The Revival Issue

F O R A L U M N I A N D F R I E N D S O F U S C D A N A A N D D AV I D D O R N S I F E C O L L E G E O F L E T T E R S , A R T S A N D S C I E N C E S

MAGAZINE

SPRING / SUMMER 2021

The Revival Issue

ZOOMING

AHEAD

Out with the old and in with the renew.

Spirit of Revival

USC Dornsife faculty reflect on what revival means to them personally, and on the form they hope it takes after the pandemic.

“In the past year — and more — along with the many shocking deaths around us, the death of hope was often one that reverberated with clarity. Yet our losses summoned the voices of the young and of those traditionally disenfranchised, all speaking in unison with a renewed intensity and vitality, demanding that we believe — each of us — in essential change and a renewed, fiercely revitalized society.

Revival is to claim one’s rightful place in one’s own history and living culture.”

DAVID ST. JOHN, University Professor and professor of English and comparative literature

“I’ve always had a soft spot for the first few chapters of Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac. They describe those first months of the year when the landscape begins to stir after winter’s harsh stillness. The idea of revival after lengthy periods of bleakness — like Leopold’s spring — has long enchanted me. It gives me hope that the things that seemed forever lost during our coldest hours can — and will — be returned to us. The parallels to our collective experience during this pandemic aren’t lost on me.”

“In May, fully vaccinated, I finally could cross the continent by plane and visit my ailing father and my indefatigable mother. After 16 months of worried phone calls and FaceTime closing the distance between us, it is restorative to share tender touch so freely. Revival can’t take any of the journey to tenderness and touch for granted.

For intimacies to thrive, for grief to be shared, it was necessary to travel respectfully among strangers again and to rediscover what we share in common.”

NAYAN SHAH, professor of American studies and ethnicity and history

“As we start to restore the aspects of our lives that have laid dormant, I hope that we stay mindful of the thick grief blanketing so many. Those burdened by loss don’t have the luxury of just restoring what has been paused. Now they must reimagine what’s next.

I hope that we will meet each other with kindness and help one another in honoring and remembering what cannot be revived.”

EMILY SMITH-GREENAWAY, associate professor of sociology and spatial sciences

JOE ÁRVAI, Dana and David Dornsife Chair, director of the USC Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies and professor of psychology

“One thing that I have struggled with over the past year is the loss of community and common purpose.

When I have returned to campus, it has felt eerily quiet and still. As we move out of the pandemic, I eagerly await quiet labs coming to life again, the reinvigoration of intellectual exchange, noisy classrooms, and the spontaneous hallway debates.

The revival of our community.”

NAOMI LEVINE, assistant professor of biological sciences, computational biology and Earth sciences

Message from the Dean There will be hugs on move-in day and tears on graduation day. There will be lectures and workshops and lively debates. And there will be football in the Coliseum again.

“As those of us fortunate enough to be vaccinated emerge from our solitude, we ought to do more than reimagine a more just society. We must act on our cherished principles to establish a more effective safety net, provide greater access to health care, and reconstruct institutions that inspire confidence for all members of our communities. If we seize this moment, let us hope we can make the world a better place where everyone enjoys full protection of basic human rights.”

ALISON DUNDES RENTELN, professor of political science, anthropology, public policy and law

“We don’t need a post-COVID revival. ‘Revival’ suggests restoration of what used to be. We need revision, literally looking anew at the world. Surviving a global pandemic was like living in wartime. We suffered fear and loss, but we learned mutual care and common cause, despite the fractious politics that tried to divide us. Now we can identify other diseases and fight them together — the plagues of racial injustice, religious conflicts, gun culture, increasing economic stratification, climate disaster …”

LISA BITEL, Dean’s Professor of Religion and professor of religion and history

After a tumultuous year and a half, we at USC Dornsife are anticipating the return this fall to our vibrant campus environment. We will welcome one of the most talented and diverse first-year classes in our history, composed of students from across the country and around the world. A backlog of events, celebrations and applied learning experiences will present countless opportunities. And our faculty will bring their cutting-edge ideas and challenging intellectual questions back into the classroom. This will be one of the most exciting times ever to be part of the USC Dornsife community.

With so much to look forward to, we are pleased to share this issue of USC Dornsife Magazine, which explores the theme of revival and rejuvenation from multiple angles.

The pandemic has taken a tremendous toll on many Americans, but the United States seems to have reached a clear turning point. While the virus is still ravaging much of the world, in this country COVID-19 case numbers and deaths are dropping, and life is rapidly returning to some form of normal. This is due in no small part to the intellectual talent and laboratory infrastructure that is housed in our world-class research universities.

