have included a newspaper clipping photo of George that I came across in my father’s USC memorabilia. Poor George. How humiliating. In my father’s footsteps were his sister, Dorothy Klinepeter ’48; his mother, Dorothy Dalton Duggan MA ’55; his grandsons, Joseph W. Haney III ’97, MBT ’04 and Mark W. Haney ’02, MD ’06, MS ’08; and me, Susan L. Haney MMFT ’00. We also have two Trojan daughters-in-law. Thanks for the education, opportunities and memories.

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FROM THE COLLECTION OF THE LOS ANGELES PUBLIC LIBRARY

EATER’S DIGEST “Nearly every phase of LA’s growth has had a menu to go with it,” writes Josh Kun in his most recent book, To Live and Dine in L.A. On page 12, the USC Annenberg professor shares memorable LA restaurant menus, like this one from the Jonathan Club, a members-only establishment still serving today.

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trojan news Hark the Heraldry

USC transformed its housing for freshmen entirely into residential colleges in 2012—bringing special cultural programming, academic opportunities and mentoring from faculty to more students. With five more colleges set to open at USC Village in two years, the university recently unveiled official crests to represent each of its colleges— both existing and new. Some echo the colleges’ pasts, while others evoke histories that have yet to be written. Here are just a few.

ARTS AND HUMANITIES RESIDENTIAL COLLEGE Located at Parkside— Exposition Boulevard and Vermont Avenue This creative community is home to students of music, art and literature. It’s known for its performance and practice spaces. The crest detail is drawn from landscape surrounding the college—Mudd Hall and Hahn and Nazarian plazas.

BIRNKRANT RESIDENTIAL COLLEGE Located next to Leavey Library Dubbed “seven floors of open doors” for its social atmosphere, this college currently houses freshmen who are Trustee, Presidential and Mork Family scholars. The crest features a “B” for Birnkrant, the Torch of Knowledge, a book and a door.

MCCARTHY HONORS COLLEGE Located at USC Village— north side of Jefferson Boulevard Endowed by the Thomas and Dorothy Leavey Foundation, this college will provide a home for exceptional scholars. The design is inspired by McCarthy Quad, which was named in honor of Leavey Foundation Chair Kathleen Leavey McCarthy ’57.

NEW RESIDENTIAL COLLEGE AND NORTH RESIDENTIAL COLLEGE Located on Figueroa Street between 34th Street and Childs Way This college is a hub of activity and combines two closely connected buildings, often called “New North.” Interlocking angles on the crest evoke connections.

INTERNATIONAL RESIDENTIAL COLLEGE Located at Parkside— Exposition Boulevard and Vermont Avenue Global issues are a focus for this community, which includes many students from other nations. A display of flags on the crest represents the international traditions celebrated at the college.

SOUTH AREA RESIDENTIAL COLLEGE Located on Figueroa Street between Hellman and Childs ways Home to residents with a passion for social change, this community is represented by a compass rose, signifying exploration. The college includes residents of Marks and Trojan halls and Pardee and Marks towers.

WEST AREA RESIDENTIAL COLLEGE Located near the Lyon Center—Jefferson Boulevard and McClintock Avenue West comprises two adjoining towers, Webb and Fluor. The college’s crest shows two adjoining colors, with the sun setting to the west.

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trojan news

See the exhibition at the Los Angeles Central Library through Nov. 13. Details at lfla.org/live-and-dine.

To Live and Dine in LA Vintage menus can serve as maps of a long-ago city—colorful culinary guides that reveal the politics, economics and sociology of eating. Josh Kun, associate professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, worked with his students, chef Roy Choi and Los Angeles Public Library librarians to comb through the library’s collection of more than 9,000 menus—some dating back more than a century—to create the book To Live and Dine in L.A.: Menus and the Making of the Modern City (Angel City Press). A companion exhibition is underway at Los Angeles’ Central Library. “Menus and restaurants are mirrors and mementos both. They are keys to understanding a city and its people,” Kun writes. Here, he orders up some of his favorites: DON MATEO KELLER’S FEAST AND BALL “The earliest menu in the library’s collection is for a banquet thrown in 1875 by Matthew ‘Don Mateo’ Keller at his winery on Alameda Street that offered curried pig’s feet and steak and kidney pie. Dining out then was not that common and mostly a privilege of the wealthy, and there were more printed banquet menus than restaurant menus.” BOB’S BIG BOY MENU TEMPLATE “The Lord Printing Company in Los Angeles was the only one in the nation to focus exclusively on menus. Located on Beaudry Avenue, Lord was a ‘daily menu press’ for most of the last century. For the Bob’s Big Boy chain, it would print blank templates like this to be filled in with the daily and weekly dishes.” ALLAN LUM’S NEW GRAND EAST CAFE “Restaurants were key to the making of ‘New Chinatown’ as a com-

mercial and residential district. Allan Lum was one of many Chinese and Chinese-American restaurateurs who put their own images on their menu covers to make their ownership clear and to counter the stereotypes that had long been used to market Chinese restaurants.” TICK TOCK TEA ROOM “‘The most successful tea room,’ wrote The Journal of Home Economics, ‘is the one that preserves the atmosphere of a pleasant, well-ordered home.’ That was the aim of the Tick Tock Tea Room, opened in 1930 by Helen and Art Johnson. They served individual pot pies and pot roast with homemade noodles in a room she designed as a replica of the Minnesota living room they left behind: cuckoo clocks, fireplaces, fresh flowers and all.” ZAMBOANGA “One of the city’s earliest ‘South Seas’-themed clubs and restaurants, the Zamboanga opened

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on Slauson Avenue in the 1930s full of exoticizing ‘tiki’ motifs that attracted Hollywood celebs. To live up to its Philippines namesake, it put a die-cut of a pipe-smoking monkey on the cover of its tiny menu—now a classic image of LA menu design.” COCOANUT GROVE “Thanks to its starstudded clientele, the Cocoanut Grove nightclub—opened in the Ambassador Hotel in 1921—epitomized Hollywood glamour

and fantasy. The menu by Hilton designer Don May matched the club’s Moorish-inspired interiors and captured an ambience that celebrities couldn’t resist: the allure of a tropical escape.” ALLISON ENGEL

IMAGES FROM THE COLLECTION OF THE LOS ANGELES PUBLIC LIBRARY

spring 2015

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trojan news #1–#3 Peter Read Miller’s Sports Illustrated covers include USC quarterback Matt Barkley (2012); linebackers Brian Cushing, Rey Maualuga and Clay Matthews (2009); and quarterback Rodney Peete (1998). #4 Wide receiver Robert Woods makes a catch during the 2012 USC-Stanford game. #5 The 2009 Trojans, led by Matt Barkley, roll out against Oregon State. #6 Defensive backs Dennis Smith and Joey Browner break up a pass against Notre Dame in 1980. #7 Tight end Dominique Byrd scores in a foggy end zone at Oregon State in 2004.

See more pictures and read surprising insights from his career online at bit.ly/USCMiller.

Freeze Frame

As a USC freshman, Peter Read Miller ’69 approached El Rodeo yearbook editors and asked, “Can I shoot for you? I like sports stuff.” He parlayed his early successes photographing USC football into a career that spanned decades, including shooting NFL games and serving on the staff at Sports Illustrated. But in his spare moments, he always returned home to the USC sidelines with cameras in hand. In 2014, the Los Angeles City Council honored Miller for an “unparalleled and distinguished achievement”: his 50th anniversary documenting the Trojans. Here he shares some of his favorite images. ELISA HUANG

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IMAGES COURTESY OF PETER READ MILLER

Peter Read Miller ’69 brings 50 years of Trojan football into focus.

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Trojan Trustees

The USC Board of Trustees welcomes three USC alumni whose backgrounds span from banking to the lab bench.

POWER PLAYER After years as a top college and professional tennis player, Heliane Steden ’86 took her leadership talents to the business world. Steden serves as a managing director at Merrill Lynch’s flagship international office in New York, where she provides private banking services to clients in Mexico. Born in Germany and raised in Mexico City, Steden moved to the U.S. in 1983 to pursue a bachelor’s degree in business administration at USC and play tennis for the Women of Troy. As a student-athlete, Steden was a three-time All-American and a member of two national championship teams. Named Mexico’s top female athlete in 1985, she represented the country in both Federation Cup play and the Pan Am Games. In recognition of her own journey to USC and her rewarding experience as a

student-athlete, Steden endowed a scholarship for the Women of Troy tennis program geared for international student-athletes. GLOBALLY MINDED Since graduating from USC, William McMorrow ’69, MBA ’70 has steadfastly backed real estate education and research at the university. He serves on the executive board of the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate and recently made a gift to establish the William J. McMorrow Global Real Estate Program at the USC Marshall School of Business. The program will enable undergraduate business majors to learn about international real estate firsthand through trips across the U.S. and abroad, while connecting them with internship positions. McMorrow is chairman and CEO of Kennedy-Wilson Holdings, an international real estate and financial services firm. Since McMorrow purchased the company in 1988, Kennedy Wilson has grown from one office and 11 employees to a firm with 25 international offices in countries including the United Kingdom, Spain and Japan.

CANCER FIGHTER A third-generation Angeleno, Amy Ross PhD ’86 studied experimental pathology at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and worked in the cancer diagnostics field for more than 25 years. Now retired, the former Caltech biologist has authored more than 75 scientific papers and holds three U.S. patents. At USC, Ross was one of the founding members of the USC Lambda LGBT Alumni Association and served twice as co-president of its board of directors. She also endowed the Amy Ross Scholarship in LGBT Health Studies for students who are advancing LGBT health and wellness. Ross recently completed her term as president of the USC Alumni Association Board of Governors and serves as a member of several USC organizations, including Women of Troy and the USC Trojan Society of Hospitals.

T H AT ’S

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Fall renews old rivalries, which means it’s time for the most storied nonconference matchup in college football: USC–Notre Dame. This year’s battle for the Jeweled Shillelagh takes place on Oct. 17 in South Bend. Let’s hope for a different result than in 1953; holders of this $5 ticket saw Notre Dame take its 16th win since the series started in 1926. In more recent history, USC took last year’s game decisively, 49-14.

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COURTESY OF USC UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES

The USC Board of Trustees’ three newest members are alumni with longstanding philanthropic and volunteer ties to the university. Get to know the latest leaders to join USC’s governing board.

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A Sustainable USC

In an age of throw-away electronics, clothing and shoes, USC faculty, staff and students are envisioning a university where nothing is considered disposable and resources like energy and water are used wisely. The far-reaching effort stretches into nearly every corner of USC. From using recyclable carpet to reducing tailgate waste, Trojans are making strides in sustainability that you might not know about. 7

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#1 USC residential dining venues use china, glass and silverware instead of disposable flatware. They also avoid plastic trays. These steps keep about 20 tons of disposable food containers out of landfills. #2 The USC Bike Coalition brings together students, faculty and staff to host repair workshops and advocate for a bike-friendly Los Angeles. #3 Some 3 million gallons

of water are stored below Cromwell Field. The water is chilled during cool night hours and piped to buildings for air conditioning during the day, saving 4,000 megawatthours of power a year. #4 You wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t see ketchup packets during football games at the Coliseum. The facility reduces landfill waste through its new composting and recycling program. #5 USCâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s largest parking structure uses 80

percent less energy thanks to fluorescent fixtures and motion and daylight sensors installed in 2012. #6 The International Residential College at Parkside grows veggies in its new community garden. The University Park Campus also hosts a weekly farmers market. #7 Hydration stations across the campus let students fill up reusable bottles instead of buying bottled water.

PHOTO BY MEIKO TAKECHI ARQUILLO

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Celebrate ten years of USC’s dynamic arts and humanities initiative! Our 2015–16 season features:

JUNOT DÍAZ ALONZO KING LINES BALLET THE CREATORS OF SERIAL ROBERT SCHENKKAN BILL T. JONES MARTHA GRAHAM DANCE COMPANY ROBERT TOWNE THE GLOAMING and much more!

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TWO ALUM NA E TO KN OW

A New Game Plan

The USC School of Cinematic Arts wants women to make their mark on the video game design industry. By Vanessa Okoth-Obbo When you hear the word “gamer,” do you think of a skinny teenage boy glued to his game console on a Friday night? Think again. Over the past two decades, many long-held perceptions about video games have come crashing down. For one, nearly half of the 155 million Americans who play games—some 46 percent—are female, according to the Entertainment Software Association. Yet a look under the hood at the companies developing these games reveals the workforce to be overwhelmingly male. “In the industry you can see [game development] teams of 35 people with one woman. You also see very little ethnic diversity,” says Laird Malamed, a faculty advisor for students in USC’s advanced games class. Chief operating officer of Oculus VR, Malamed previously was head of development at Activision Blizzard, the gaming giant behind blockbusters like Call of Duty and Guitar Hero. As female-centered support groups and efforts to recruit women grow across the game industry, social media chatter on the reasons behind the shortage of women has raged (2012’s #1reasonwhy Twitter dialog drew thousands of women—and men—to the debate). Having women in the field matters, in part, because they help shape the point of view and narrative of the games. But one answer may be simple: Start more young women on the game development path early. USC has taken that mission seriously, drawing diverse students to its game design program. “We’ve worked very hard to build a community around our program that’s really open and welcoming,” says Tracy Fullerton, who holds the Electronics Arts Endowed Chair of Interactive Entertainment at the School of Cinematic Arts. “It has been that way since the beginning, and because of this the program has even attracted students who might not have been in the industry otherwise.” Fullerton leads the school’s Interactive Media & Games Division, which has seen the number of female students grow year after year. She also serves as director of USC Games, USC’s nationally top-ranked university-wide game design program.

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Meet two of the many Trojan alumnae changing the face of game play. KELLEE SANTIAGO MFA ’06 Head of developer relations at OUYA Bona fide Co-founder and former president of thatgamecompany, which creates games that inspire and enrich players Quotable quote “I believe games can be deeply meaningful and wildly entertaining.”

The Interactive Media & Games Division’s incoming undergraduate and graduate classes this fall have about as many women as men, and Fullerton is a firm believer that once these talented and diverse students enter the industry, they’ll become changemakers like Erin Reynolds ’06, MFA ’12. A graduate of USC Thornton School of Music, Reynolds worked as a game deSUSANA RUIZ veloper for several years before returning MFA ’06 to get her master’s degree from the USC Assistant professor at School of Cinematic Arts. After graduatUniversity of California, Santa Cruz, and USC ing, she founded Flying Mollusk, a studio doctoral candidate where she’s developing NeverMind, a multiBona fide Co-founder level game that began as her MFA thesis. A of Take Action Games, biofeedback horror game, NeverMind uses which combines social sensors to measure players’ fear and stress justice and nonfiction storytelling while they play, becoming more difficult as Claim to fame Her players become more scared. The full verMFA project, Darfur is sion is scheduled for release this autumn. Dying, is considered Reynolds collaborates with a team of a foundational work in the “serious play” designers and developers—many of whom game genre. she met at USC. She’s the only woman on the team, but she says that has posed no barriers, and the field is widening. “I think we’re in a very exciting time because making games is so accessible to so many people,” Reynolds says. “I’m very encouraged about the direction of diversity in gaming in general.” Chanel Summers, a pioneering video game producer and an adjunct professor in the Interactive Media & Games Division, believes in inspiring young women before college. She teaches a condensed version of her “Audio Expression” class to girls in Washington state, not far from Microsoft headquarters. “Most of my students are still in high school, but one has gone on to study video games at Drexel University,” says Summers, who was a sound engineer for the original Xbox console. “She is absolutely consumed with being a sound designer for digital media, and I have every confidence that she will be amazing.” Studies have shown that the earlier girls are introduced to technology fields, the more likely they are to pursue tech majors in college—a direct pipeline to the game industry. Summers is quick to point out that people who are passionate about game design are eager to welcome all innovators. “I am asked often about [my job as a female sound engineer] but hardly ever by people inside the industry,” Summers says. “Certainly, there is a natural curiosity when people learn what I do, but I never get tired of encouraging more women into game development as an extremely rewarding career opportunity.” autumn 2015

USC ALUMNI CAREER RESOURCES

Adrienne Bankert (right) with Kyle Hrabe, USC School of Cinematic Arts student

“As a USC alumna, I’m proud to connect with USC students and alumni who are interested in the profession of journalism. The USC Career Center helped me launch my career. I encourage my fellow USC alumni to tap into all of the career resources available through connectSC.”

