University of Southern California

Nearly 1,000 of L.A.’s most prominent business leaders, philanthropists and elected officials joined USC President C. L. Max Nikias and colleagues Tuesday for a festive gala celebrating the opening of USC Village.

“Tonight we can see the full span of USC’s extraordinary evolution from cornerstone to capstone,” Nikias told the crowd gathered in USC Village’s Central Piazza.

“And we recognize that the USC Village stands as the crowning achievement of all of our capital construction efforts, efforts that have been fueled and fulfilled

The Trojan Family grew by 3,358 when the fall semester began, and many of those incoming students are first in their families to attend college. Almost 17 percent of the class of 2021 are first-generation college students, according to the USC Office of Admission.

About two-thirds of the class are students of color. The incoming class also has the highest average test scores in USC history.

“As the numbers show, our fall freshman class is the highest achieving and the most diverse

The Foshay Learning Center has done it again. For the second year in a row, the public high school — which is less than a mile from the University Park Campus — has sent more first-year students to USC than any other high school. Foshay first took the honor last year with 19 students, and that number rose to 21 this year.

Although the students may be moving in different academic directions, their Foshay bond doesn’t break.

“We’ve been together since sixth grade,” said

TOKYO — The 2017 USC Global Conference opened at the Grand Hyatt Tokyo today with nearly 500 people at the welcome dinner to kick off the three-day event. Guests were treated to a special performance by legendary violinist Midori Goto, Distinguished Professor at the USC Thornton School of Music.

The conference runs through Saturday and features presentations and discussions among USC researchers, regional business leaders and other global executives and academic leaders.

“This is a special moment for so many of us, to

USC Professor Jacob Soll’s master work, The Reckoning: Financial Accountability and the Rise and Fall of Nations (Basic Books, 2014), cast a stark light on the financial world as national economies continued to recover from the Great Recession of a few years earlier. Now the book has been translated to Greek, and Soll presented the updated version to scholars at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in Greece.

Soll, the recipient of a MacArthur Fellows award (often called a MacArthur genius grant), was joined by USC

USC President C. L. Max Nikias and his wife, Niki C. Nikias, traveled to Scotland, where he was made an honorary Doctor of Science by the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow.

The ceremony, which recognized Nikias’ “dynamic leadership in higher education,” took place June 23 in the university’s Barony Hall.

Upon his arrival on campus, Nikias delivered a keynote lecture to faculty and university leaders on timeless leadership lessons from the classics, especially from theorist-practitioners like Xenophon. In accepting his degree the following day,