From DNA sequencing and the discovery of messenger RNA to social science research that has helped to make vaccinations available in underserved populations, our research universities have been responsible for many of the breakthroughs that have enabled COVID-19 vaccines and their delivery — and a huge fraction of the underlying scientific knowledge developed over decades that made these breakthroughs possible.

But our work is far from over. The pandemic has accentuated societal problems that have existed for decades, emphasizing the need to meet another set of challenges with similar urgency. How do we take what we’ve learned about technology to improve education, work, infrastructure and supply chains? How do we take what we have learned about inequity to build a future in which everyone has the access and opportunities to enrich their lives? How do we, as a global community, take what we have learned about international collaboration to address complex global challenges such as climate change?

With our ambitious community of faculty, students, staff, alumni and friends, USC Dornsife will use this moment of revival to see the world with fresh eyes.

Together, we will make it our goal to define better questions, forge stronger collaborations, and leverage the resilience we’ve gained during the past year to pursue the most creative solutions to pressing challenges.

AMBER D. MILLER Dean, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences Anna H. Bing Dean’s Chair

Spring / Summer 2021 | 1

COVER STORY

SENIOR ASSOCIATE DEAN FOR STRATEGIC INITIATIVES AND COMMUNICATION

Lance Ignon

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Susan Bell

ART DIRECTOR / PRODUCTION MANAGER

Letty Avila

WRITERS AND EDITORS

Michelle Boston Margaret Crable Darrin S. Joy Jim Key Stephen Koenig Meredith McGroarty DESIGNER

Dennis Lan VIDEOGRAPHER AND PHOTOGRAPHER

Mike Glier

SENIOR WEB SPECIALIST

Michael Liu

COMMUNICATIONS ASSISTANT

Deann Webb

CONTRIBUTORS Maddy Davis, Crisann Begley-Smith, Greg Hardesty, Eric Lindberg, Abigail McCann, Marc Merhej, Gary Polakovic, Yannis Yortsos USC DORNSIFE ADMINISTRATION Amber D. Miller, Dean • Jan Amend, Divisional Dean for the Life Sciences • Emily Hodgson Anderson, College Dean of Undergraduate Education • Stephen Bradforth, Divisional Dean for the Physical Sciences and Mathematics • Steven Finkel, College Dean of Graduate and Professional Education • Kimberly Freeman, Associate Dean, Chief Diversity Officer • Lance Ignon, Senior Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives and Communication • Peter Mancall, Divisional Dean for the Social Sciences • Renee Perez, Vice Dean, Administration and Finance • Eddie Sartin, Senior Associate Dean for Advancement • Sherry Velasco, Divisional Dean for the Humanities

USC DORNSIFE MAGAZINE Published twice a year by USC Dornsife Office of Communication at the University of Southern California. © 2021 USC Dornsife College.

The diverse opinions expressed in USC Dornsife Magazine do not necessarily represent the views of the editors, USC Dornsife administration or USC. USC Dornsife Magazine welcomes comments from its readers to magazine@dornsife.usc.edu or USC Dornsife Magazine, SCT-2400, Los Angeles, CA 90089.

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A hundred years ago, renowned French sociologist Émile Durkheim wrote about the phenomenon of “collective effervescence” — his term for the joy we derive from the shared experience of participating face-to-face with others.

Since the pandemic forced us into lockdown last year, we have lamented those cherished moments that invigorate us, lending vibrant color and a vital sense of belonging to our lives.

However much of a lifeline technology has been for many of us during this immensely challenging period, it has proved to be incapable of replicating the communal joy that we experience at sports events, at live concerts, or simply sitting, as actor Frances McDormand put it in her Oscar acceptance speech, “shoulder-to-shoulder” at the cinema.

As humans, we are creatures of togetherness, hardwired to connect. History teaches us that, as soon as we feel safe again, we will make the effort to do just that.

Will we also come roaring back, packing restaurants, nightclubs and bars — just as our forebears did in the 1920s following the ravages of the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 to ’20? Historians and economists say it is very possible that we will.