PHOTO COURTESY OF SPECIAL OLYMPICS

—Adrienne Bankert, Reporter/Anchor for ABC 7 Los Angeles The Trojan Family connection is truly lifelong and worldwide. Whether you are exploring career options, recruiting talent, seeking networking opportunities or interested in mentoring a student, USC is committed to helping you achieve your professional goals. tfm.usc.edu

USC alumni career resources feature exclusive career opportunities for the Trojan Family. Alumni are encouraged to take advantage of resources designed specifically for USC graduates. Log in to your 24/7 alumni career resource, connectSC, by visiting:

careers.usc.edu/alumni

Career Center Career resources for USC Alumni are made possible through a partnership between the USC Alumni Association and the USC Career Center.

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T R O J A N

V O I C E

L A U R A M O S Q U E D A M D ’8 7

Respect Our Elders Meet the doctor who’s on a mission to end elder abuse.

How did you get into this field? When I was doing my fellowship in geriatrics, I saw a patient who had a huge welt on her arm. She told me her daughter hit her with a telephone so I reported it to Adult Protective Services [APS] as a suspected case of elder abuse. When the patient came back to see me a

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few weeks later, nothing had changed. So I marched into APS. I was really mad. And that’s when I learned that I was part of the problem. APS workers are often in difficult and dangerous situations with little assistance from the medical community. They are true heroes, yet few people know they even exist. Inadequately staffed and so underfunded, they have very limited time to spend with the people they are trying to help. Why is this an issue for the medical community? The vast majority of APS workers have little or no medical training. When I went out on house calls with them, I would see somebody all bruised up, and I’d say, “That person was beaten.” What I would hear time and time again—even from police—is: “They’re old. They bruise easily.” Well, you shouldn’t see bruising on the face, the head, the neck, the soles of the feet, the torso. You shouldn’t see multiple large bruises without a reasonable and believable explanation.

We need to keep the focus on prevention and early detection and recognize that this is a public health issue. The vast majority of abuse is not done by bad people. It happens when poorly informed folks who may lack caregiving skills can’t handle the situation they’re in. Take, for example, a sandwichgeneration woman whose father-in-law with Alzheimer’s disease moves into the house. She’s already raising her teenage kids and running the household. Now she’s got somebody following her around, saying: ‘What time is it? What time is it?’ Finally she just loses it: She hits or starts screaming, doing things that are absolutely abusive and should never happen. But that woman doesn’t need to be locked up; she needs help. Of course, there are some people with serious pathology who are abusive and they do need a date with the criminal justice system. Why is this such an urgent problem? People over 85 are the fastest-growing segment of our

population. These are the people most likely to have chronic conditions. Half of them have a dementing illness and half of those people will be abused or neglected. We don’t have a workforce that is prepared in terms of numbers or education to care for them. We don’t have sufficient policies or protections and don’t enforce the ones we do have well enough. Even with enough money and a caring family, caregiving is really difficult. In an ideal society, how would we address this? It starts with a health care system that provides person-centered holistic care. While we’re providing medical care and linking people to community-based services, we also need adequately funded systems to intervene and help in cases of abuse and neglect. We need a compassionate, empathetic approach. That’s the kind of thing that will prevent abuse.

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ILLUSTRATION BY CARLO GIAMBARRESI

One in 10. That’s how many Americans over age 60 suffer abuse, says Laura Mosqueda MD ’87, chair of the Department of Family Medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. The geriatrician and Los Angeles native is using the National Center on Elder Abuse, the nation’s only clearinghouse for information on elder abuse, to take action. The federal Administration on Aging recently funded this USC-based center, which Mosqueda directs, through a three-year, $2.2 million grant— just as huge numbers of baby boomers are entering their 60s. She spoke to Diane Krieger of USC Trojan Family Magazine about the road ahead.

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Family Ties

Six decades, three buildings, three generations and one strong USC tradition come together for the Popovich family. by lynn lipinski

EDITOR’S NOTE: The entire USC community mourns Jane Hoffman Popovich ’65, who died of cancer shortly before this magazine went to press. A tribute to her appears on p. 70. Ask USC Trustee Jane Hoffman Popovich ’65 for her earliest memory of USC, and she smiles. It has to be the USC-UCLA men’s basketball game that kicked off the 1959-60 season and cemented her allegiance to the Trojan side of LA’s crosstown rivalry. “My father took me to that first USCUCLA game at the Sports Arena, which had just opened,” she says. “The game was very close all the way to the end.” USC guard Jerry Pimm almost brought the game against Coach John Wooden’s Bruins to a big finish, sinking a 20-foot jump shot, but it wasn’t to be. The final score: UCLA 47, USC 45. Despite the heartbreaking loss, the Trojans made an indelible impression on the teen. A native Angeleno, Popovich saw USC grow along with Los Angeles during the region’s boom in the 1960s. Her parents, H. Leslie and Elaine Stevely Hoffman, were avid supporters of higher education in LA, which was a driving force for their decades-long support of USC—even though they did not attend the university. The Hoffmans invested heavily in USC, helping to create many of the classrooms, research spaces and medical programs so important to the university today. That tradition continues through their daughter, Jane; her husband, J. Kristoffer Popovich ’65 MBA ’70; and their granddaughters, Kimberly Shepherd, Tricia Fink and Jennifer Allen ’96. The Hoffman Foundation, steered by the Popoviches and their daughters, most recently donated $4 million in June to en-

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dow the Jane and Kris Popovich Chair in Cancer Research at USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center. “Jane and Kris Popovich stand among USC’s most dedicated and exceptional supporters and have earned such a special place in the hearts of so many of us at USC,” President C. L. Max Nikias says. “As a couple, they continue to build on the stellar groundwork laid by Jane’s parents nearly 60 years ago. Over the decades, this singular family has combined their extraordinary philanthropy and foresight regarding higher education with a heartfelt dedication to our community. The university’s current lofty standing can be traced back—in no small measure—to their outstanding support.” PILLARS OF THE CITY The family legacy began in Los Angeles during World War II, when H. Leslie Hoffman—Les for short—started making and selling tabletop radios. He diversified into televisions, along the way forming Hoffman Electronics Corp. The company would go on to pioneer solar cell technology. But he was more than a business and technology leader. He became a USC trustee and national chair of USC’s 1961 Master Plan Com-

mittee. The campaign raised $126 million for USC in the 1960s. “My father was committed to building the city into a thriving community,” Jane Popovich says. And for USC to grow along with LA, “he knew that personal giving would be key.” Kimberly Shepherd remembers that her grandparents and parents loved to bring new people to a cause. “Before giving, they’d always ask themselves, ‘does this need our leadership?’” she says. She’s now a board member at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, like her father before her. A walk through USC’s campuses underscores their leadership. Gifts from their foundation in the 1960s funded the H. Leslie Hoffman Hall of Business Administration at the USC Marshall School of Business and the Elaine Stevely Hoffman Medical Research Center at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. A donation in 1995 funded the H. Leslie Hoffman and Elaine S. Hoffman Chair in Cancer Research at the Keck School of Medicine. “Jane and Kris understand the relationship between a strong USC and a strong Los Angeles,” says James G. Ellis, USC Marshall dean. “They are tireless stewards of the Hoffman family philanthropic tradition, a legacy they have made

their

Les Hoffman, left, Elaine Stevely Hoffman and Jane Hoffman Popovich

OPPOSITE: PHOTO COURTESY OF THE POPOVICH FAMILY; VINTAGE PHOTO COURTESY OF USC UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES

time with our grandchildren.” They have eight, ranging in ages from 2 1/2 to 17. The Popoviches’ hobbies include family outings of hiking, golf, skiing and—harkening back to Jane Popovich’s earliest memory of USC—Trojan basketball and football.

their own and carry forward to future generations. They are hands-on leaders within the USC and Marshall communities, earning an indelible place in the hearts of the entire USC and Marshall family.” Nearly 30 years after the dedication of Hoffman Hall, construction began on Jane Hoffman and J. Kristoffer Popovich Hall— dubbed JKP—a technologically advanced building that would become home to the USC Marshall School’s MBA programs. Daughter Jennifer Allen, who had been a USC senior at the groundbreaking, remembers walking through Popovich Hall shortly after it had opened. “I felt like I stepped into the next generation of business education,” she says. “I was so proud and happy for my parents, and to be part of a USC legacy that runs very deep.” The new Popovich Hall, opened in 1999, would continue the work the Hoffmans started: boosting higher education and advancing USC Marshall’s standing as a top business school. GROWING UP TROJAN An only child, Jane Popovich was told by her mother and father that she could go to any university she wanted. “Well, anywhere except for UCLA,” she says with a smile. She was accepted at USC, Stanford and tfm.usc.edu

Northwestern, but chose USC. Kris Popovich, whom she met in high school, earned business degrees at USC Marshall. The couple married shortly after graduation, pursuing their interests in business as well as family. Hoffman Electronics was sold in 1971, but Kris Popovich continued as CEO of its spin-off Hoffman Video Systems, a leading integrator of audio and video components. Jane Popovich followed her passion to the fashion industry, where she owned and operated several clothing stores and a retail catalog for more than 20 years, many of those years in partnership with her three daughters. Despite a packed schedule, the couple still finds time for their alma mater. Jane Popovich has been a member of the USC Board of Trustees since 1983. She also just finished a term as president of the USC Associates Board of Directors, a group that Kris Popovich was instrumental in forming, and of which he has also served as president. Both serve on the USC Marshall Board of Leaders, and Kris Popovich has served as USC Marshall’s development chair. Jane Popovich is also an active member of Town & Gown of USC and Women of Troy. When asked what they do for fun, the retired couple has a simple answer: “Spend

NEXT GENERATIONS Their most recent gift to Norris cancer center will create an endowed faculty chair to advance critical cancer studies. “After 60 years of research, we’re still looking for cures to all cancers,” Kris Popovich says. “We hope this gift will spur progress toward a much-needed breakthrough.” “Jane and Kris Popovich understand the importance of investing in translational research, which is key to bringing the knowledge generated through basic science to the patient’s bedside,” says Stephen Gruber, Hoffman Chair in Cancer Research and director of USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center. “Thanks to their generosity, Norris cancer center can support outstanding faculty who will be able to develop innovative care that will benefit cancer patients.” The gift brought the Hoffman Foundation’s lifetime USC giving to $20 million, which includes significant contributions to establish student scholarships. “There is a strong sense of tradition within our family’s support of USC,” Tricia Fink says. “I talk to my sons about how we support USC because we want to help build this community and, through that, to help others.” When the Popoviches return to the University Park Campus, they’re always thrilled to see Popovich Hall—not because their names are on it, but because students and faculty love the learning environment. Seeing a new generation of leaders thriving is a reminder that the legacy their family started is alive and well and has taken USC further than they could have ever imagined. “Today, USC has become an academic powerhouse, and its accomplishments attract people from around the world,” Jane Popovich says. “I’m proud that my father was among those who helped get the ball rolling.” usc trojan family

trojan news HE A LT H FI L E S

The Student and the Stradivarius A musician’s instrument is more than simply a tool of the trade. “The violin and its player inspire and influence each other,” says Distinguished Professor Midori Goto, renowned violinist and faculty member at the USC Thornton School of Music. “To meet up to the great mind of a great violin, the player must learn to live up to it as well.” One of Goto’s graduate students will have the rare chance to learn that lesson firsthand. When Francisco Garcia Fullana won the Munetsugu International Violin Competition in Japan in March, he received a once-in-a-lifetime prize: a two-year loan of the “Rainville” violin created in 1697 by Antonio Stradivari. “It is almost a dream come true to be able to play on such wonderful instruments,” says Fullana, 25, who has been playing on a 1679 Pietro Guarneri “di Mantua” violin on loan from the Stradivari Society of Chicago since 2013. So why is older better? “On one hand, it’s the craft,” Fullana says. “It’s like a Picasso, Miró or a Goya. They were geniuses at what they did. It’s the same case with a Guarneri or with a Strad.” The other factor is an effect that can only come with time. “In the older instruments, the tone quality and the beauty within the sound are almost unbreakable in their magic,” he says. Stradivari violins are famous for a reason, he adds. “Even if I switch to something less expensive or fancy in the future, you still have that sound in your ear. So it’s not just the instrument itself, it’s the sound it produces and how you hear it. It handles you more than the other way around.” ALLISON ENGEL

A Vision for Arts

Visions and Voices raises the curtain on its 10th year with a packed lineup (see the list at visionsandvoices.usc. edu). Here are some of the memorable moments from the arts and humanities initiative’s first decade: PATTI SMITH In a wide-ranging 2014 discussion moderated by USC Annenberg’s Josh Kun, the iconic poet, writer, singer and fine artist offered music and recollections, such as her childhood belief that toys come alive at night. FICTION SCIENCE The 2007 “TransFormations: Fiction Science” event featured scientists and artists as they explored what fictional worlds, satire and alternate histories can tell us about our own world—and why they can be more “true-to-life” than reality itself.

WONDERLAND UNBOUND Celebrating Lewis Carroll’s work through music and animated multimedia projects, this 2014 outdoor event featured films by MFA animation students that were projected onto the front of Doheny Memorial Library. (See a video of the evening at bit.ly/WonderlandUSC.)

Q U OTAT I O N

“Market size doesn’t matter anymore. The difference between the Oklahoma City and Chicago markets is meaningless.” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver on digital and mobile media’s transformation of basketball, during a talk at USC Marshall’s Sports Business Institute 26

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Plucking hairs in a specific pattern and density can cause up to six times as much hair to grow back, according to a USC study. The injured hair follicles spur the immune system to signal surrounding follicles to grow hair. Scientists hope the mouse research leads to potential targets for treating baldness. Avoiding the grocery store when you’re hungry turns out to be sage advice. USC Dornsife findings show that hungry shoppers not only spend 60 percent more than lesshungry consumers, but also buy more non-food products. “I want food” becomes simply “I want.”

Old age is alive and well. Many 100-yearold Americans live in good health: 55 percent have no cognitive impairment, 23 percent have no chronic disease and 18 percent have no disability, according to USC Davis-led research. An international team led by Keck Medicine of USC neuroscientists linked a specific gene to noise-induced hearing loss, one of the most common work-related illnesses in the U.S. The lab research may eventually lead to extra precautions for people at high risk from noise.

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STRADIVARIUS PHOTO BY DANIEL ANDERSON

To watch Fullana play the “Rainville” Stradivarius, visit bit.ly/USCStrad.

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Hear, and Now The newly named USC Tina and Rick Caruso Department of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery helps children and adults experience the world of sound.

A cochlear implant means Shane Lundie can now hear his mother’s voice.

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The Caruso family was caught up in a movie at home earlier this year when daughter Gianna, 15, made the announcement that would change her father’s life. “Dad and Mom, I hear the rain.” Rick Caruso ’80 smiled. “Yeah, it’s raining,” he said, turning his attention back to the movie. “No, Dad,” said the teen. “I hear the rain.” Her words clicked. Born with inner-ear hearing loss, Gianna had just done what was once impossible for her. Rick and Tina Caruso realized that their daughter could hear even the faint tapping of raindrops, thanks to a recently implanted hearing device. Such life-changing leaps happen daily within the USC Tina and Rick Caruso Department of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery, renowned for its innovative treatments and research addressing hearing loss in children and adults. Keck Medicine of USC physicians’ efforts to break the sound barrier are gaining added momentum from a transformative $25 million gift from the Caruso family. Their gift in June endowed and named not only the USC Caruso Department, but also the USC Caruso Family Center for Childhood Communication, a treatment center affiliated with Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. “This is a very personal mission for us,” says Caruso, a USC Trustee who graduated with honors from the USC Marshall School of Business. For physician John K. Niparko, the support bolsters what he calls a “talented, dedicated team” in the department. “The fact that we have partners like the Caruso family is beyond expectation and quite humbling—it inspires us all the more,” says Niparko, chair of the USC Caruso Department and the Leon J. Tiber and David S. Alpert Chair in Medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. Two years ago, working in tandem with audiologist Kristina Rousso, Niparko introduced Gianna to a new, in-the-ear device, which sits deep in both autumn 2015

PHOTO BY STEVE COHN

by candace pearson

tfm.usc.edu

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Research Climbs into Top 10 The Keck School of Medicine of USC catapulted 30 spots in three years to join the country’s top 10 medical schools in National Institutes of Health (NIH) research funding for otolaryngology, according to the nonprofit Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research. In 2014, the USC Tina and Rick Caruso Department of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery earned the No. 10 spot in NIH-funded programs—up from No. 16 in 2013 and No. 40 in 2012. Out of $85 million the NIH awarded for otolaryngology research in 2014, USC Caruso Department physicians and scientists garnered $3.25 million. Also in 2014, the USC Caruso Department welcomed 44 top researchers from the esteemed House Research Institute, as well as several other leading researchers and physician-scientists, contributing to its growing reputation. These achievements reflect USC’s drive in advancing biomedical research, technology development and patient care. “Our research has found a wonderful home at USC, where human communication forms the basis for so many programs,” says John K. Niparko, who joined the department in 2013 as Leon J. Tiber and David S. Alpert Professor and Chair. “You can’t build a program like this without a committed university behind it.”

