With today’s Ambassadors mailing, I’m delighted to share some successes USC has recently celebrated, both at home and abroad. At the height of this year’s Piatigorsky International Cello Festival, which included recitals, orchestral concerts, and master classes, The Wall Street Journal ran a wonderful piece, and I’m so pleased to share it with you today. Professor Ralph Kirshbaum, who holds the Gregor Piatigorsky Chair in Cello at our Thornton School of Music, spearheaded this vibrant festival, along with the school’s dean, Robert Cutietta. Together, they have created a treasure for our city, one that benefits and inspires so many artists, while significantly enriching our cultural landscape. In just a few short years, it already draws international acclaim.
While this piece speaks to USC’s contributions on the global stage, the second piece emphasizes the unique impact that the university community has right here in our local community. It profiles the work of Professor Thomas Lyon of our Gould School of Law, who works with children in custodial, abuse, and criminal cases, and appeared on the front page of the Los Angeles Times. I believe it captures the exceptional integrity, compassion, and intellect he brings to his work, and I enclose it here with a significant measure of pride.
Also with this mailing, I want to share some exciting news: for the third straight year, USC ranks as the top school in the nation for studying video game design. This is an important and impressive achievement, and underscores the broad scope of our academic programming. Indeed, USC stands as a leader in diverse areas—from video gaming to music to law—and taken together, the attached pieces remind us of our community’s singular potential to touch, and to improve, the lives of others.
Finally, I want to share an insert that chronicles the USC delegation’s trip to Israel, which took us to four leading universities and research institutes: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Tel Aviv University, and the Weizmann Institute of Science. We also visited Yad Vashem, the Jewish people’s living memorial to the Holocaust, and met privately with Shimon Peres, the president of Israel.
This trip, of course, is an excellent example of USC reaching out to the world—but it’s only one example. Last fall, I wrote to you about our enormously popular and productive global conference in Hong Kong. This proved so successful that we’ve added a mini-conference in London, to be held October 8-9, with the Right Honorable Jack Straw as our keynote speaker. This will precede our 2013 Global Conference, scheduled for Seoul, South Korea, and will build on more than a decade of well-attended conferences, in cities ranging from Tokyo to Taipei.
These conferences complement a number of international endeavors throughout the year. For example, last December, a delegation of USC deans visited Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, Brazil. These deans came from schools across USC, and as a group, sought to build ties with prominent universities, corporations, and policy makers in Brazil, as well as the university’s many alumni in that country. They reported enormous success!
I hope you enjoy the four enclosures, and send you my sincere appreciation for your service as a USC Ambassador.
Yours truly,
C. L. Max Nikias
President