In this issue of USC Dornsife Magazine, we explore the idea of “Revival” from many different angles. We look at the way forward and delve into the psychological effects of the pandemic on our families and ourselves. We shine a spotlight on the economy and in particular how the $1.7 trillion saved by Americans during the pandemic are likely to fuel a spending spree. We find hope as our environmental scholars outline their solutions for rapidly enacting positive change during the escalating climate crisis; humor in the history of snake oil salesmen and their scurrilous promises of revival; and comfort in the insights of a courageous alumna who overcame a lifetime of crippling shyness to become USC’s director of belonging.

As the vaccine rollout in the United States causes the number of COVID-19 cases to drop dramatically, we are gradually reemerging into the world.

Are we heading back to our old lifestyles?

Experts counsel us to recognize the mistake of believing that the future will look exactly like the past. It never does. But, while our lives may be different, we have been given a moonshot moment to learn from our experience of the last 16 months and correct our course to forge a better, more equitable tomorrow — not just for ourselves, but for those who follow in our footsteps. —S.B. COVER ILLUSTRATION BY ASIA PIETRZYK

RY T H M E J O I E D E V I V R E BY R O B E R T D E L A U N AY

USC DORNSIFE BOARD OF COUNCILORS Kathy Leventhal, Chair • Wendy Abrams • Robert Alvarado • Robert D. Beyer • David Bohnett • Jon Brayshaw • Ramona Cappello • Alan Colowick • Richard S. Flores • Shane Foley • Vab Goel • Lisa Goldman • Jana Waring Greer • Pierre Habis • Yossie Hollander • Janice Bryant Howroyd • Martin Irani • Dan James • Suzanne Nora Johnson • Bettina Kallins • Yoon Kim • Samuel King • Jaime Lee • Arthur Lev • Roger Lynch • Robert Osher • Gerald Papazian • Andrew Perlman • Lawrence Piro • Edoardo Ponti • Kelly Porter • Michael Reilly • Carole Shammas • Rajeev Tandon

Our Lives in Color Again

Contents

SPRING / SUMMER 2021 SPIRIT OF REVIVAL USC Dornsife faculty reflect on what revival means to them personally and the form they hope it takes after the pandemic.

4 FROM THE HEART OF USC Mars Rover Perseverance; Seaweed power; New USC Dornsife center explores impact of innovation; Sugar early could mean poor memory later; From Pump to Plug; Bus poet.

5

Curriculum

6 Profile

9 Lexicon

12 Academy

in the Public Square

14 Our

World 38 Legacy

39 DORNSIFE FAMILY Scott Fraser elected to National Academy of Medicine; Alumna fights COVID-19 on three fronts.

39 Faculty

News

41 Alumni

News

40 Faculty The shift to online learning during the pandemic enabled biological sciences major Gabriella Schultze to balance her studies with a ballet career, bringing grace and beauty to a bleak landscape.

THE REVIVAL ISSUE

16 From Survival to Revival: Mapping the Road to a Better Future

The COVID-19 pandemic upended lives around the world. Where do we go from here? By Meredith McGroarty

22 All I Need Is a Miracle

History teaches us that in times of crisis, our desire for easy solutions makes us vulnerable to charlatans — but beware, their seductive quick fixes will not lead us to a lasting and genuine revival. By Stephen Koenig

26 Notes on a Post-Pandemic Economic Revival

Americans saved an extra $1.7 trillion during the pandemic. Experts predict the economy is about to get a jolt of consumer spending. By Lance Ignon

PHOTO BY JASON L AVENGOOD

30 The Shy Alumna

Cat Moore ’05 long suffered crippling loneliness until she cracked the secret of creating relationships. As USC’s director of belonging, she now helps students do the same. By Susan Bell

34 Clearing the Air

As the climate crisis escalates, USC Dornsife experts are studying ways to quickly enact positive change and find a path to greener days. By Darrin S. Joy

42 Alumni

Canon Canon

43 Remembering

44 TROJAN COMMUNITY Colossal achievement: Classes of 2020 and 2021 celebrate commencement at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum — for the first time since 1950.

CONNECT WITH USC DORNSIFE Facebook.com/USCDornsife Instagram.com/USCDornsife Twitter.com/USCDornsife LinkedIn.com/school/USCDornsife YouTube.com/USCDornsife

dornsife.usc.edu/magazine Spring / Summer 2021 | 3

FROM THE HE ART OF USC Viewpoint EXPERT OPINIONS

“We’re going to be faced with two sets of habits: pre-pandemic and during the pandemic. And we’ll have to choose which to repeat.”

WENDY WOOD, Provost Professor of Psychology and Business, in an April 5 Washington Post article on how to establish and maintain healthy habits.