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Amanda Garcia’s cochlear implant restored the hearing and confidence she had gradually lost.

of her ear canals. When it was activated, Gianna began to cry. It was the first time she’d heard her parents’ voices clearly. “It was a great day—one of the most amazing days in our lives,” Gianna’s father says. That experience motivated the Carusos to ask an important question, he says: “What more could we do to help kids who don’t have the ability to get this kind of medical support or technology?” The need is there. About one in 1,000 children has profound hearing loss at birth, and by 5 years, that increases to one in 500. The impact can be dramatic. “Early sound exposure is absolutely essential for a child’s development in so many dimensions,” Niparko says. “We have an opportunity to engage the brain circuits of the developing child in the first few years—circuits highly dedicated to language learning.” Niparko is a leading authority on implantable technologies and principal investigator on a 14-year National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded study on cochlear implants. He’s also passionate about music and art—both of which are, “at their core, about communication,” he says. Andy and Jennifer Garcia of Long Beach, California, wanted to help their daughter Amanda access that world after she was born with mild to moderate hearing loss caused by a virus. At first, Amanda did well with a single hearing aid. Then, a serious ear infection left her deaf in one ear. As Amanda’s hearing deteriorated, so did her speech and her self-confidence, recalls her mother. The family turned to Niparko for help, and at age 9, Amanda received a cochlear implant. The moment it switched on, “her eyes got big!” Jennifer Garcia says. The cochlear implant differs from a hearing aid—essentially an amplifier—by bypassing the damaged cochlea, part of the inner ear with nerve endings essential for hearing, to directly stimulate the auditory nerve. With training, children learn to recognize the sounds of language. For many, that work takes place at the USC Caruso Family Center, where audiologists, speech-language pathologists and education experts from Keck School of Medicine and Children’s Hospital Los Angeles care for some 5,000 children and young people annually. Expect that number to expand, especially as interactions between the USC Caruso Family Center and its partner on the same campus—John Tracy Clinic—continue to grow. The Lundie family went through the journey with their son Shane, who was born profoundly deaf. When he was about a year old, Shane underwent a successful cochlear implant procedure, allowing him to hear sound for the first time. But the journey didn’t end there. The Lundies worked closely with the USC Caruso Family Center for Childhood Communication to ensure that he continued developing his hearing and communication skills. At the USC Caruso Family Center, families like the Lundies and Garcias first enter a sound booth equipped with state-of-theart audiometers that focus on frequencies in the speech range. Young children use puzzle pieces to signal when a sound registers. Even babies can be evaluated: When they turn their heads at a sound, they’re rewarded with the sight of a toy bear playing the drums. Speech-language pathologists also use play-based activities to assess a child’s language skills. Just five months after hearing sound for the first time, Shane was able to say a new word: “Mama.” autumn 2015

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE GARCIA FAMILY

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CHILD PHOTO BY VAN URFALIAN

Learn more about hearing services at keckmedicine.org or call 800-872-2273.

It was, as his mother Kelly puts it, the “best Christmas gift ever.” “We want each child to have the richest possible language experience,” says pediatric audiologist Margaret Winter. To that end, the USC Caruso Family Center has also developed its own literacy-training program—“Come Read With Me”—for families who speak English as their second language. Children, teachers and parents participate. Analysis shows major gains in children’s reading and writing years after training. Following this summer’s program, one mother noted that her daughter “now prefers books over Barbies,” Niparko says. Other research explores new technologies. For children missing an auditory nerve—necessary to transmit sound from inner ear to brain—the answer may lie in what’s called an auditory brainstem implant, or ABI. The FDA approved a Phase I clinical trial for ABI in children under 5 years old through the Keck School of Medicine, working with the House Clinic. In the five-year clinical trial—the only one in the U.S. to gain NIH funding—House Clinic and Children’s Hospital Los Angeles surgeons will implant ABI devices in as many as 10 children, who will be monitored for three years. With the first procedure in 2014, it’s too soon to tell how well the ABI may help children develop speech over time. “That’s a question we all hope to answer,” says Keck Medicine audiologist Laurie Eisenberg, study co-leader. Over the course of her career, Eisenberg has seen the field of assistive devices flourish. “Forty years ago, no one could have predicted where we are today,” she says. Others in the department turn to human biology to target hearing loss. In his quest to understand the embryonic development of the inner ear, USC researcher Takahiro Ohyama recently identified a key molecular sequence that may someday open up avenues for gene therapy. And scientist Neil Segil studies cellular reprogramming to try to regenerate hair cells, delicate structures in the inner ear that are critical for hearing. Some animal species, including birds, frogs and fish, can regenerate damaged or lost hearing by growing new hair cells. Mammals can’t. But Segil’s team was the first to show that what are called supporting cells—neighbors to hair cells—could be reprogrammed in mammals to generate hair cells at an early stage of life. Now Segil, a professor of research, is tapping into stem cell techniques developed at the Keck School of Medicine that trigger skin cells to turn into other types of cells. Preliminary data suggest that hair cells develop directly from a type of skinrelated stem cell, Segil says. It’s early, but he’s cautiously excited about the possibilities. Today Gianna, Amanda, Shane and others like them are beneficiaries of decades of advances in hearing research. Gianna can now hear her coaches when she competes in her equestrian events, and she wants to volunteer at the USC Caruso Family Center. Amanda, 10, felt confident enough to talk to her Girl Scout troop about her cochlear implant. Two-year-old Shane loves to dance to the radio. And he’s catching words “even at a whisper—mindboggling!” says his mother. Every time Shane hears a new sound, he points to his ear and says another word Mom loves to hear. “On.” tfm.usc.edu

Audiologists like Jamie Glater, right, help Roman Carbone and other patients adjust to their hearing devices.

From Snoring to Swallowing The USC Tina and Rick Caruso Department of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery offers expertise in seven areas: CHRONIC NASAL OBSTRUCTION USC has one of the first academic medical centers in Southern California to use steroid stents to treat tough, chronic rhinosinusitis. Because patients receive the steroids directly through the nose, they can avoid oral steroids, which can have negative effects. FACIAL PLASTIC AND RECONSTRUCTION SURGERY Treatments include reinnervation— implanting nerves—as well as acupuncture as part of rehabilitation. Researchers in facial nerves and paralysis are harnessing the power of induced stem cells to create nerve grafts generated from a patient’s own skin cells.

FROM TOP: Patients benefit from the work of physicians (John Niparko), scientists (Neil Segil) and audiologists (Margaret Winter).

HEAD AND NECK CANCERS Keck Medicine of USC was the first on the West Coast to offer transoral robotic surgery as an alternative to some open surgeries, most often for patients with tumors at the base of the tongue or throat. Benefits include faster recovery and better function. HEARING AND BALANCE Research includes age-related hearing loss and evaluation of cochlear and auditory brainstem implants in deaf children. Scientists also are studying how to use stem cells to potentially halt or reverse hearing loss. SKULL BASE SURGERY Only a few places nationwide offer hearing preservation surgery for patients with acoustic neuroma. Keck Medicine is one of them, based on a remarkable collaboration between otolaryngologists, neurosurgeons and radiation oncologists. Physicians offer the latest in imaging, microsurgery and radiosurgical options that help preserve normal facial function and hearing. SLEEP MEDICINE Patients can find a wide range of help for sleep disorders, from complex procedures to advanced new systems to treat sleep apnea. VOICE AND SWALLOWING Keck Medicine physicians can listen to patients’ voices and adjust therapy as patients are treated in the office. Electric stimulation therapy accelerates recovery time after surgery and during chemotherapy.

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Colors in this brain MRI show the direction of fiber tracks within the hippocampus of a patient with Alzheimerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s disease.

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cover

Data on the Brain At the USC Mark and Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute, big data and imaging could revolutionize how we detect and treat Alzheimer’s and other neurologic diseases.

COURTESY OF KRISTI CLARK, CAROL MILLER AND THE LABORATORY OF NEURO IMAGING

By Katharine Gammon It all started 30 years ago with a conversation between scientists over a beer. Arthur Toga listened, intrigued, as one of his colleagues described a then-new project that used a specialized computer system to link together early satellite imagery of the Earth. A neuroscientist, Toga wondered if that computer system could do the same with pictures from the human body—such as images that capture rates of metabolism in the brain. What would we be able to see, Toga pondered, if we could use computer-enabled imaging to view how the brain works? Toga has devoted his career to answering that question. As director of the USC Mark and Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute, he has built one of the largest data collections of human brain images in the world. By combining the power of computer science with the study of brain science, his team at the institute—which comprises researchers across disciplines like neuroscience, physics, engineering and math—can map brain image data in an unprecedented way. The scientists combine images showing brain structure and function with other measures like cognition, behavior and genetics. Of course, medical imaging isn’t new. Neurologists already use it to assess damage and recommend treatment for people who have had a stroke, for example. But Toga wants to make the most of these scans through the power of volume. All images taken in the National Institutes of Health-funded stroke clinical trials, the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative and the Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative— thousands of scans—are centralized in Toga’s lab at the USC tfm.usc.edu

Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute. Patterns found across these scans could lead to ways to diagnose and treat these conditions more effectively. And that’s just one of the many projects underway at the USC Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute, where more than a hundred investigators led by Toga and Paul Thompson, associate director, pursue scientific mysteries every day. Based at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, their quest to digitize and map the brain could find answers to neurodegenerative diseases, among the most intractable problems in human health—and the most costly. SEEING THE BRAIN Worldwide, more than 47 million people suffer from Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia, and that number is predicted to triple by 2050. Yet society is unprepared for it. Part of the problem with prevention and treatment of these diseases is that doctors don’t know the exact factors that lead to them. Likewise, when illness arises, it’s difficult to pinpoint the changes underway until late in the process. What’s especially heartbreaking about brain diseases is that they can alter people’s core traits, says USC Provost Michael Quick, a professor of biological sciences at USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. “If you have kidney disease, or diabetes, we don’t tend to think of you as a changed person because of it. But when talking about a disease of the brain, it’s something that is affecting, potentially, who that person is.” That’s because everything from our memories to our personality is wrapped up within the networks that make the brain tick. And there are ever-growing ways to analyze these networks through imaging. “We can measure the brain’s grey matter and white matter, but we could also map the anatomy of connections—the wiring diagram,” Toga says. Imaging devices can see much more than the structure of the brain, he explains. They can see what’s happening in the brain at any moment in time, like where there’s more blood flow or electrical activity. The goal, he says, is to integrate these layers of data and create a rich map of the brain that’s constantly changing. Combining structure and function into one map shows what the brain is doing when it’s functioning well, and what goes awry when there’s a problem. Today the only way scientists can uncover the subtle nuances that distinguish a healthy brain from a brain heading toward disease is by mining through many thousands of brain images—research on a massive scale made possible at the USC Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute. These brain imaging studies also can help researchers understand how the normal, healthy brain varies from person to person. Some people stay mentally sharp into their late years, and understanding the structure and function of their brains could help others live longer with a better quality of life. Then there’s the issue of how the brain develops. Throughout a person’s life, the brain changes—a baby’s brain isn’t like the brain of an older person, healthy or unhealthy—and scientists can learn a lot about the brain by mapping it as it grows. usc trojan family

Reach out to Keck Medicine of USC

sleep specialists at 800-USC-CARE How Alzheimer’s Changes the Brain or keckmedicine.org/sleep-disorders.

HIGH NORMAL COGNITION

AVERAGE NORMAL COGNITION

LOW NORMAL COGNITION

IMPAIRED COGNITION

USC scientists seek patterns of change in thousands of brain scans. The scans of people with Alzheimer’s who have strong cognition only begin to show evidence of what are called amyloid deposits.

Deposits of amyloid protein in the brain are a hallmark of Alzheimer’s. In these scans, green areas indicate that amyloid already has begun to build up in the brain even before patients show symptoms.

As Alzheimer’s progresses and begins to affect thinking, patients’ brain scans show a corresponding buildup of amyloid protein (green and yellow areas) in certain key parts of the brain.

In Alzheimer’s patients with noticeably impaired thinking and memory, brain scans show high buildup of amyloid protein, denoted in red and orange, in specific areas of the brain.

FIRSTS

The USC Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute has a number of impressive firsts to its credit. Its scientists are the first to map the spread of Alzheimer’s disease in the living human brain, the first to analyze how HIV moves through the brain showing early signs of dementia and memory loss, the first to show that brains in later life unravel in the reverse order of development, and the first to create a comprehensive, population-based 3-D atlas of the human brain to examine neurological disease. 34

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OPPOSITE: COURTESY OF THE LABORATORY OF NEURO IMAGING; PHOTO BY MARK BOSTER/LOS ANGELES TIMES

This kind of mapping was once inconceivable. The computational power needed to crunch data and store huge images became available only recently. The USC Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute stores four petabytes of data—the equivalent of about 53 years’ worth of high-definition video— and it will keep growing. Yet researchers are still struggling to process and share the immense amount of imaging data being gathered around the world. In 2014, Toga won a $12 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop systems and strategies at the USC Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, part of the USC Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute, to help scientists and physicians mine this brain-related big data. Even though great strides have been made, scientists also know they could do more with better technology. Today’s equipment lets them see the brain as if they were on an airplane at 37,000 feet: It’s an expansive view, but not detailed. “Imaging is a technology that is continuing to evolve in resolution and sensitivity,” Toga says. “We can’t see individual cells at the cellular or molecular level using MRI.” The next step may involve creating new detection technologies and tracers—molecular homing beacons—to witness the brain at this small scale, Toga explains. Ultimately, the ability to see cellular or even molecular underpinnings of brain function may provide the targets that scientists need to create therapies against neurological disease or psychiatric disorders. FLOOD OF DATA Some six years ago, Toga’s fellow USC neuroscientist Paul Thompson was chatting with esteemed Australian geneticist Nick Martin when Martin made an offhand comment: While geneticists share data all the time, people working in brain science often don’t. That got Thompson thinking. Sharing could potentially be a tool for solving the brain’s mysteries the same way it fast-tracked the decoding of the human genome. “If you had enough genetic data and enough scan data, you could crack the brain’s genetic code,” Thompson mused. The cipher-breaking reference during that 2009 conversation inspired the name ENIGMA, which is now one of the world’s largest brain imaging studies. Led by Thompson, the Enhancing Neuro Imaging Genetics through Meta Analysis project won an $11 million grant from the National Institutes of Health last fall to develop new computational algorithms to find biomarkers of mental illnesses and brain diseases. Like the famous enciphering machine from World War II, ENIGMA revolves around code. But in this case, it relies on sophisticated technology—and new ways to analyze data—to reach a deeper understanding of the brain. The project documents how a dozen diseases, including Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia, depression and bipolar disorder, alter the brain. In January, after combing through brain scans and DNA of 30,000 people around the globe, the ENIGMA researchers found eight genetic variants that determine the size of different regions of the brain. These genetic clues may tip off scientists about who will benefit from current drugs and how to develop better medicines. More findings are on the way. Since the ENIGMA project brings together experts from 35 tfm.usc.edu

Behind the Institute: Mark and Mary Stevens

ARTHUR TOGA Provost Professor of Ophthalmology, Neurology, Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences, Radiology and Engineering As comfortable with computer science as he is with neuroscience

PAUL THOMPSON Associate Dean for Research and Professor of Neurology, Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences, Engineering, Radiology, Pediatrics and Ophthalmology Studied Greek and Latin and mathematics at Oxford University

Mark and Mary Stevens understand firsthand what neurologic conditions can do: Mark Stevens’ father has Alzheimer’s, and one of the couple’s sons has dyslexia. They know that advances in neuroscience could touch everyone, from children just beginning life to seniors approaching life’s end. So when the couple got the opportunity to make a permanent mark on neuroimaging research— one of USC’s highest priorities and a point of distinction—they jumped on it. The Stevens family donated $50 million to endow and name the USC Mark and Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute in March. Researchers at the USC Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute collaborate with researchers at USC and across the world in biostatistics, computer science, mathematics, pharmacology and other disciplines. Among many seminal achievements, the institute was first to map the spread of Alzheimer’s disease in the living human brain and also created the first digital 3- and 4-D brain atlases to examine the effects of neurologic diseases. “The field of neuroscience represents the next great frontier of medical research in the 21st century,” says Mark Stevens ’81, MS ’84, a USC trustee. “We believe that the tremendously talented team and the interdisciplinary nature of the institute’s work will yield meaningful understanding of this frontier in the future.” Mark and Mary Stevens have long given to USC in ways that reflect their passion for improving technology and the lives of others. Prior naming gifts include supporting the USC Stevens Center for Innovation and the Stevens Academic Center for student-athletes. The gift places the Stevens family among the ranks of the largest benefactors of the university in USC’s 135-year history. Mark Stevens, the leader of venture capital firms S-Cubed and Sequoia Capital, has been a USC trustee since 2001 and sits on the USC Health System Board. He also has served on the USC Viterbi School of Engineering’s Board of Councilors for 18 years.

