With today’s Ambassadors mailing, I want to share a copy of my annual address to USC’s faculty. It covers an array of important and timely topics, and will give you a strong sense of USC’s most recent successes, as well as the tremendous opportunities before us. I hope you enjoy it.
There is one subject I’d like to discuss in greater detail here: USC’s remarkable students. Throughout the academic year, I host monthly teas for our students, and I am repeatedly amazed by their extraordinary creativity and intellectual curiosity. They engage the world with such passion!
I feel so fortunate to meet these students in person, and to hear firsthand about their experiences at USC. Each tea includes fewer than 20 students, so I really have an opportunity to hear about their classes, their extracurricular activities, and their plans for the future. Their energy and optimism—their sheer dedication to life—inspire me.
But I should add that I’m not in the least bit surprised. The Admissions team keeps me apprised of the metrics, and our students represent a formidable group of scholars and artists. This past year, 38,000 applicants vied for some 2,600 spots in our freshman class! And for the class arriving this fall, we have already received 45,400 applications, marking a 20 percent increase over a year ago—the largest number we’ve ever had in our history. This intense interest in USC allows us to build the most broadly talented undergraduate population in the world.
This may surprise you: USC’s freshman class contains nearly three times as many Caltech-caliber students as Caltech itself. After all, Caltech has approximately 200 students with almost perfect GPAs and SAT scores, while USC has 550 students of exactly the same quality. Additionally, USC’s freshman class includes more top students in the creative and performing arts than at the world’s leading conservatories and professional schools.
This translates to a vibrant mix of students, and to ensure that we actually bring them to our campuses, we offer the nation’s largest pool of financial aid, annually using $235 million of our own money to recruit quality and diversity. More than 60 percent of our students receive financial aid. Today, 14 percent of our incoming freshmen represent the first generation in their families to attain the dream of a college education, and a remarkable 21 percent of our freshmen are underrepresented minorities. SCions represent 20 percent of the class, while international students comprise 15 percent.
These successes have come from a proactive and aggressive approach to high school recruiting. In 2004, USC representatives personally visited 380 high schools per year. Today, we visit more than 2,000 schools! We have a truly national and international recruiting strategy, designed to bring in top students from all 50 states, as well as students from across the Pacific Rim and India. As another reflection of our success, USC’s graduation rates have risen to 90 percent, on a six-year basis. And each year, we see additional improvement. The metrics become increasingly impressive!
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While we take great pride in these numbers, we take even greater pride in the students themselves. This year, I’ve been so pleased to get to know Will Riley, a freshman from Chicago, Illinois. Will was accepted at USC as a Trustee Scholar, but he initially elected to attend Yale University. However, after carefully considering his educational goals, he discovered that USC afforded him more intellectual freedom, as well as the curricular programming he sought. At USC, he could more easily pursue all the fields in which he was interested, so he got in touch with our admissions office and asked if his spot was still available. Will is now a proud member of USC’s Class of 2015—and is absolutely thriving. In fact, he is double majoring in Spanish and philosophy, politics, and law, and is involved in a number of activities, including Annenberg TV News, the Joint Educational Project, Spanish Undergraduate Students Association, and Adventure LEAD.
Will represents the caliber of exceptionally talented students I meet at my monthly teas, as well as those students we honor each year at Academic Honors Convocation. This always proves to be a moving, even awe-inspiring, evening, and I want to tell you about four of the undergraduates who will be recognized this year, as they amply reflect the breadth of talent and intellect at USC. They are members of Phi Beta Kappa and Phi Kappa Phi—two of USC’s oldest and most prestigious honor societies—and show singular dedication to their diverse pursuits.
Jason Kehe, who will receive the Phi Beta Kappa undergraduate award, has excelled in a unique range of activities. A USC Trustee Scholar and Thematic Option student, he is majoring in print and digital journalism at our Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, while also completing minors in neuroscience and cinematic arts.
In addition to his many successes at USC, Jason has already distinguished himself as a talented journalist, editor, and critic. He has contributed to Los Angeles magazine and The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. As a freelancer for the Los Angeles Times, he has written event profiles, theater features, and artist spotlights for the Calendar section, having already earned 15 bylines, including a front-page feature. At USC, Jason has worked as senior arts editor for Neon Tommy and as arts critic for the Daily Trojan.
Also receiving this award from Phi Beta Kappa, Lauren Yu-Lien Maldonado is double majoring in biological sciences and art history at our Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, having already earned admission to USC’s Baccalaureate/M.D. program, as well as Thematic Option. She works as a supplemental instruction leader for General Biology, for which she attends lectures and leads study groups. She has also served as lead research assistant in publishing an educational database on Veronica Franco, a sixteenth-century Venetian poet and courtesan. Lauren speaks Spanish, Italian, Mandarin Chinese, and Taiwanese.