“What is striking to me is that there are just so many communities who have been marginalized and underrepresented or demonized in Hollywood, and just how meaningful it is for various communities when you see yourself finally represented.”

Life on Mars

USC Dornsife research backs the Mars rover Perseverance’s search for signs of living organisms on the red planet. By Darrin S. Joy The Mars rover Perseverance rocketed skyward on July 30, 2020, from Florida’s Cape Canaveral, hurtled through 300 million miles of space, and triumphantly set down in Jezero Crater, just north of the red planet’s equator in the eastern hemisphere, seven months later, on Feb. 18.

The robotic explorer features a powerful system for detecting signs of microscopic life called the Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals. SHERLOC will search for subtle clues any microbes may have left behind using technology developed under the direction of USC Dornsife Professor Emeritus of Earth Sciences Kenneth Nealson.

A renowned microbiologist and astrobiologist, Nealson worked to develop a component of SHERLOC called the deep ultraviolet microscope. The instrument uses a deep UV laser, which emits a tight beam of light that’s deep in the ultraviolet end of the spectrum.

Deep UV light has a shorter wavelength, enabling it to penetrate samples — including Martian soil and rocks — while causing organic molecules to glow with fluorescence.

The effort began in 1998, shortly after Nealson became a senior scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and

an adjunct professor at Caltech. He continued work on the deep UV microscope for several years after joining USC Dornsife in 2001, working with a team that included Ph.D. student Rohit Bhartia, Jan Amend, professor of Earth sciences and biological sciences and divisioal dean for the life sciences, and Moh El-Naggar, Dean’s Professor of Physics and Astronomy and professor of physics and chemistry, as well as postdoctoral fellows and other students.

Their work showed that the microscope could be used to identify bacteria and could also be used on dry samples to distinguish many different molecules — a key necessity in the arid Martian environment.

The deep UV microscope is part of Perseverance’s robotic arm, where it is combined with other instrumentation that expands the number of chemicals the system can detect.

In what is the culmination of nearly 25 years of work on Nealson’s part, scientists deployed SHERLOC soon after the rover touched down. Should it detect possible chemical signatures of life, they can choose to bring samples back to Earth for deeper analysis.

“That is my dream,” Nealson says, “to bring back those samples.”

EVELYN ALSULTANY, associate professor of American studies and ethnicity, in an April 27 Today.com article on the importance of actor Riz Ahmed’s Oscar nomination.

MICHAEL MESSNER, professor of sociology and gender studies, in a March 24 Sports Illustrated article featuring his research on the wide disparity in television and online coverage of women’s and men’s sports.

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P H O T O BY M A R T I N H O LV E R DA

“Women’s sports continue to get short shrift, which is significant when you consider the larger picture of girls’ and women’s efforts to achieve equal opportunities, resources, pay and respect in sports.”

Curriculum

CURRICULUM PHOTO COURTESY OF WIKI COMMONS; CLEMENT S PHOTO COURTESY OF JIM CLEMENT S

WRITING ACROSS THE AISLE Instructor: Jim Clements, associate professor (teaching) of writing

Framing debate methods in terms such as “attack,”

“defending your point” and “strategy” is evidence that the goal of many debates is not to connect or grow or learn, but to win against an “opponent,” says Clements.

A more effective viewpoint, he tells students, is to consider a debate not as a battle but as a dance, with two people engaged in a delicate push and pull — not to beat each other, but to create something beautiful together.

“Your goal is not to tell the other person something you

already know; it’s to use the back-and-forth as a site of learning,” he says.

Clements was inspired to create the course after observing that his students often say they feel that nobody listens to each other and that repercussions for “saying the wrong thing” are dire.

Rather than sort opinions into categories such as “correct” or “incorrect,” his class aims to discover what belief systems are at the foundation of the positions each of us

WRIT 150

holds, and how we can listen to each other to understand those systems better, before making our moral choices.

Romano Orlando, a senior majoring in Italian and neuroscience at USC Dornsife and pursuing a concurrent master’s degree in translational biotechnology at Keck School of Medicine of USC, says that as a more conservative student, he found the class to be a refreshingly judgment-free zone.

“I never felt singled out, or that I would get a worse

grade for leaning more conservative,” he says. “It was about the content of your writing, not the leaning of your writing.” —M.M.

“L’Écoute” (“Listen”), a beloved, abstract sculpture by French artist Henri de Miller, sits in front of the Gothic church of Saint-Eustache in central Paris. The 70-ton sandstone representation of a giant head gently cupped in a hand encourages passersby to stop and listen, too.