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OPPOSITE: COURTESY OF THE LABORATORY OF NEURO IMAGING

cover countries and thousands of patients’ brain scans every day, Thompson likens it to crowdsourcing a problem—using everyone’s abilities to maximize the output. Multiple sclerosis is a good example: By pooling imaging, scientists can look for patterns and places where the disease is more common. That could lead to theories about why it occurs. “The ENIGMA project is work that’s truly impactful. It’s collecting data from across the world to address issues that have global consequences,” says Quick, USC’s provost. Sometimes trawling through big data yields surprises, like when ENIGMA researchers studied patients who were taking drugs to manage bipolar illness and schizophrenia. The scientists wanted to find out which medications worked best to restore brain function or stop the loss of brain tissue. Along the way, they found that there’s a surprisingly robust pattern of physical brain changes in people with schizophrenia, including alterations to areas that control memory. Thompson notes that without such a vast source of data, it would be hard to know if those changes were actually due to the disease or to something else. The researchers also never expected to find that the hippocampus—the brain’s memory center—is smaller than average in people who are depressed, and even smaller if they became depressed early in life. The longer people suffer from the illness, the more their brain differs from the typical brain. That finding gets Thompson excited because it suggests solutions. “If there is a way to treat depression early, you could slow the progression of brain tissue deterioration,” he says. Then there’s Alzheimer’s disease. Using scans, ENIGMA researchers charted what Thompson calls a “forest fire of tissue loss” in brains with Alzheimer’s. The disease first attacks the parts of the brain that guide memory, then the ones that govern emotions, and then the disease skips over sensory-controlling areas of the brain until it finally degrades the frontal areas involved in self-control and inhibition. “As this cascade of events happens, you see this devastating decline in a person’s ability to handle everyday life,” Thompson says. Unfortunately, while imaging can clearly show how the brain degrades in Alzheimer’s, he says, no treatments can yet stop it. Big data holds promise, though. Databases at the USC Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute not only include images of the brains of patients with diseases like Alzheimer’s, but also information about each patient’s genetic makeup. That means the scientists can study vast numbers of DNA sequences. In this case, the researchers can search through brain images of people who have genes that predispose them to Alzheimer’s disease. Some of these genes match up to specific physical changes in the brain. As the scientists gather more data, these genes could suggest targets for treatment. The deluge of data across bioscience could produce a river of innovation, or a flood of information that rushes by, unused, until science can catch up to it. USC Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute researchers are partnering with researchers across the world to seize these opportunities. After all, millions of people are waiting for answers. Michael Quick sees parallels in earlier bioscience research. “A hundred years ago, when we started using X-rays, we were throwing away all sorts of data because we didn’t have the capacity to use them,” he says. “But as time has marched on, we have been able to mine large amounts of the information—and that’s only going to grow.” tfm.usc.edu

Digitizing Health Today, big data has become one of the most powerful tools for unlocking the mysteries of the human body. But what is it? Big data is a shorthand way of describing a volume of digital information so massive and complicated that traditional techniques aren’t enough to store and process all of it. Researchers need sophisticated programs to analyze and extract useful conclusions, images or patterns from all of these data points. Here are a few ways USC researchers have used big data to shed light on health.

Copying Cancers

Paul Macklin, a mathematician at the Center for Applied Molecular Medicine at the USC Institute for Genetic Medicine, develops computer models that simulate how cancers work. By feeding information about a patient’s cancer into a computer, doctors could potentially predict how that cancer would respond to many treatment options, and ultimately choose the best treatment for each patient.

Snapping Synapses

USC scientists Don Arnold, Scott Fraser and Carl Kesselman are joining forces to show how a brain stores memories. They’re creating new molecular tools that color-code every synapse in the brain. They’re also building a special microscope that can capture images of living synapses, as well as the big data tools needed to follow the synapses over time. Synapses are links that carry information from one neuron to another, and researchers have never before observed them as they change in number and strength while animals learn.

Mapping Molecules

Widely considered the father of computational biology, University Professor Michael Waterman led the scientific movement that first integrated math, statistics and computer science with molecular biology. Waterman, a professor of biological sciences, mathematics and computer science at USC Dornsife, was instrumental in creating the algorithms and formulas used to map the human genome.

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The Promise Every year, professional athletes return to Troy to fulfill their goal of earning a USC degree. By Mike Piellucci

tfm.usc.edu

t was his first day back as a USC student and Darnell Bing had come prepared—or so he thought. He had his backpack and laptop and even an iPad at the ready. It had been five years since the AllAmerican safety played his last snap for the Trojans in the 2006 BCS National Championship Game, and almost as long since he’d been in a USC classroom. The least he could do was arrive ready with the technological tools he figured were standard for today’s students. Turns out the first tools he needed were the most low-tech of all—pen and paper— after a professor asked students to write an assignment by hand in class. Bing can only laugh now as he recalls the moment: Every gadget he owned, all for naught, as he meekly asked the student next to him to borrow basic writing utensils. “I’d made an assumption, rather than coming prepared for everything,” he says. “I made an assumption that everything would be different.” Every year, student-athletes like Bing ’13 return home to Troy to complete their degrees after leaving early to pursue a career in professional sports. Most of them come back from the NFL. Some, like Bing and his Trojan teammates tight end Dominique Byrd ’15 and defensive tackle Shaun Cody ’15, do so after wrapping up their playing careers. Others, like wide receiver Marqise Lee, miss as little as one semester before returning. What all come to discover, though, is that while their old school supplies aren’t obsolete just yet, the rest of what they thought they knew about college has changed. Everything truly is different. TEXTBOOKS VERSUS PLAYBOOKS At some point, these returnees all face the same question. Some hear it from classmates or professors after they’ve been back for a while. Others field it patiently every time they walk across campus. “A lot of people are like, ‘What are you doing here?’” says Lee, the first USC player to receive the Biletnikoff Award, which is given to college football’s best wide receiver. The subtext: “‘He’s in the NFL—it’s crazy that he’s back!’” There are days when Lee doesn’t believe it himself. Two months removed from his 2014 rookie season with the Jacksonville Jaguars, the 23-year-old re-enrolled full usc trojan family

time for the spring semester at USC Dornsife earlier this year, taking four classes as he pursues his degree in sociology. He expects to graduate next spring, but it won’t be easy. “There are days when I sit in class and I’m like, Qise, do you really want to finish?” he says. Although he took classes during the NFL offseason, the league never truly stops. The last month of the semester was brutal. He commuted back and forth to Jacksonville for organized team activities, which meant coordinating presentations and even a final exam with his professors based on the dates the Jaguars allowed him to be in LA. The days at USC were even more hectic. A typical college student might only spend five hours on campus during a busy day, but Lee’s average Monday went from 9 a.m. to 4:50 p.m. Class breaks were interspersed with tutoring and workouts at the John McKay Center to keep his body in game shape. As his Jaguars teammates were relaxing, Lee was taking on “the hardest thing ever.” And to know Marqise Lee is to understand that words like these aren’t uttered lightly. He is, after all, the player who withstood his family being broken apart by the court system, who lost one brother to gang violence and the other to prison, who bounced around foster homes before a teammate’s parents took him in. He’s well schooled in adversity, and that—more than anything—informed his decision to return

back Silas Redd, are in school with him. Back in their Trojan football days, they were part of a nine-man crew that lived in a house they affectionately refer to as The Palace. That well-worn piece of real estate on 25th Street molded those football players into a brotherhood. And, as brothers are wont to do, they live to compete with one another. Three of these teammates and housemates had already graduated by the time Lee, Woods and Redd went to the NFL. No longer able to compete every day on Howard Jones Field, those former players instead threw down an academic gauntlet: Get your degree, and get on our level. Lee is all too happy to oblige. “My mind-set is, if those three got it, it’s mandatory,” he says. “It’s all competition, really. I went through school all the way from kindergarten, elementary—I’m not about to waste my time. I’m going to finish. It’s competitive within yourself.”

Darnell Bing, top, and Dominique Byrd

On the day he signed his USC letter of intent, Dominique Byrd promised his mother he’d earn his degree. to college. The degree is part of Lee’s plan to make sure other kids don’t have to live through what he experienced. He wants to work in and help reform the foster care system. And football is his means to that end. “We do understand as players that it doesn’t last forever,” Lee says of the NFL. “A degree can last forever and helps get a nice job after playing. I’ve got to get a degree to get the job I want. My main focus is helping as many kids as I can.” So Lee toils away. It helps that two of his former teammates who turned pro, wide receiver Robert Woods and running

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FOCUSING OFF THE FIELD Because he’s early into his playing career and was so recently the most recognizable student-athlete on campus, Lee is easily spotted. He’s always greeted warmly, sometimes by people he knows and sometimes by others who only know of him. Most know little about his ambitions to reform the foster care system. Instead, he’s a man who gets paid to catch footballs, and he did that better than maybe anyone else who ever wore cardinal and gold. In their eyes he’s an athlete before anything else. Sometimes, that’s all they think he is. It’s not what he’d prefer, but he understands that comes with the territory. “It’s what you sign up for,” Lee says. There is no defined out-clause on that agreement, though, no pact dictating when football becomes tangential to an athlete’s public identity. It’s a balancing act that Lee won’t have to attempt so long as he’s playing in the NFL. But for players like Bing, Cody and Byrd, who returned to USC after their playing days were over, defining a new identity is one of the core challenges of being back on campus. That’s especially true when, in their minds, what they did between the hash marks can get in the way of being recognized for who they want to become. “I wish people took us seriously,” Bing says. “Obviously, when we were here and playing really well, that was the talk of the town. But just to see us as regular individuals I think is more important than worshipping us as an athlete. I think everyone wants to be known as an individual at some point in time and not just be glorified for everything you do on the field.” “I really feel that there’s a label placed on guys that they aren’t smart or they are ‘only’ football players,” echoes Byrd, who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in African-American studies. “I have been more resentful of that than anything.” The first recourse, then, is to try to blend in. Bing, who is now pursuing his master’s in education, would regularly try to throw undergrads off the scent by claiming that he worked in real estate, even soliciting another student to help him sell the cover story. Cody, by his own admission, tries to “dress as young as possible,” always making sure to pull the brim of his hat low to avoid detection. Invariably, those attempts break down. As Byrd puts it, “It’s kind a hard to [hide when you’re] 6-foot-3 with a bunch of tattoos and they’re going, ‘Hmmm, there’s something that you do.’” What these young men have come to realize, however, is that their concerns are mostly unfounded in their second term as students. For starters, most of their new classmates hadn’t even hit puberty during their run on Pete Carroll’s dynasty teams in the autumn 2015

ILLUSTRATIONS BY ALEXIS MARCOU

2000s. More than that, the gulf between these young men and their classmates has shrunk because, functionally speaking, there no longer is one. They’re not the guys who their fellow students cheer at the Coliseum. They’re not the ones who are exhausted before class because they got up at 6 a.m. for workouts. They are regular students, in class for the same reason as their classmates. “It’s easier because I chose,” Byrd says. “I chose to want to do well, and I have a choice to come back or not. Being an adult and having choices, and choosing for self-betterment, is always rewarding.” There’s also the matter of simply being more alert now, without the grind of football wearing them down. “I was in class with some of the guys on the team, and I could see how tired they were,” says Cody, who walked through commencement in May and has two classes left to complete his degree in sociology. “They’re just dragging through class. I put myself back in that position of how tough it is as a student-athlete…and it made me appreciate that much more what it’s like to be ‘normal.’ It really gave me more of an opportunity to dive into my studies versus cramming or trying to get by as fast as possible.” The greatest gains, though, come through simple maturity. Byrd believes that was the case for him especially—someone who was smart enough to keep up in classes during his college football career but who treated school less as its own experience than as a means to play football and live in Los Angeles. “Your focus is definitely different as a young man,” he says, than it is when you are building a family. When he returned to school at age 29, he was determined to be a different student than he was at 19—determined to be better. “When you’re in class with 13 people or nine people and you didn’t do the reading, it’s not cool not to know what people are talking about,” Byrd says. “When you’ve done the reading and work, when you’re able to articulate what you think, the reward is instant.” He pauses before revealing his ultimate conclusion, the last one so many would expect to come from a bruising tight end. “It’s cool to be smart.” LOOKING BEYOND THEMSELVES The road to the graduation stage doesn’t wind much longer than Shaun Cody’s. He’s on solid financial footing after eight years in the NFL and is carving out a successful second career for himself in media, a field far removed from his studies in sociology. At 32, he could have decided that he was too old to go back to school. But like every student, Cody thought about what it would mean to put on a cap and gown and hear his name called. Not just for himself, but also for his daughters. He has three and he wants them to earn college degrees someday. It wouldn’t feel right to ask them to do something he didn’t accomplish on his own, he says, not when he had the time to do it and the backing of the Trojan Athletic Fund to reimburse the remainder of his original football scholarship. “I really wanted to set an example for my family and say I might not have finished this first go around, but I’m going to finish this sucker up,” Cody says. “It hopefully leaves that imprint in their mind: ‘Hey, I’d like to graduate from a school one day.’” It turns out this is one of the greatest commonalities among these former pro players: They all came back for someone other than themselves. Byrd is the son of a single mother who made him promise on the day he signed his letter of intent with USC that he would one day earn his degree. Bing completed his bachelor’s in 2013 and tfm.usc.edu

now tutors current student-athletes in the John McKay Center. He wants his master’s so he can continue to serve as a big brother to the next generation of players. “Being that we’ve been in the shoes that they want to go in, I basically try to help them see the bigger picture in life,” Bing says. “If you play 10, 15 years, great. If you don’t, great—you still have an education to fall back on. You’re at a tremendous university where they’re willing to help you out in whatever circumstances you’re in.” Magdi El Shahawy, senior associate athletic director and director of USC Student-Athlete Academic Services, says he’s

“I think everyone wants to be known as an individual … and not just be glorified for everything you do on the field.” DA R N E L L B I N G

Marqise Lee, top, and Shaun Cody

seen Trojans move back to LA and enroll at USC 10 years or more after leaving for the pro ranks—and that sets an example. “It’s always great to see these former student-athletes come back to campus with a renewed focus and share with our current student-athletes how important it is to earn a college degree,” El Shahawy says. Lee has one more year to go before he dons cap and gown, but he already imagines what that day will feel like. He’s acutely aware of how many people are responsible for helping him get this far: his mother, Toy; the couple who informally adopted him in high school, Steven and Sheila Hester; his siblings; and too many coaches and teachers to mention. Without even one of them, he knows he might have wound up in the same position as one of his brothers. He wants to see the looks on their faces when he finally gets his degree in his hands. “I always think about that—I know they’ll be stoked!” he booms, with a big laugh. “My mom and Miss Sheila will probably be crying tears of joy. That’s what I look for, showing that I’m on the right path to the things I will be doing. School is something I’ve got to finish.” When that day comes, Lee will be one of thousands of students to cross the stage. After his detour to the NFL, he’ll be crossing the same goal line as the scholars surrounding him: becoming a graduate of USC. usc trojan family

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

Annette Kim mapped Beijingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s underground housing by sifting through thousands of apartment ads online.

