May 31, 2016
This year’s commencement was absolutely glorious, as USC conferred degrees on nearly 17,000 graduates—an extraordinary group of passionate, curious, and dedicated Trojans. Niki and I would like to extend our heartfelt congratulations to all of our graduates, their families, and the countless teachers and mentors who supported their academic journey to this achievement. We hope our newest alumni return often to their alma mater in the coming years and decades. To them, we say: Fight On!
In addition to these degrees, USC awarded honorary doctorates to six exceptionally accomplished individuals. Among them was Larry Ellison—the internationally renowned entrepreneur, philanthropist, and sportsman who built the Oracle Corporation. Mr. Ellison delivered our commencement address, and just two evenings before, announced an extraordinarily generous gift of $200 million to USC. His historic gift will establish the Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine of USC. Without question, this new institute in West Los Angeles will disrupt conventional approaches to the fight against cancer. Professor David B. Agus, who has joint appointments in medicine and engineering, will lead the institute. For more details on the tremendous vision behind Mr. Ellison’s gift, and how it will benefit so many around the world, I encourage you to read the accompanying story in the Los Angeles Times.
Pulitzer Prize goes to USC professor
Last month, Professor Viet Thanh Nguyen was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, recognizing his debut novel, The Sympathizer. Among the many distinctions awarded to our nation’s greatest writers, few match the prestige of a Pulitzer Prize. For fiction, its previous recipients include William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Toni Morrison, and Edith Wharton. In The Sympathizer, Professor Nguyen—who joined the faculty of our Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences in 1997 as a newly minted Ph.D.—revisits the war in Vietnam through the eyes of a complex and conflicted narrator. Throughout his two decades at USC, Professor Nguyen has been an inspiring mentor to our students, and has received numerous teaching awards, including the Mellon Mentoring Award and the Teaching Has No Boundaries Award.
Dramatic Arts embraces the future
The new dean of our School of Dramatic Arts, David Bridel, shared his views on the future of the school with a local National Public Radio station. In the interview, Dean Bridel spoke of the importance of preparing dramatic arts students to embrace digital media and technology. “The old paradigm of train hard, get an agent, and wait for the phone to ring is long dead,” he said, explaining that dramatic arts—similar to most fields and professions—is undergoing profound change. “I’m trying to create a new version of what a school of dramatic arts might look like.” The USC School of Dramatic Arts is a unique jewel: it offers rigorous artistic training in a conservatory environment, all within the context of a major research university in the heart of the entertainment industry.
Championing the humanities
This past semester, I had the enormous pleasure of co-teaching an undergraduate course, The Culture of the Athenian Democracy, which allowed me to share my deep passion for the humanities with our students. I firmly believe the humanities are crucial to a well-rounded education, and—although USC students continue to pursue humanities majors at a steady rate—we must ardently champion the value of a humanistic education, which will help our graduates navigate an increasingly complex and technological world with purpose and ethics. “Humanities teach you to read and to think and to self-teach, which are the most important things,” I told a reporter who visited our class one day. “I want to see if I can light a fire in the students myself.”
Supporting our nation’s veterans
General David Petraeus, who is a Judge Widney Professor at USC, and I recently co-authored an op-ed that appeared in USA Today, in which we encourage top research universities to maximize their participation (or to fully participate) in the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)’s Yellow Ribbon program. (The Yellow Ribbon program combines VA funding with aid from participating private universities to help veterans avoid some or all of the out-of-pocket tuition and fees associated with degree programs). Only eight of the top 23 private institutions maximize Yellow Ribbon benefits by offering full and unlimited scholarships to qualified veteran students—and USC is one of them. As General Petraeus and I wrote in the piece: “We all need to ensure that those who volunteered to serve our nation in a time of war have the necessary academic qualifications and a pathway to an education from the best schools America has to offer.”
Historic title for women’s beach volleyball
Earlier this month, USC’s women’s beach volleyball team made history, as it won the first-ever NCAA beach volleyball championship. Under coach Anna Collier, the top-ranked team completed the year on an outstanding 30-match winning streak, securing back-to-back national titles, as it was the defending AVCA champions of 2015. What a wonderful exclamation point on their season! In next month’s letter, I will share more of this year’s successes, including photos from commencement, as well as additional information regarding Mr. Ellison’s landmark gift. In the meantime, Niki and I hope your summer is off to a great start.
Yours truly,
C. L. Max Nikias
President