A USC Presidential Scholar, Lauren has volunteered at LAC+USC Medical Center, and last year, participated in a USC Dornsife Problems Without Passports course, through which she studied global health topics at Oxford University. Additionally, while studying abroad in Florence, she co-founded Send-A-Smile, an organization that sends homemade cards in English and Italian to hospitalized children. At USC, Lauren serves as director of special programs in art and science for USC Troy Camp, and as outdoors guide and co-director of community service for SC Outfitters.
Meanwhile, in addition to two graduate students, Ioana Literat and Kelly Young-Wolff, Phi Kappa Phi has selected Kelly Paul to receive one of its student recognition awards. Kelly is earning her bachelor of fine arts at our School of Theatre, and served as the scenic designer for plays produced in the 2011 New Works Festival, which showcases plays by USC’s M.F.A. playwrights. Kelly designed the sets for all three plays featured in last year’s festival—The Bearded Girl, The Quiet of the Storm, and Wind River, creating architectural blueprints and sketches to achieve her highly creative vision. Through an economical use of objects and colors, she produced spare, evocative designs that were more than mere backdrops to the dramatic action: they coordinated with the actors and costumes to form an integrated whole on stage.
Kelly has designed sets for other USC School of Theatre productions, including Les Liaisons Dangereuses and Vieux Carré. She also works 10 hours a week in the School of Theatre’s scene shop, where she assists in building and painting sets. Outside USC, she has worked on television shows, serving as an intern in the art department for Deal or No Deal and America’s Got Talent. To enhance her skills as an artist, she draws, watches classic cinema, and reads Russian literature. In 2006, Kelly received the governor’s California Art Scholar Award, the state’s highest recognition for a student in the arts.
Brendan Ryan, who is pursuing his bachelor’s in performance (flute) at our Thornton School of Music, is also receiving a student recognition award from Phi Kappa Phi. Brendan co-founded the Flutes of Troy, a group that performs selections from classical compositions for young students in order to develop their musical awareness. He and his collaborators created two different programs, Music and the Movies and Music and Sports, the latter winning first prize in the 2010 Thornton Outreach Chamber Ensemble Competition. The ensemble performed an arrangement of Mozart for four flutes on Classical KUSC.
Last fall, Brendan played principal flute in the Thornton School’s production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute. He was a fellow at the Yale School of Music’s Norfolk Chamber Music Festival in Norfolk, Connecticut last summer, and has an abiding passion for theater.
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These five students—and their Trojan peers who pass them on McCarthy Quad, sit next to them at Tutor Campus Center, and study for exams alongside them at Leavey Library—remind me of the importance of USC’s mission. We are building the future generations of society. We’re nurturing educated and thoughtful citizens, all of whom will contribute their skills and talents to the world. This brings such clarity to the work we do every single day.
As president, I spend a great deal of my time fundraising. And as we advance our ambitious campaign, I take special pride in the gifts USC receives that directly support students. Last year, Julie and John Mork donated $110 million to support undergraduate student scholarships at the university, thereby creating the USC Mork Family Scholars Program. Thanks to their generosity, we welcomed the first group of Mork Scholars to our campuses last fall, and we look forward to watching this program grow. I believe the Mork family inspired others to support student scholarships, as we’ve seen significant momentum in this area of fundraising.
The Harman Family Foundation recently donated $10 million to name the USC Sidney Harman Academy for Polymathic Study. Jane Harman is one of USC’s illustrious trustees, and this gift honors the legacy and vision of her late husband, Sidney Harman. It provides funding in perpetuity to promote critical and integrative thinking, the study of the great polymaths, and persuasive communication among students and scholars.
Also this month, our esteemed trustee William Schoen and his wife, Sharon, pledged $10 million to support scholarships for USC’s military veteran students. This gift augments the Schoen Family Scholarship Program for Veterans Endowment, adding to an earlier endowment of $6 million. This brings the Schoens’ total giving to $16 million, and we honored their longstanding dedication to USC at our annual Veterans Appreciation Dinner earlier this week.
Finally, the Stamps Family Charitable Foundation recently donated $3.8 million to create a new class of scholars at the university, and these students will have the same standing as the Trustee, Presidential, and Mork scholars. The Penelope W. and E. Roe Stamps IV Leadership Scholars will also receive a discretionary fund for study abroad, unpaid internships, summer research, or other learning opportunities. This gift means that USC will offer 40 additional full-tuition scholarships to undergraduates, bringing the total number of fully funded undergraduates to more than 180 annually, or a record 6 percent of each entering class! This landmark seems all the more meaningful as we celebrate the accomplishments of students as stellar as Will, Jason, Lauren, Kelly, and Brendan.
Before closing, I want to share an op-ed I wrote for CNN.com, “You Can’t Export American Universities.” It complements a number of points I cover in my faculty address. I also want to remind you that USC will again host the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books on April 21-22 on our University Park Campus. This is always a very special event, filled with thought-provoking speakers, lively events, and interesting booths. We very much hope you are able to join us that weekend—and that you bring your friends and family. We’re always pleased to welcome new people to our campuses, and to give them a taste of the Trojan spirit. Thank you again for serving as an Ambassador for USC.
Yours truly,
C. L. Max Nikias
President