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Mind the Map USC spatial scientists and analysts create a new generation of experimental maps to understand our world—and change it for the better. By Greg Hardesty You stroll down a sidewalk in Beijing and take out your smartphone. Using Google Maps, the most frequently used app in the world, you quickly discover you’re just minutes from the Temple of Heaven, and you continue on your way. But if you’d known about a far different digital map, you could have used it to see a part of Beijing unknown to tourists: a hidden world teeming with some 1 million people, mostly migrant workers, living underground in basements and bomb shelters. Annette Kim, an associate professor at the USC Price School of Public Policy, led a team of Chinese researchers to chart the maze of makeshift housing three stories below street level, documenting the lives of people inhabiting windowless spaces as small as 100 square feet. Kim—who was recently recruited from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to head USC Price’s new spatial analysis lab, SLAB—made the map after mining more than 7,000 online ads for apartment rentals. The 3,677 underground housing spaces on her digital map appear as orange dots, creating a vivid snapshot of a population that plays a crucial role in China’s economy but is often derided by some Chinese media as the “rat tribe.” tfm.usc.edu

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In cities around the world, Kim says, mapping can shed light on the lives of misunderstood populations such as minorities and immigrants. “In many cases, the needs of these people are not being accounted for in our future plans for the city,” she says. “The experimental maps we’re creating are helping us to see better.” We’re light years removed from the cave etchings that served as mankind’s first maps—and even from that paperback, spiralbound street atlas that once was a staple of every Los Angeles automobile: the Thomas Guide. Now you can find interactive maps online that can guide you to almost anything, from where to smell juniper in Rhode Island to where to find fallen fruit in your neighborhood. The carefully inked, hand-drawn maps of only 50 years ago seem like quaint relics. “The digital age has unleashed the power of mapping,” says USC geographer John P. Wilson. Online community-based tools such as ArcGIS Online and OpenStreetMap enable practically anyone to get into the map-making game, not just cartographers or number-crunching researchers. Thanks to the Internet, cloud computing and geographic information systems that store and process map data, Wilson says, “everyone now has the ability to collect and organize large and sophisticated data sets with all sorts of geographic information, and from that you can build maps and other kinds of visualizations.” Witness the growth of the Spatial Sciences Institute in the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. Created only five years ago and directed by Wilson, the institute now offers more than 10 academic programs from the undergraduate to doctoral levels, a sign of how fields like geographic information science, geodesign and spatial informatics and analytics are taking off. At USC, students and researchers go beyond mapping for mapping’s sake: They use maps, combined with their science, to see things in different ways—and strive to make the world a better place. “Maps can be brought to service for the public good,” says Wilson, professor of sociology, civil and environmental engineering, computer science and architecture. Some of his colleagues have examined how to build a greener Los Angeles by creating 3-D simulations of the region’s landscape from a century ago. They also documented changes in urban tree cover during the past decade using remotely sensed imagery. Others mapped links between asthma incidence and proximity to freeways and roads. One graduate used his expertise to help the charity World Vision respond to a natural disaster in the Philippines. By combining the predicted path of 2013’s deadly Typhoon Haiyan with data about vulnerable locations, he mapped those areas of the Philippines that would most need humanitarian help. Aid packages were quickly dispensed to more than 713,000 people in 500 villages across the country. MAPS FOR DISCOVERY You’re at dinner at a restaurant on the Sunset Strip, and you spot actor Russell Crowe sitting 15 feet away from you. Feeling lucky?

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You should, based on mapping research by Elizabeth CurridHalkett, associate professor at USC Price. Currid-Halkett painstakingly researched the socializing habits and favorite spots of Hollywood “A-listers” like Crowe by cataloguing more than 600,000 photographs of celebrities at parties, award shows and charitable appearances. Then she and a colleague ran a social networking analysis on a supercomputer to study the celebrities’ networking habits. Surprise: The A-list celebs spend most of their time at the same places and events as other A-listers. In other words, don’t expect an invitation to Crowe’s table anytime soon. It may seem like an obvious Hollywood pattern, but CurridHalkett’s research on celebrities—detailed in her book Starstruck: The Business of Celebrity—goes beyond fodder for tabloid gossip. Mapping the networking habits of people like Tom Cruise and Meryl Streep reveals the dynamics of power across society. Scientists and Hollywood both perpetuate what sociologists call the “Matthew Effect”—the belief that success begets success, Currid-Halkett explains. Research has shown that scientists acclaimed for their early work tend to be cited by other scientists more often during the rest of their careers, regardless of the strength of their later work. It’s much like actors and the Academy Awards: Winning one opens the doors to more acting opportunities for years. From Wall Street to Silicon Valley, most of the attention and rewards go to an elite few, Currid-Halkett says, so studying celebrity “tells us much more about human dynamics than simply about a particular industry.” This ability to sift these patterns out of the connections between complex data and locations is what makes modern mapmaking infinitely adaptable and powerful. Maps can provide a starting point to learn more. As Wilson puts it, “A map is a conduit to not only organize and communicate some existing knowledge, but it also can be a conduit to go find or create new knowledge.” Take faith, for example. Wilson’s group now is working with colleagues in USC’s Center for Religion and Civic Culture (CRCC) to better understand how congregations evolve over time and contribute to social capital. Their crowdsourced maps and data will illuminate patterns of religious practice in Southern California, drawing on the work of USC students who will visit places of worship and take videos and interview people of faith using a new smartphone app created at the Spatial Sciences Institute. Wilson and his CRCC colleagues expect to learn about some surprising trends in the area, based on a few early leads. “Most Buddhist temples are in Little Tokyo, but now most Japanese Americans live in the South Bay. I presume these temples survive because the congregation is mostly commuters,” Wilson says. “There also are some churches that have changed from African-American to Latino and some that move frequently. We hope to better explain why and how through our research.” autumn 2015

MAPS COURTESY OF THE SPATIAL ANALYSIS LAB AT USC

Annette Kim, left, and Elizabeth CurridHalkett tell surprising stories about society through maps.

We know Los Angeles is a hotspot for film, but cultural maps also show concentrations of areas rich in theater and fashion in the region. Combining data with geography can illuminate trends and patterns that might otherwise go unnoticed.

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MAPS AS STORIES How do you capture the story of a city? Media artist Kristy H.A. Kang MFA ’97, PhD ’13 did it through the website “Seoul of Los Angeles,” her interactive doctoral dissertation project that documents the diverse ethnic community in LA’s Koreatown. Kang, who serves as associate director of USC Price’s SLAB and teaches at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, adapted Google maps by overlaying boundary lines that tell the history of Koreatown and its people through archival pictures, videos and snippets of audio. “The perception is that Koreatown and other different ethnic neighborhoods scattered around the city are homogeneous entities,

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but that’s not the case,” Kang says. For example, 58 percent of Koreatown residents are Latino, and large communities of Bangladeshis and Salvadorans settled in the area—a tidbit that users discover as they stroll through her site. And more stories are coming. Earlier this year, Annette Kim—SLAB’s founder and director—and her colleagues began mining official city documents, such as approvals for signs like “Little Ethiopia” or “Thai Town,” to map LA’s ethnic communities. They’re using U.S. Census Bureau data too. The efforts are all part of SLAB’s philosophy of using maps to understand the world beyond census tracts and city limits. “It’s a way of thinking about your space differently and being autumn 2015

Check out this story at bit.ly/USCmapping to explore USC’s ever-growing world of maps.

able to see what you normally might overlook,” Kim says. The approach comes to life in Sidewalk City, her recently published book, which chronicles the life of street vendors in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. One of Kim’s maps in the project follows a coconut-water vendor for a whole day, tracing her moves around the city. Kim hoped her research would show how the city’s vibrant sidewalk life operates and encourage city planners to rethink the concept of public space. A Vietnamese senior bureaucrat was so impressed with Kim’s research that, after meeting with her, he immediately suggested that the two of them go outside to enjoy the sidewalk life. “He seemed to be seeing everything with new eyes,” Kim says. tfm.usc.edu

Planners use maps to show where buildings, roads, parks and other physical landmarks are located, Kim says, but they don’t typically incorporate people into them, especially immigrant populations. And if we can’t see them, she notes, how can we account for their needs? Ultimately, the mapmakers aim to display the world differently so people can learn about it and make informed decisions. “Maps afford you the opportunity to integrate everything— people, business opportunities, services, the environment, the threats and risks to business and the environment,” Wilson says. “It’s like going to see a show on Broadway and watching everything unfold on the stage. In many ways, a map can serve as a stage for life.” usc trojan family

As a digital revolution sweeps through the publishing world, storytelling is alive and well—and English is thriving at USC. By Diane Krieger Illustrations by Selcuk Demirel

Write On! “What do you read, my lord?” Polonius asks Prince Hamlet, in his Shakespearean windbag way. “Words, words, words,” sighs the young man. Had The Bard written Hamlet in the digital age, his hipster prince might well have answered: “Tweets, videos, Snapchat photos.” As the palette of today’s media explodes with e-possibilities, words—especially those captured on paper—are no longer the basic unit of storytelling. It’s a turn of events that’s empowering to some and, to others, deeply disturbing. Some openly fret whether the flowering of the information age spells doomsday for the printed page. “Within 25 years the digital revolution will bring about the end of paper books,” predicted author Ewan Morrison, writing in the Guardian in 2011. “More importantly, e-books and e-publishing will mean the end of ‘the writer’ as a profession.” Today, practically anyone with online access can blog or tweet to a worldwide audience. This has both democratized writing and, in some ways, devalued it. At the same time, the rise of digital books and online mega-sellers like Amazon means more writers can self-publish their books, and readers can order books instantly with the push of a button. But authors are getting a smaller piece of the economic pie.

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autumn 2015

The Writers Then there’s the halo effect of social media. Some authors build strong followings on Twitter and Facebook, which bring writers closer to their readers-turned-fans. In this swirling media landscape, what will happen to the book as we know it? Read on as three distinguished authors from the Department of English in the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences offer their take on the argument. The gist: Rumors of the book’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. Can paper survive in a digital-first world? Leo Braudy: Every time a new technology comes along, there are always people who say the old technology is dead. After photography, people said there will be no more painting. After digital music, they said there are going to be no more analog or live performances. Then there’s always a re-evaluation of the old technology and it gets a glow around it, and becomes a new source of aesthetic pleasure. When you’re with a book, it is a personal experience, a private experience. There’s a feeling of intimacy that’s right there, embedded in the history of the book, and I think the desire to have that intimate relationship with a work of art is not going to go away. T.C. Boyle: We can never foresee exactly what is going to happen. When the telephone was invented, people said the great American tradition of letter writing was going to die. And so it did. But who could have predicted that we mainly communicate with each other today through writing, whether Instagram, emails or whatever. People still must write. My 1987 book, World’s End, has recently been reissued by the Easton Press in a small run as a nice leather-bound book for collectors. So there are people who still want and love a book. The house that I rent on the mountain has a library with a lot of classics of world literature in bound volumes. It’s a great joy to take this big book and put it in your lap and read Dostoevsky again. There’s something about it—it’s tactile—that gives you satisfaction that the Kindle does not. But Millennials don’t have the same attachment to paper as their parents. Anna Journey: I think Millennials are aware

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T. CORAGHESSAN BOYLE Best-selling novelist and shortstory writer Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English and writer-in-residence

LEO BRAUDY Cultural historian and critical theorist University Professor and Leo S. Bing Chair in English Working on a history of fear, tracing the rise of horror as a genre starting in the Reformation

ANNA JOURNEY Award-winning poet Joined USC in 2014 as an assistant professor of English Specializing in contemporary poetry, she’s completing her third collection of poems

of the dangers here. They aren’t all screen zombies. They’re hungry for tangibility. My stepdaughter owns two typewriters. Last semester in one of my poetry classes, a word came up in conversation and a student unfamiliar with the term wanted to look it up. Instead of looking at his iPhone, he reached into his jacket and pulled out a paperback dictionary. A poetry acquaintance of mine posted a call on Facebook: “I miss seeing people’s handwriting. Does anybody want to exchange a postcard with me? Message me with your address.” So I sent her a postcard, and she sent one to me. I think there is a hunger for ways of communicating that are becoming foreign. There’s a hunger for using your hands and making a connection. Look at Etsy. Or look at me. I took a taxidermy class two months ago. Boyle: I do public readings a lot. I’m looking for a young audience, especially young men who may have played video games but know the novel only as the format for the dreaded term paper, something you do for drudgery in school. I like to give a show, entertain and remind them that literature at its root is a form of entertainment, that it can be cool, it can open up the world to you in a unique way, just as a film or song can. Braudy: I think there will always be literature because there will always be people who want to tell stories and there will always be people who want to read stories. The question is what format of literature will it appear in? Traditional hard-copy book or online? I suspect it will still be a mingling of the two. I don’t think it’ll be entirely one way or another. But isn’t digital the environmentally responsible thing to do? Some argue paper made from trees is unsustainable. Braudy: Maybe we’ll find another material. Who knows? In a hundred years, we could be making books out of air pollution. Is writing literature a profession? Braudy: In Britain, yes, but not in the United States. Maybe in New York or a few other places close to the center of publishing, newspapers and magazines, you could put together a life—not a lucrative but a sustainable life—on a freelance basis. Otherwise it’s almost impossible unless you’re a really big seller, like James Patterson or Tom Boyle, or you have another kind of job, usually an academic job. Boyle: I never dreamed of having a career making money as a writer. It didn’t affect me one way or another. You don’t choose to be an artist. You just are one. Artists will make art no matter what. It doesn’t matter what the public thinks, or what form it’s going to appear in, or whether you’ll make a living. You just do it anyway. The university has been a blessing for literary novelists and poets in that it has given us a place to be and to cultivate our work and the work of our students. It’s a great thing. I hope it continues. Journey: I don’t think “poet” is a profession. Poetry is an art; teaching is a profession. Even Shelley back in the 1800s, when he referred to poets as the “unacknowledged legislators of the world,” didn’t consider it a profession. You write because you have to, because you love it, not to sell your poems. Poetry sales are always modest compared to fiction bestsellers. If a poet sells 5,000 or 10,000 copies of a book, that’s huge, whereas similar numbers in fiction would be cause for shame and despair. There’s a smaller audience for poetry, but it’s vibrant, it’s necessary. autumn 2015

Campfire for a New Age How can a university English department embrace the revolution underway in the storyteller’s art? At USC, the answer lies in narrative studies. The Department of English at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences was already a maverick for featuring a robust creative writing program alongside its literature curriculum, traditionally the centerpiece of the discipline. Narrative studies goes a step further. Launched five years ago, the narrative studies major prepares students for a digital future where storytelling crosses media. It includes courses in subjects such as cinema, theater and music. To get a sense of what narrative studies means, consider the capstone projects of three recent graduates:

JULIA VIRTUE ’15 Virtue produced a singer-songwriter album adaptation of Jane Austen’s Persuasion. Under the supervision of English professor Tania Modleski, Virtue composed and recorded 10 original songs exploring the story arc and character development of the novel’s estranged lovers. Lyrics, instrumentation and even the singers’ breaths meticulously mirror how the repressed Anne Elliot finds her voice and Captain Wentworth learns to listen. To hear Virtue’s album, go to soundcloud.com/juliaraevirtue.

KATIE ROBERTS ’15 Roberts analyzed Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost, exploring the theme of God’s profound unhappiness. Nothing unusual here—except she wrote her 18-page essay in painstaking imitation of the master poet, composing all but the footnotes and bibliography in blank verse. A sample:

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An created a multimedia homage to Los Angeles. Titled “LA to Z,” the website combines text, video, photo galleries, an audio story and a blog. She worked under Vicki Callahan, a professor in the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

O, Muse! Please aid this lowly Undergrad In her intrepid trial. Rouse her mind And heal her spring break singed fingertips …

The number of USC undergrads majoring in narrative studies nearly doubled, from 69 to 135, between fall 2013 and fall 2014. “The narrative studies major is just exploding,” says David St. John, chair of English, noting that the department added a narrative studies minor this school year. In part, numbers may be growing because USC students recognize that they have experiences worth sharing, St. John says. The depths of human emotion fascinate us, regardless of the media used to plumb them. Muses St. John: “Students are discovering, as they mature, that the world is a world of stories.”

VERONICA AN ’15

Number of narrative studies undergrads in 2013 and 2014

135 autumn 2015

Poetry in Motion Whatever changes technology brings, the poem is here to stay. The spare, word-bound art form is thriving in the digital age. Google the term “poetry” and you’ll get 300 million hits. Websites like Poetry Out Loud draw millions of American teens. A quarter-million readers visit Poetry Archive each month to hear poets read their own stanzas. It would be a mistake, though, to think of the Internet as a poetry-sharing repository. It’s also a catalyst for new poetic energies. Consider Twitter poetry, composed of 140 characters. Such “micropoetry” has taken on a life of its own, with The New York Times Book Review soliciting “twitterature” from the likes of Claudia Rankine, who recently joined the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, and Robert Pinsky. USC poet Anna Journey, for one, appreciates the lively, creativity-sparking community converging around blogs, e-journals and social media. “There are so many people writing poems, and so many diverse schools of poetry,” she says. “There isn’t one poem of the moment. Not just one poem that responds to the Zeitgeist. There is room for all of these movements, and I find that really exciting.” It’s ironic, then, that poets are also among the last holdouts against e-books. According to The New York Times, poet Albert Goldbarth refuses to publish e-books “on principle.” Revered poet John Ashbery made headlines last year when he finally agreed to release 17 collections in digital form. Three years earlier, the Pulitzer Prize winner had abruptly halted four e-book editions after seeing the publisher’s demo full of missed line breaks and bunched-together stanzas. On digital devices, it’s tough to dictate how lines of type flow across the screen. “In poetry every word, every line break is crucial,” says Carol Muske-Dukes, USC creative writing professor and a former California Poet Laureate. “When we publish something electronically, we can’t control breaks or topography, overall.” Even The New Yorker was getting it wrong, says poet David St. John, professor and chair of USC’s English department. Despite repeated efforts to fix errors in lineation and indentation, poems in the literary magazine’s online archive had remained “screwed up” until just last year, he says. Poets care passionately about these issues because “the line is the unit of meaning in poetry,” Journey says. “We build poems brick by brick, line by line. If a digital version alters the poem irrevocably, I think that’s terrible.” St. John explains: “Poems change the way you breathe. If that’s altered, it’s a different experience from what the poet intended.” But e-publishing has come a long way, and poetry presses increasingly are paying programmers to meticulously hand-code line breaks. Aesthetically the e-reader has been a typographic wasteland, but that’s changing too. Eye-pleasing fonts custom-crafted for Amazon and Google platforms recently rolled out on tablets. There may yet be hope: The digital page, typeface designers say, has never looked so “bookish.”

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High-Profile Hardcovers

You know you’ve made it as a novelist when you’ve hit The New York Times Book Review. USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences creative writing faculty went on a literary streak in April, earning three favorable reviews of their new releases in the literary digest. PRUDENCE BY DAVID TREUER Set at a lakeside resort in Minnesota and the neighboring Ojibwe reservation during the 1940s and ’50s, the story revolves around Frankie, Billy and Prudence—three people bound by an accidental killing and the resulting tangle of secrets and lies. “While there’s much hope in this lyrical novel,” critic Stacey D’Erasmo writes in the review, “as evidenced by the freedom with which it examines some of the more transgressive interstices of race, sexual orientation and gender, there’s also an obdurate insistence on taking responsibility, particularly if one is a man.” It’s the fourth novel by David Treuer, whose stories illuminate Native American cultures and characters beyond stereotypes. THE HARDER THEY COME BY T. CORAGHESSAN BOYLE T.C. Boyle’s novel “takes on the paranoia of the far-right sovereign citizen movement and off-thegrid/mountain-man survivalism, as well as more mainstream American notions of independence,” writes critic Dana Spiotta. Set in contemporary Northern California, the book explores the volatile connections between Sten, an aging Vietnam veteran; his deeply psychotic son, Adam; and Sara, the middle-aged anti-government anarchist who is Adam’s lover. With such material, Spiotta notes, Boyle might have gone “full-tilt satirical, but [he] takes a darker and more restrained approach. He has written a compelling, complex and intimate novel.” The author of 25 books, Boyle founded the USC English department’s undergraduate creative writing program in 1978. THE SYMPATHIZER BY VIET THANH NGUYEN This “remarkable debut novel”—a tragicomedy told by a South Vietnamese aide-de-camp who is also a Communist spy—made the cover of the April 2 print edition of The New York Times Book Review. In the U.S.-centric canon of Vietnam fiction, Viet Thanh Nguyen “fills a void in the literature, giving voice to the previously voiceless,” writes reviewer Philip Caputo. Presented as a first-person confession, the narrative veers from the fall of Saigon to a refugee’s picaresque misadventures in Hollywood. “In its final chapters, The Sympathizer becomes an absurdist tour de force that might have been written by a Kafka or Genet,” Caputo says. An associate professor of English and American studies and ethnicity, Nguyen is a scholar who adeptly handles both fiction writing and literary criticism.

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Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not just travel. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Trojan Travel. Journey to East Africa and experience the excitement and quality of traveling the world with the Trojan Family. We also offer more than 40 other group-travel adventures to places like the Alaskan frontier, the Canary Islands and the swinging East European capitals of Berlin, Prague and Budapest. Or let our SConcierge service help you create your own customized dream vacation! Visit trojantravel.usc.edu or call (213) 821-6005 for more information and to book your Trojan Travel adventure.

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FA M I LY

PHOTO BY GUS RUELAS

THEY’RE BACK Each fall brings a crop of new students to USC’s campuses, but one part of student life will never change: They’ll always take a well-deserved break from studying to watch a football game. See how this year’s brand-new Trojans celebrate their school spirit at bit.ly/OfficialTrojan.

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Fantastic Fans

From athletics to arts, these devoted Trojans have an unwavering passion for cardinal and gold that comes straight from the heart. Autumn always brings new spirit to the Trojan faithful. Meet a few especially enthusiastic members of the Trojan Family with a love for all things USC. CANDY YEE ’68, MS ’69 AND PATTI POON ’65 Candy Yee ’68, MS ’69 will pull out her camera the second she spots a Trojan athlete. She’s snapped thousands of photos of USC student-athletes—legends or not— many of which she has lovingly shared on her blog, TrojanCandy.com. Yee and her sister, Patti Poon ’65, have been Trojan fans for more than 50 years. These Houston-bred sisters first came to USC as undergraduates. When they weren’t studying, they went to as many USC games as they could. Now retired schoolteachers, Yee and Poon still cheer for every USC team, often accompanied by their respective husbands, James Yee PhD ’74 and Dudley Poon. “The only sports we don’t actually go to are men’s and women’s golf, and maybe cross country,” Yee says. “But we’re into golf !” Poon interjects. “We donate to the women’s team.” That’s not all they support. Both are on the Galen Founders list, and they give to the Women of Troy, Cardinal & Gold and the Spirit of Troy. Poon is a highlevel donor to the Trojan Athletic Fund. Their non-athletic involvement includes USC Associates, Trojan Guild and Town & Gown of USC. Poon also volunteers with the USC Trojan Society of Hospitals. With their husbands, the sisters have endowed two scholarships at the USC Rossier School of Education.

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But their most precious gift is time. Before Heritage Hall closed for remodeling, on Thursdays and Fridays the sisters greeted everyone who walked through the door with a welcome table of edible treats. When student-athletes stopped by their table, Yee snapped pictures and interviewed them for her blog. Some, like football player Abe Markowitz ’12, became personal friends. They’re on hugging terms with quarterback Cody Kessler. Adoree’ Jackson and Marqise Lee would always strike a pose when they spied Yee’s camera. And it isn’t just about big names—the sisters cheer athletes from lacrosse to fencing. “As long as they’re Trojans!” Yee says. With Heritage Hall’s remodel now done, the welcome table is gone, but the sisters keep busy attending USC games and special events, such as sports facility openings and the Trojan Hall of Fame gala. Yee documents it all on her blog. In 2014, the USC Alumni Association presented the sisters with Widney Alumni House Volunteer Awards at the annual Volunteer Recognition Dinner, honoring their support for USC Athletics. THE FELIX FAMILY As a USC Song Girl, Jordan Felix leaps and kicks on the sidelines to rally the Coliseum crowd, but she can’t help attracting a small cheering section of her own: her family. “They’re at every game,” says the junior, a theater major minoring in dance. “My dad has the video camera. My mom brings all her family and friends. My little brother, my older siblings, they’re constantly supporting me.” The Felixes have made USC a family

affair. Michael ’83 and Debbie Felix love rooting for their two Song Girls—daughter Taylor ’13 preceded Jordan on the dance squad—and their enthusiasm has only grown over the years. Debbie Felix is involved in the USC Kaufman School of Dance, where she serves on the board of advisors. She’s also part of Town & Gown of USC. Michael Felix, meanwhile, chairs the advisory board of the USC Caruso Catholic Center and sits on the boards of the USC School of Dramatic Arts, USC Latino Alumni Association and USC Associates. For his extraordinary volunteerism, he received the USC Alumni Association’s 2014 Alumni Service Award. Head of global investment operations for the Los Angeles-based Capital Group Companies, Michael Felix carves out time for what he calls his “three passions”—his wife, their four children and USC. Up to three times a week the Felixes travel to the University Park Campus from their home in Yorba Linda, California. They attend USC Thornton School of Music concerts, Visions and Voices cultural events, plays at the USC School of Dramatic Arts and Sunday evening mass at Our Savior Parish and USC Caruso Catholic Center. Someday, Michael Felix plans to walk down the church’s aisle and give away his daughters as brides. Older son Brenden, a University of Arizona graduate, is eyeing the master’s in real estate development program at the USC Price School of Public Policy. Meanwhile Austin, the youngest child, is applying for college. More USC superfans in the making? “Oh my God, we’re praying so hard,” Debbie Felix says. autumn 2015

PHOTOS: (TOP) COURTESY OF CANDY YEE; (MIDDLE) COURTESY OF THE FELIX FAMILY; (BOTTOM) COURTESY OF THE GOODMAN FAMILY

by diane krieger

Know any Trojan fans whose USC fanaticism knows no bounds? Tell us about them at magazines@usc.edu.

THE GOODMAN FAMILY It’s been a half century since Herb ’58 and Kathy Goodman ’62 graduated from USC, but you’ll still find them at the Coliseum and Galen Center three or four times a week during fall and winter. After 57 years of wedded bliss, they never miss a football game. And they attend every men’s and women’s basketball and volleyball game at the Galen Center. They helped build it, after all. You’ll find their names on the dedication plaque at its northwest corner. A native Angeleno, Kathy Goodman fell in love with Trojan football as a youngster. “All of the tradition, the band. I only ever wanted to go to ’SC.” She got her wish, attending on scholarship. Pretty soon she was dating Herb Goodman, a psychology major from New Jersey. They were both musicians: She played double bass, he played several wind instruments. On Saturdays, he wooed her from the field, marching in the Spirit of Troy’s saxophone section. After college, Herb Goodman became a social worker and Kathy Goodman taught at local schools. Moonlighting as band leaders, they started their own banquet facility, which proved so successful they were able to sell the business and retire a few years later. One thing that hasn’t changed is their enthusiasm for their alma mater. “It’s kind of a religious thing,” Kathy Goodman says. “Our life revolves around USC.” Going to games can take three hours because the Goodmans live in Camarillo, California. But it’s never a dull ride in their custom-painted van, the cardinal and gold exterior “so loud it almost blares,” she says. For years this big-hearted couple lugged boxes of Trojan gear to sell at away games, coaches’ tours and booster events— all proceeds supporting USC Athletics. These days, they’re board members of the Trojan Club and the President’s Advisory Council and emeritus members of the Athletics Department Board of Counselors. They avidly support Swim With Mike and have endowed two basketball scholarships, one for each point guard. “That’s the shortest player on the team,” chuckles Herb Goodman, “because Kathy is 4-foot-6.” “USC has given us such pleasure over the years,” he adds. “That’s why we decided to give back our time and our money.” tfm.usc.edu

TOP: James Yee PhD ’74, Candy Yee ’68, MS ’69, Patti Poon ’65 and Dudley Poon are avid boosters of USC Athletics, from golf to basketball. MIDDLE: Jordan, Austin, Debbie, Michael ’83, Taylor ’13 and Brenden Felix have made supporting USC a family affair. BOTTOM: Trojans for more than 50 years, Herb ’58 and Kathy Goodman ’62 never miss a football game.

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Leading by Example

Michael Adler ’86, MBA ’92 takes the helm of the USC Alumni Association’s governing board. by bekah wright

Michael Adler ’86, MBA ’92 remembers the first time he heard of USC: his high school’s “college night.” The sounds of the Trojan Marching Band filled a school hallway as band members paraded down the corridor. Adler followed the band—and he’s answered the USC call ever since. Not only did he go on to earn two degrees at USC, but he also took on the roles of ardent fan, Trojan leader and now president of the USC Alumni Association (USCAA) Board of Governors. For Adler, it’s the highlight of his 33-year relationship with the university. Adler grew up in LA’s Woodland Hills neighborhood, and family finances were tight. He started working at age 8, selling Amway products door to door and landing jobs at a hobby shop and arcade after school. Finances should have made USC out of the question, but the university offered scholarships and financial aid that covered tuition. At USC, Adler juggled a full course load with his full-time job at McDonald’s. He also joined the business fraternity Delta Sigma Pi, where he served as chancellor and president. He didn’t have much opportunity to socialize on campus, but Jill —a McDonald’s co-worker who became his first girlfriend and the reason he attended USC rather than going out of state—insisted that Adler take her to a Trojan football game. Jill didn’t attend USC, but she knew football. “We sat in the very top row and she had to explain what was going on,” Adler

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remembers. By his second game, he was hooked. “For more than 20 years, I’ve attended every home and away game.” Not that he’s had a lot of free time. In 1983, Adler started working four hours a week collecting interest rate information for a bank consultant to supplement his full-time McDonald’s job. Thirty-two years later, he’s the president and managing director of what’s now known as Informa Research Services, which gathers competitive financial intelligence. At home, he and Jill just celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary and have a 17-year-old son, Grayson, who hopes to be a future Trojan. Adler’s path to USCAA leadership grew out of a class project for his MBA program. “My final project was an operational

audit of the USCAA Board of Governors,” he says. Impressed with his work, the board asked Adler to join. After serving a twoyear term in the 1990s, he returned in 2007 and worked his way to the top spot. As newly elected president of the USCAA Board of Governors, he has two big goals: helping USC stay accessible to all students and increasing the value of USC diplomas. To meet these goals, Adler hopes to boost USC’s alumni participation rate— the number of alumni with undergraduate degrees who donate to USC—which is a factor in national rankings. Explains Adler: “We are at 41 percent, which is the best in the Pac-12. But if we increase that, it will strengthen our rankings, and the value of our degrees goes up.” His own continuing financial support grew out of a seed planted his freshman year, when he saw a list of donors’ names in Hoffman Hall. He recalls thinking, “Someday, if things go the way I hope, I want to give back so others will have the opportunity USC provided me.” He started small, splitting the Trojan Athletic Fund’s Cardinal & Gold junior membership with friend Chuck Miwa ’87, MBA ’00 because half was all he could afford at the time. Looking ahead, Adler is excited about USCAA’s role in launching a new university-wide program, Day of SCupport, which will especially emphasize reconnecting with undergraduate alumni. He has no doubt that USC’s numbers will continue climbing “if we all work together to support our Trojan Family.” autumn 2015

PHOTOS BY ALISON DUNDES RENTELN AND PAUL RENTELN

Alumni Abroad People don’t usually walk out while Alison Dundes Renteln gives her lectures. But this time, the USC Dornsife political science and anthropology professor faced an exodus. Why? A herd of elephants had moseyed in for a listen and her students rushed to take photographs. “I’ve never been upstaged by anything like that,” Renteln laughs. The “classroom” was Thornybush, a private game preserve in South Africa. And no, this wasn’t a study abroad program. It was part of Trojan Travel, USC Alumni Association’s travel program. Brazil. Croatia. Tibet. Cuba. Trojan Travel spans the globe, hosting as many as 45 trips per year. The one thing the trips have in common is an itinerary that goes beyond typical tour stops. “As a university, we can pair professors with specialties to the trips, which adds an extra element,” says Linda J. Ball ’83, associate director of Trojan Travel. Rick Jewell PhD ’78 is a tour veteran. “The two or three lectures I give on each trip are shaped by the locations we visit,” explains Jewell, a professor at the USC School of Cinematic Arts. He once gave a talk on the Seine River in France about Jean Renoir, film director and son of Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Professors like Jewell serve as faculty hosts on the tours, giving travelers deeper insight into local culture. With more than 10 trips under their belts, travelers Tom Givvin ’66 and his wife, Linda Givvin ’70, remember getting a close look at American history on Mississippi paddle wheelers and a luxury rail line. “The train trip focused on Civil War sites from Washington, D.C., to New Orleans,” Tom Givvin says. There’s also the opportunity to meet global alums. On a trip to Jordan, a former student of Renteln’s provided some off-theitinerary surprises for the USC visitors. “As a political advisor to the king, he arranged a special dinner with leading political figures and a tour of Parliament,” Renteln says. And of course, another benefit is getting to know fellow Trojan traveling companions. “We have something in common with the other travelers, not the least of which is being part of the Trojan Family,” says Pat Koehler ’57, who travels with husband Dan Koehler ’65. “The camaraderie and bonding have led to lasting friendships.” For Jewell, learning goes both ways. “The alums live interesting lives and have a lot to say,” he says. “Interacting and learning from them is a special delight.”

Ready for your next adventure? Visit trojantravel.usc.edu.

Trojan Travel offers a variety of organized travel experiences that appeal to the interests of USC alumni, family and friends. The service also provides customized travel planning and lodging discounts. These photographs were taken on Trojan Travel excursions.

#1 HOUSE OF FAITH The Blue Mosque (or the Sultan Ahmet Mosque) in Istanbul is both a cultural site and house of worship. #2 CARVED IN STONE The ancient city of Petra in Jordan was an important crossroads linking Arabia, Syria/ Phoenicia and Egypt.

#3 ROAR Travelers to South Africa have seen their share of lions and other fauna in the Thornybush Game Preserve. #4 SOLDIER ON Terracotta soliders in Xi’an, China, draw tourists from around the world.

BEKAH WRIGHT

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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.

1 9 5 0 s Lawrence Booth ’59 (LAW) has published the book Worlds Fastest Humans [sic], which tracks the careers of three iconic Trojan sprinters: Charlie Paddock, Mel Patton and Frank Wykoff. The trio trained under track coach Dean Cromwell, who worked at USC from 1909 to 1948. Patton later coached Booth at Long Beach City College. 1 9 6 0 s Robert Rosenberg ’66 (BUS, ACC), JD ’69 (LAW) was named California’s No. 1 real estate solo practitioner by Super Lawyers magazine in 2013 and 2014. He continues his transactional real estate practice in Beverly Hills, California. 1 9 7 0 s Gregory Polito MD ’71 (MED), after 38 years of practicing urology, has been appointed vice president of medical affairs, surgical services at Presbyterian Intercommunity Hospital in Whittier, California. His responsibilities include patient safety, operating room efficiency and quality of work for inpatient and outpatient surgery, the GI lab and interventional radiology.

PHOTO COURTESY OF SUSANNE STIRLING

Daniel B. Watson ’73, MPA ’78 (SPP) retired in December 2014 after more than 41 years in law enforcement. Watson spent 28 years in the Los Angeles Police Department and went on to serve as police chief in the cities of South Pasadena and Mammoth Lakes, California. Paul Wilson MS ’73 (ENG), EdD ’87 (EDU), a Realtor since 1997, has been elected the 2015 president of the Greater Albuquerque Association of Realtors. The organization, which serves central New Mexico, has 3,000 members, accounting for more than half of all Realtors in the state. The retired Marine lieutenant colonel and his wife, Judy, own Home Team Realty in Albuquerque. tfm.usc.edu

family class notes

Susanne Stirling MA ’76 (LAS) was appointed to the California International Trade and Investment Advisory Council by Gov. Jerry Brown. She is vice president of international affairs at the California Chamber of Commerce, where she has led the International Trade Department since 1982. Todd DeMitchell EdD ’79 (EDU) was named John and H. Irene Peters Professor of Education at the University of New Hampshire. His seventh book, The Challenges of Mandating School Uniforms in the Public Schools: Free Speech, Research and Policy, co-authored with Richard Fossey, was published in June by Rowman & Littlefield. 1 9 8 0 s George Chapjian ’81 (LAS), MSW ’84 (SSW), MS ’84 (GRN) was appointed director of Santa Barbara County’s Community Services Department in May. He previously served as director of the Parks, Recreation and Marine Department for Long Beach, California. Charles E. Smith ’84, MPL ’90 (SPP) was elected to the California chapter of the American Planning Association’s Board of Directors. Smith is the planning and development leader for ICF International.

School of Music Board of Councilors member, will serve as acting president and chief executive while current president and CEO Deborah Borda is on sabbatical this fall. 1 9 9 0 s 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. Boyd Rutherford MA/JD ’90 (SCJ, LAW) was installed as the ninth lieutenant governor of Maryland in January. The Los Angeles Guitar Quartet—which includes USC Thornton alumni Matthew Greif MM ’92 (MUS), Scott Tennant MM ’83 (MUS) and USC Thornton faculty member William Kanengiser ’81, MM ’83 (MUS)—released the album New Renaissance. The recording was partially funded through a Kickstarter campaign, which raised more than $12,000.

Robbin Itkin JD ’84 (LAW), Lori Loo JD ’90 (LAW) and Pamela Westhoff JD ’86 (LAW), MBA ’86 (BUS) were named in Super Lawyers magazine’s 2015 list of the top 50 female lawyers in Southern California.

L. Zane Jones MFA ’92 (DRA), artistic director at Civic Rep in Seattle, directed a new play by Thea Cooper at New City Theater this summer and directed and produced a critically acclaimed production of A Streetcar Named Desire earlier this year. She is associate professor at the University of Washington School of Drama, where she teaches acting.

Elisabeth Ledwell ’86 (DRA) is a teacher at independent day school Falmouth Academy on Cape Cod, where she has directed more than 70 shows. She recently directed Almost, Maine by John Cariani at the Cape Cod Theatre Project.

Robert Thies ’93, MM ’95 (MUS) celebrated the 20th anniversary of his gold medal in the Prokofiev Competition in St. Petersburg, Russia. He was the first American pianist in nearly 40 years to win a Russian piano competition.

Gail Samuel ’89 (MUS), MBA ’02 (BUS) was promoted to the position of executive director with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association. Samuel, a USC Thornton

Julio Friedmann PhD ’96 (LAS) was appointed deputy assistant secretary for clean coal by the Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy. He was previously chief usc trojan family

Keep the Trojan Family Close at Hand With the USC Alumni Association’s new USC Fight Online app for the iPhone® and iPad®, degreed USC alumni can: n -PDBUF BOE OFUXPSL XJUI fellow Trojans, wherever you are, in real-time n $POOFDU UP 64$kT career services n 'JOE BOE TVQQPSU Trojan-owned businesses n %JTDPWFS OFBSCZ BMVNOJ events and gatherings Go to alumni.usc.edu/app to EPXOMPBE 64$ 'JHIU 0OMJOF UPEBZ

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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.

energy technologist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Kent Keith EdD ’96 (EDU) accepted the position of president of New Hope Christian College/Pacific Rim Christian University, a newly constituted university in Honolulu. Fangfang Shi ’96, MM ’99, DMA ’12 (MUS) won first place in the 2015 American Protégé International Competition for Piano and Strings and performed in Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall in April. 2 0 0 0 s Terri Batch MPA ’00 (SPP) received a Bronze Medal, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s highest award for excellence in federal service. She is a senior international trade specialist with the U.S Department of Commerce in Los Angeles.

Paul Knutzen ’03 (ENG) was named the 2014 Tri-Cities Engineer of the Year in recognition of his technical contributions to local projects and involvement in various professional and community organizations. He is manager for Meier Architecture Engineering Civil Group and served as past president of the Columbia Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers. Amy Wang ’03 (ENG), MD ’10 (MED) received her medical degree from the Keck School of Medicine of USC and married fellow Trojan Jeffrey Wang ’03 (ENG), MD ’07 (MED). The couple moved to Minnesota, where she trained at the Mayo Clinic, doing her residency in internal medicine and joining the Mayo Clinic staff while her husband completed his urology training. They had twins (a boy and a girl), then moved back to the South Bay in 2014 and had another son. Julie Boardman ’04 (MUS) produced her first Broadway play, An American in Paris, last spring. Alison Bjorkedal MM ’05, DMA ’08 (MUS) and Nick Terry DMA ’11 (MUS) performed on the Partch ensemble’s Grammy Award-winning album, Plectra and Percussion Dances.

Calder Quintet

PHOTO BY AUTUMN DE WILDE

Benjamin Jacobson ’01, MM ’07 (MUS), Andrew Bulbrook ’02 (LAS), Jonathan Moerschel ’01, MM ’03 (MUS) and Eric Byers ’03 (MUS), members of the Calder Quartet, which originally formed at USC, were featured on the May 2015 cover of Strings Magazine. Ashleigh Aitken JD ’02 (LAW) was named the 2015 president of the Orange County Bar Association. Brandon Barash ’02 (DRA) has had a recurring role on TNT’s Major Crimes since 2013. He also starred in General Hospital as Johnny Zacchara from 2007 to 2014. tfm.usc.edu

Michael J. Despars ’05 (DRA) received the Theatre Leadership Award from the California Educational Theatre Association (CETA) for chairing the CETA High School Theatre Festival and serving as director of the Orange County Cappies Critics Program. He also serves as vice president of public high schools on the CETA Board of Directors. Tobin Cosio MPP ’05 (SPP) is now human resources director for the city of Oxnard, California. He was formerly the labor relations manager for Ventura County. Patrick Morganelli MM ’05, GCRT ’06 (MUS) composed music for LA Opera’s Hercules vs. Vampires, an operatic mash-up featuring a cast of singers and full orchestra performing a live soundtrack for the 1961 cult film Hercules in the Haunted World.

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Always a dedicated student, Georgia Shaver ’77 never imagined that she would have to stand up for herself in the classroom. Shaver was a model scholar at USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, majoring in French and international relations, and she belonged to Alpha Gamma Delta. Yet one her professors began to single her out during class for no apparent reason, leaving her bewildered. She had no option but to speak up for herself. Little did she realize that the incident would serve as a steppingstone to her future career in the United Nations. “As soon as I confronted the issue with him, his relationship with me changed completely,” says Shaver, a native of South Pasadena, California. “It showed I had the ability to stand up for what was right. It

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also motivated me to work for the U.N. because I could fight for the person who didn’t have a voice, and that was more important than anything else that I had studied.” After receiving her master’s in peace studies from Antioch University, Shaver began working as an assistant project officer for the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) in Malawi. Her first assignment placed her in the East and Southern Africa Bureau, where saving lives and providing food security for millions of beneficiaries throughout Africa became her mission. “It was overwhelming—new environment, unfamiliar work, a lot of responsibility,” Shaver says. “But it was exciting. It challenged my skills and abilities and I grew up fast.” Later, as director of the WFP offices in Mozambique

and Ethiopia, she focused on humanitarian operations addressing droughts, refugees and floods. She then spent the last five years of her career as the first ombudsman of the WFP, working on internal workplace conflict. “With resources being dear and the humanitarian mission so critical and important, an organization needs to ensure an enabling work environment so that staff can be productive and engaged,” she says. “Conflict is very expensive and a waste of resources.” Shaver met the man who would become her husband, Angelo Boccaccini, during one of her reassignments to the WFP headquarters in Rome. They eventually made Rome their permanent home so their daughter, Magda Boccaccini ’15, could finish high school. Despite retirement from the

U.N. after 31 years of service, Shaver shows no sign of slowing. She wrote the codes of conduct and ethics and the harassment policy for the African Union and introduced a course on conflict resolution at the American University of Rome. “I see my accomplishments as a force for university students to learn early on the importance of communication and listening, as well as engaging with conflict rather than avoiding and escalating it,” she says. Conflict resolution has never been more necessary in our rapidly changing world, says Shaver, who points out that sometimes conflict offers benefits: “It forces people to face challenges—and improve themselves in the process.” KAMALA KIRK

autumn 2015

PHOTO BY GUS RUELAS

A former United Nations ombudsman teaches the art of conflict resolution.

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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.

Jennifer Brienen ’06 (DRA) was recently promoted to design manager at Thinkwell Group, a design and production company. Robert Istad DMA ’06 (MUS) was appointed the Pacific Chorale’s new artistic director, beginning with the 2017-18 season. Christiane Roussell JD ’06 (LAW) was named the 2015 president of the John M. Langston Bar Association of Los Angeles. Kirk Vining ’08 (ENG), an experimental test pilot, flew the first flight of Boeing’s 757 ecoDemonstrator. The flights evaluate new technologies to improve commercial aviation’s efficiency, as well as to reduce noise and carbon emissions. Jessica Hall MM ’09, GCRT ’11, DMA ’14 (MUS) will serve as Minnesota Opera’s resident pianist and coach for the 2015-16 season. The highly competitive Resident Artist Program is a professional training ground for exceptional artists and musicians. Brandon Martinez EdD ’09 (EDU) was named principal of Los Alamitos High School. Home to more than 3,000 students in grades 9 to 12, Los Alamitos is ranked No. 87 (top 1 percent) in the country. Its school district has been on the College Board’s AP Honor Roll five years in a row—one of only six districts in the U.S. to do so. 2 0 1 0 s

PHOTO COURTESY OF GENA TRUITT

McKinley Belcher III MFA ’10 (DRA) is featured in the new PBS series Mercy Street, which stars Josh Radnor, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Gary Cole. Khalia Davis ’10 (DRA) played Lil Inez in Hairspray! at the Berkeley Playhouse. She also recently performed in The Book Club Play as Lily. Shawn Gong MS ’11 (ENG) is 4D product/ project manager at DAQRI, where he creates project plans for mobile apps. Accessed via mobile and wearable devices, 4D incorporates augmented reality and other tfm.usc.edu

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technologies to add a new dimension to any environment. Michael Lewis MPA ’11 (SPP) was recently elected to a 3-year term on the Torrance Community Credit Union’s Board of Directors. He previously served on the supervisory committee for the credit union for approximately 2 years. Julia Adolphe MM ’12 (MUS) was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic to write a viola concerto for principal violist Cynthia Phelps, who also attended USC. Shireesh Asthana MS ’12 (ENG) lives in San Francisco and works for Facebook as an engineer. Kathryn Lochert ’12 (DRA) is a stage manager for American Blues Theater in Chicago, where she has recently become an artistic affiliate. She is also a proud new member of the Actors’ Equity Association. Gena Truitt MSW ’12 (SSW), U.S. Navy veteran, was appointed by Gov. Jerry Brown to serve on the California Veterans Board, a body that advises the state’s Department of Veterans Affairs secretary and advocates for veterans statewide. She also works at the VA Loma Linda Healthcare System in San Bernardino County, interacting directly with veterans as a social worker specializing in homeless outreach. Samuel Araiza ’13 (ENG) is working at YP as a software engineer in Glendale, California. Benjamin Cho MAT ’13 (EDU) is reprising his role as Carl Nishioka for the second season of Michael Bay’s The Last Ship on TNT. Nathan Graeser MSW ’13 (SSW) is a chaplain with the Army National Guard and works at the USC Center for Innovation and Research on Veterans & Military Families, administering the Los Angeles Veterans Collaborative, a network of more than 250 organizations and stakeholders that works collectively to identify and resolve local veterans’ needs.

Tiffany Jones PhD ’13 (EDU) is program director, higher education research and policy, for the Southern Education Foundation in Atlanta. Corrine St. Thomas-Stowers MSW ’13 (SSW) was selected as a Clinton Global Initiative commitment-maker and mentor. She is an investigative assistant in the Human Trafficking and Exploitation Unit at the Orange County District Attorney’s Office Bureau of Investigations in Santa Ana, California, and was chosen by the Clinton Global Initiative for her background in criminal justice and helping sexually exploited children. Maura Velasco-Ventura MPA ’13 (SPP) is now administrator of the Long Beach Police Department and heads the department’s records and technology division. Robin Bishop PhD ’14 (EDU) is an assistant professor of psychology at Mount Saint Mary’s University in Los Angeles. Catherine Kawaguchi EdD ’14 (EDU) was named superintendent of the Sulphur Springs Union Elementary School District, located in Canyon Country, California, which includes nine schools that serve more than 5,000 students from kindergarten through sixth grade. Glenn Medeiros EdD ’14 (EDU) was named president of Saint Louis School, a private, all-boys Catholic Marianist school in Honolulu. Melissa Moore EdD ’14 (EDU) was named superintendent of the El Segundo Unified School District, which includes five schools that serve more than 3,000 students from kindergarten to high school. Dawn McMahan MSW ’15 (SSW) is executive artistic director at Pythia Arts Center for Social Change, a nonprofit in Oakland, California, that uses arts and social services to help the community. She is also board president of Manzanita Community School and works with Alameda Family Services to develop Senior Connections, a program providing case management services to the elderly. usc trojan family

Scholarships change lives. Every gift counts. giveto.usc.edu

“Being a music student can be a huge financial burden—taking lessons, going to music activities. A lot of students like me can only go to USC because of scholarships. They really make a big difference.” Ashley Hoe USC Asian Pacific Alumni Association Distinguished Scholar Award Piano performance major, Class of 2015

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From Classroom to City Hall

PHOTO COURTESY OF ROBERT GARCIA

A USC Annenberg alum-turnedinstructor brings his teaching skills to his job as mayor of the nation’s 36th-largest city. His five and a half years on the Long Beach City Council introduced Robert Garcia MA ’05 to the players and departments that keep the California city running. But an entirely different experience trained him for his stint as the city’s mayor: his time in front of a classroom. “Teaching was by far the thing that prepared me the most for being mayor,” says the 37-year-old Garcia, the youngest leader ever to take the helm of Long Beach. “Teachers have to be good listeners, experts on subjects, and willing to work

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within a specific structure.” Garcia says he feels drawn to teaching because of his own positive experiences as a student. He emigrated from Peru to California when he was 5, and is the first in his family to graduate from college. He earned his bachelor’s from California State University, Long Beach before he headed to the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism for a master’s in communication management. A doctorate in higher education at Cal State Long Beach prepared Garcia to start teaching and mentoring students at USC Annenberg. He also found time to start a community news organization, the Long Beach Post, in 2007. (He gave up editorial control in 2009 when he joined the city council.) When Garcia became mayor last fall, it was the first time in

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10 years that he wasn’t working on a college campus. He’s determined to get back once his term is over—if not before. He’s considering integrating a course into his schedule as early as fall 2016. “I love students and teaching,” he says, “and I love the university environment.” But for now, his focus is Long Beach, a city Garcia believes to be “the best city in the country.” The American Dream is alive and well in his community, he says. “I come from a blue-collar immigrant experience, and I found success and acceptance in Long Beach. There are lots of people here like that—you could be from any background, any place, and succeed in this city.” Garcia intends to take Long Beach out of the shadow of Los Angeles by attracting innovative companies, growing tourism and cleaning up the environment.

He wants the rest of the country to know that Long Beach is a big city (as the 36th-largest city in the country, it has a bigger population than Miami, Minneapolis or Atlanta) and that its seaport, when combined with the Port of Los Angeles, makes the largest port complex in the country. Together they take in 40 percent of all goods shipped to the U.S. What Garcia appreciates most about Long Beach is its sense of community. Every neighborhood has its own association, and they’re strong and organized. “People look out for their neighbors here,” he says. “It’s one of the most welcoming, progressive, thoughtful places anywhere.” LILI WEIGERT

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B I R T H S Erica (Hurtado) Lara ’02 (LAS) and Eric Lara PhD ’11 (EDU), a daughter, Ophelia Lara. M A R R I A G E S Lauren Perez ’11 (LAS) and Jonathan Gilde ’14 (LAS). I N

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Gordon S. Marshall, 95

Gordon S. Marshall ’46 (BUS) of Pasadena, California, died June 2 at age 95. A longtime USC Trustee, Marshall was the founder and retired chairman of electronics giant Marshall Industries and namesake of the USC Marshall School of Business. Marshall grew up in South Pasadena and served as a B-24 bomber pilot during World War II. After completing his service, he enrolled at USC and graduated with a degree in accounting from what was then USC’s College of Commerce in 1946. Starting from his days as a teenage ham radio operator, Marshall had a passion for electronics. He founded Marshall Industries in 1953. The company, based in El Monte, was listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1959 and grew to become one of the largest U.S. distributors of industrial electronic components. In 1999, the company was purchased by Avnet Inc. in a multimillion-dollar deal. Marshall maintained strong ties to his alma mater. He was elected to the USC Board of Trustees in 1968, was secretary of

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the board from 1970 to 1984, and served as chair of several committees. As a committed Trojan, he seemingly never missed a USC football game. At USC Marshall, he was active in the Distribution Management Program, lectured in several courses and served as executive-in-residence. He was recognized with the school’s Alumni Award for Business Excellence in 1994. In 1996, his gift of $35 million—at that time the secondlargest gift in USC’s history—named the business school. In addition to USC Marshall, his name is attached to the Gordon S. Marshall Chair in Engineering, the Gordon S. Marshall Early Career Chair and the Gordon S. Marshall Professorship in Engineering Technology. He was also a founder of the Los Angeles Music Center. Marshall received the USC Alumni Association’s highest honor, the Asa V. Call Alumni Achievement Award, in 2005. He was preceded in death by his wife, and is survived by his daughters Alison, Karen and Valerie. Arthur L. Alarcon ’49 (LAS), ’51 (LAW) of Pacific Palisades, California; Jan. 28, at the age of 89. John Kehrli Cherry ’50 (LAS), MD ’54 (MED) of Encinitas, California; Feb. 10, at the age of 87. James W. Ryel MD ’50 (MED) of Surprise, Arizona; Nov. 17, 2014, at the age of 90. Berry D. Locke ’53 (LAW) of Los Angeles; April 26, at the age of 87. John R. Martenson ’54, MS ’63 (ENG) of Glendora, California; March 28, at the age of 89. Robert Glen Bezzant MS ’59 (ENG) of Orem, Utah; May 14, at the age of 88. Ken P. Kuntz ’61 (BUS) of Las Vegas; Dec. 28, 2014, at the age of 75.

Jane Hoffman Popovich, 71

Jane Hoffman Popovich ’65 (BUS), a USC Trustee and namesake of Jane Hoffman and J. Kristoffer Popovich Hall, died of

cancer Aug. 4 in Los Angeles. She was 71. A native of San Marino, California, Popovich was a tireless volunteer at USC and generous benefactor of the university. With her bachelor’s degree in business from the USC Marshall School of Business, she leveraged her passion for the fashion industry into a 20-year career operating retail stores and a catalog company with her three daughters. Her parents, H. Leslie and Elaine S. Hoffman, were key supporters of the university, and she advanced their legacy. She and her husband, Kris ’65, MBA ’70 (BUS), and their daughters steered the Hoffman Foundation, which supported programs in business and medicine. Over the years, Jane and Kris Popovich backed cancer research at USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, scholarships and centers of learning at USC Marshall, and other efforts. Her longtime dedication to USC was recognized in 1997, when she received the Alumni Merit Award from the USC Alumni Association, and again in 2006 when her career longevity and philanthropy were recognized with the USC Marshall Phoenix Award. One of 55 founding members of the USC Associates, she served as its president, as well as serving on the USC Marshall Board of Leaders and the board of Women of Troy. Her involvement extended to Town & Gown and its Junior Auxiliary, and to membership on the USC Associates’ San Gabriel Valley Steering Committee. She is survived by her husband, Kris; three daughters and sons-in-law—Kimberly and Robert Shepherd, Tricia and Michael Fink and Jennifer ’96 (LAS) and Christopher Allen MBA ’09 (BUS)—and eight grandchildren. autumn 2015

POPOVICH PHOTO COURTESY OF USC UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES

family class notes

A L U M N I

P R O F I L E

Performance of a Lifetime

PHOTO BY TODD ROSENBERG PHOTOGRAPHY 2014

A USC Marshall alumna takes the stage as one of the most prominent and powerful advocates for the arts. “A life-changing experience.” That’s how Deborah Rutter MBA ’85 describes the first time she heard—and played— Beethoven’s “Pastoral Symphony” from the middle of the violin section as a young orchestra member. Today, Rutter has long since swapped her seat in the orchestra for one behind the scenes. She serves as the third president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, where she ensures that life-changing performances happen nightly at one of the world’s famed performing arts centers. She joined the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., in 2014 after 11 years as president of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. In

tfm.usc.edu

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Chicago, she established the Institute for Learning, Access and Training (now called Negaunee Music Institute at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra) with Yo-Yo Ma as creative consultant and landed Italian conductor Riccardo Muti as music director. She’s come a long way since her start as that young violinist from the San Fernando Valley. Raised in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Encino, Rutter headed to Stanford University for her undergraduate degree largely because of its music program and the richness of the Bay Area’s musical offerings. She speaks fondly of “the physical joy, the personal sense of reward” of playing in an orchestra, though becoming a professional musician was never her plan. She got her break from Ernest Fleischmann, late head of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, who hired her. She eventually rose to orchestra manager, but she “didn’t know how to do the business part of it,” and en-

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rolled in USC’s part-time MBA program. “I was sort of a curiosity in that crowd,” she recalls about her classes, where she was among the few women. But she learned from others, calling the perspectives of her fellow students—mostly bankers and engineers—“hugely important.” Combining work with school meant that she had to “drive like crazy down the 101 Freeway,” then race back to Hollywood for 8 p.m. concerts, she remembers. Rutter went on to lead the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, then the Seattle Symphony. In Seattle, she oversaw the construction of Benaroya Hall, a performing arts space in a struggling downtown area. She calls it “the right building in the right place,” and today the hall and its neighborhood thrive. Similar instincts lie behind the Kennedy Center’s current expansion, which involves new pavilions and a pedestrian bridge over the Potomac River.

The center’s programming is ambitious too. Events next season range from a celebration of skateboarding’s connection to art, movement, music and improvisation to Wagner’s epic “Ring Cycle.” Diverse events are key to keeping performing arts relevant as society changes, says Rutter, who is committed to reflecting the interests of audiences of the future. At the same time, she’s rooted in tradition. She’ll never stop striving for those magic moments central to performing arts for centuries—when each audience member “either participates in or observes the art as it’s being created”—to inspire lifechanging experiences for a new generation. RICHARD SELDEN

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PRINT PHOTO BY ARTHUR EVANS; KENT PHOTO COURTESY OF THE CORITA ART CENTER, LOS ANGELES

Acts of Faith

If you’re of a certain age, you probably remember the colorful LOVE postage stamps ubiquitous on mail in the 1980s. They featured one of the many designs from Corita Kent MA ’51, a pop-inspired artist and contemporary of Andy Warhol who grew up in Los Angeles and studied art history at USC. A Catholic nun in the Order of the Immaculate Heart of Mary from 1936 to 1968, Kent made a name for herself both as an art educator and social activist. Kent used her vivid screen prints to pose philosophical questions about racism, poverty, religion and war, calling for peace in the conflict in Vietnam. See the late designer’s work at “Someday is Now: The Art of Corita Kent,” a retrospective at the Pasadena Museum of California Art (pmcaonline.org), through Nov. 1. The show includes pieces like “E eye love,” above (photo courtesy of the Tang Museum at Skidmore College).

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autumn 2015

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

Shalin Shah, 22

SHAH PHOTO COURTESY OF FRANCES SHAH; HENDERSON PHOTO COURTESY OF VAN URFALIAN

Shalin Shah ’13 (BUS) of Placentia, California, died on May 16. His short life was one spent in service of others. He was a chapter president for UNICEF during his last two years at USC, raising funds for the children’s charity. After graduation, he went to Peru to volunteer with the Peace Corps. It was there that he developed a severe cough, which led to his diagnosis of synovial sarcoma, a rare, aggressive cancer. He died nine months later. He spent the final few months living his life to the fullest. He married his high school sweetheart, Frances Chen, and began the #SunsetsForShalin Facebook campaign to encourage people to take time to watch a sunset. “Had terminal cancer not happened to me, I would not have been able to inspire my closest friends and family to appreciate the beautiful gift of life a little more,” he said. “This is the purpose I had been searching for—to inspire positive personal change in as many people as possible.”

The #SunsetsForShalin campaign encourages people to post inspirational advice and pictures of sunsets. Photos continue to come in from all over the world. He passed away peacefully surrounded by his parents, wife and close family as they all gathered to talk about how he had influenced their lives. He took his last breath just as his father finished speaking and the sun began to set. A memorial fund in his name has been established at peacecorps.gov/shah to support clean drinking water and sanitation projects in Peru. Ann Shaw MSW ’68 (SSW) of Los Angeles; May 5, at the age of 93. tfm.usc.edu

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

the campus, for his pioneering research and exceptional legacy in the field of medicine. He is survived by his wife, Judith, his children Sean O’Brien Henderson ’82, MD ’89, Maire Henderson Mullaly ’84, Sarah Cathleen Henderson, Brian John Henderson and Michael Clement Henderson, and 11 grandchildren. Samuel Hurst of Montecito, California; April 10, at the age of 94.

Brian E. Henderson, 77

Brian E. Henderson, former dean of the Keck School of Medicine of USC and leader of some of USC’s most prominent medical research centers, died of lung cancer June 20 in San Marino, California. Henderson, a Distinguished Professor, held the Kenneth T. Norris Jr. Chair in Cancer Prevention and was the founding chair of the Keck School’s nationally ranked Department of Preventive Medicine. He also served as the first director of the Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute and was director of USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center when it opened in 1983. He began his career in medicine as a researcher in virology. As a young scientist, he ventured to Africa with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to study yellow fever. He was a member of the U.S. Delegation on Hemorrhagic Fevers to the Soviet Union in 1969 and was in the first official U.S. scientific delegation to China. Henderson joined the Keck School of Medicine as an associate professor of pathology. When the Nixon administration declared its famous War on Cancer in 1971, Henderson helped lead the charge against that disease, thanks to a newly changed research focus. He became widely recognized as one of the world’s preeminent authorities on cancer epidemiology, investigating rates and patterns of cancer incidence to seek factors that raise or lower risk for the disease. He also studied the interplay between environmental and genetic contributors to the disease. Among his most cited works were studies on the importance of reproductive hormones to diseases such as breast cancer, as well as diet’s role in reducing cancer risk. In 1999, he was presented with the Presidential Medallion, USC’s highest honor for those who have brought distinction to

David M. Leach of Big Bear, California; Jan. 4, at the age of 77. L E G E N D

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.

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• Each professional is screened against state governing bodies to verify that licenses are current, and no disciplinary actions are pending. • The inclusion of a real estate agent, mortgage professional or insurance professional on the final lists should not be construed as an endorsement by Five Star Professional, USC Trojan Family Magazine, Los Angeles magazine or Orange Coast magazine. • The research process incorporates a statistically valid sample in order to identify the professionals in the local market who score highest in overall satisfaction. These professionals are not included on the list unless their score is statistically valid. For more information on the Five Star award and the research/selection methodology, go to www.fivestarprofessional.com.

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Let My Experience Work for You!

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

Fannie Randle is like a second mom to members of Gamma Phi Beta.

Dear Readers,

Being part of the USC community is a life-changing experience, and one I know most alumni wouldn’t trade for anything in the world. Who but a fellow Trojan could understand what it means to sit on the grass with your “pod” during Welcome Week or run through Pardee Plaza with your friends after finals? By the time you walk down Trousdale Parkway as a graduate, it’s not just a university you’re leaving. It’s home. In our Spring 2015 issue of USC Trojan Family Magazine and on Facebook, I asked for your advice to incoming Trojans who are experiencing life at USC for the first time. Here’s your advice for making the most of life as a USC student:

Visit each of your professors during office hours and talk to them one on one. They want to hear from you and get to know you. This established comfort with them will give you confidence for the rest of your course with them. They are smart, nice and interested in your experience in their classroom. A L E X I S L I N D QU I ST ’08 Well my advice is going to sound very strange in comparison ... have fun! You only go to USC once ... make memories. B REN D A B L A ZO W S K I ’97

usc trojan family

Dear Readers,

All this talk about what makes the Trojan experience so memorable reminds me of an inspiring video I recently watched featuring some USC students. Gamma Phi Beta members surprised their beloved housekeeper—who had been the sorority’s “second mom” in their house on The Row for 24 years—with a check for a new car. Fannie Randle received $21,000 to replace her duct-taped Suzuki hatchback, and it was all documented on a video that went viral. If you haven’t seen it, get a tissue ready. (You can check it out at bit.ly/ USCSororityGift). My favorite part of the story is that Gamma Phi Beta President Alicia Jewell ’15 originally figured that the 200 current sorority members could raise enough money for a down payment on a car for Randle. Then she remembered that she had 24 years’ worth of sorority alumnae who also might want to help. On her GoFundMe page, Jewell wrote that Randle “has been a constant source of love, inspiration and support” during her time at USC. That echoed across two de-

cades of sisters. In less than a month, Jewell raised 10 times what she had hoped for. Nearly 300 people who remembered and loved Randle jumped in. Randle’s story says so much about the bonds forged at USC. And best of all, I know that it isn’t an anomaly. There are countless stories of unsung heroes who have made a huge difference in the student lives of Trojans.

Here’s your chance

to share those stories. Do you have a memory about an unsung hero who made your life as a student special? Maybe it was the owner of your favorite taco joint who always knew your order, the cook who always knew when you needed a sandwich or the shuttle driver who greeted you like a friend every morning. Send a picture to magazines@usc.edu or tell us how someone in the USC community became part of your life (or your favorite student’s life) here and why they deserve special thanks. I’ll share some of my favorites in a future issue. autumn 2015

VIDEO CAPTURE COURTESY OF USC ANNENBERG TV NEWS

Be confident even when you don’t feel confident. You will encounter amazing Trojans every day who will seem larger than life. Just remember you are amazing also, or you would not be here. Decide on your major right away and stick with it. Join a club or association related to your major your first semester. Stay connected to everyone you meet. If you are using student loans, be practical: Make sure your field will allow you to pay them back comfortably. Work your butt off and fight on! R YA N W A L M S L E Y ’08

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