Spring / Summer 2021 | 5

PROF ILE

Taking Farm-to-Table from Hollywood to Bollywood

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PHOTO BY RITIKA SHAH

Perceiving a gap in the market, alumna Shriya Naheta founded Zama Organics in 2016 to act as the intermediary between 50,000 small farms and thousands of eager customers across India.

FROM THE HE ART OF USC

Late spring in India brings the harvesting of karela, a knobbly, green gourd much prized in Indian cooking for its distinctive, bitter flavor.

Muskmelon, mangoes and lychees are also in season, and green peas flood the market.

These days, many of these crops are raised using largescale farming techniques and pesticides. But down rutted, dirt roads, tucked into remote corners across India, some small farmers still grow produce the old way — chemical-free, with close attention to the local ecosystem.

In more remote areas, alumna Shriya Naheta says, farmers have been practicing organic techniques for generations — even if they have never heard of the term. India’s appetite for organic products is also on the rise. According to a 2020 USDA report, India’s organic food sector is expected to reach $10.25 billion by 2025.

Despite these stunning projections, connecting producers and consumers still presents many challenges, given the inaccessibility of the farms and the farmers’ lack of opportunity to market their crops.

Naheta, who graduated from USC Dornsife in 2015 with a degree in international relations, founded Zama Organics to help fill that gap.

Her business now acts as the intermediary between 50,000 small farms and thousands of eager customers across India.

Her undergraduate years spent in the organic food haven of Southern California, where she shopped regularly at the farmers market on USC’s University Park campus, planted the first seeds of inspiration for her business.

THE FOOD GENE Naheta grew up in Mumbai, India, in a multigenerational

family of 20 in which a passion for food seemed almost an inheritable trait. Her mother, Rajkumari Naheta, turned her passion for baking into a successful catering company and Naheta’s sister, Aditi Dugar, runs the city’s Masque, listed as one of Asia’s top restaurants in The World’s 50 Best Restaurants ranking.

Naheta baked alongside her mother, tested recipes with her sister and helped in cooking classes. “I’ve known my mom’s cake recipe since I was a toddler,” says Naheta.

She was also bitten early on by the entrepreneurial bug, inspired by her mother and by her father, Sudhir Naheta, who runs an antique jewelry business.

“I was lucky to grow up in an extremely entrepreneurial and open-minded household with very supportive parents,” says Naheta. They indulged her creativity and her interest in developing business ventures that could also benefit others.

“We used to do small drives for charity, selling handmade cards or setting up a lemonade stand. I was always trying to come up with ideas,” she says.

BOLLYWOOD TO HOLLYWOOD Naheta originally attended Brandeis University in Massachusetts for her undergraduate degree but a spring break visit to her best friend, who was attending USC, changed her trajectory. The bright, bustling sprawl of Los Angeles, studded with palm trees, felt instantly familiar.

“Both Los Angeles and Mumbai are on the west coast, one is home to Bollywood and the other to Hollywood and they both have great food. These are two cities I can call home,” says Naheta. “I immediately worked on transferring to USC and it’s the best decision I ever made.”

In 2013, she arrived on campus as a junior.

Her time as a Trojan helped prepare her for running a business. She cites the course “Gender and Global Issues,” taught by Jessica Peet of international relations, as a particular inspiration.

foothills to the north and Bengalaru in the southern state of Karnataka. The experience opened Naheta’s eyes to India’s agricultural potential.

“It was amazing to see the variety of produce across India’s topography. I didn’t think that produce like high-quality

GROWING GAINS Building the business has posed challenges at times.

Transporting produce from rural parts of India, which lack reliable roads, required painstaking logistics and the recruitment of a complex network of locals to help

“(The USC Dornsife course ‘Gender and Global Issues’) taught me to think out of the box, which is one of the best skills I could have acquired as an entrepreneur.”

“It taught me to think out of the box, which is one of the best skills I could have acquired as an entrepreneur,” says Naheta. At USC Dornsife, she was also able to network with stars of the business world, such as billionaire investor Mark Cuban, whom she met when he came to campus to give a talk.

THE GOOD EARTH Soaking in California’s vibrant food scene, which celebrates fresh produce, farm­-to-table and organic food, also inspired Naheta. USC’s farmers market, which takes over McCarthy Quad each week, introduced her to the great abundance of organic fruit and vegetables that small farms are capable of producing.

After graduating from USC Dornsife, Naheta returned to India where she tagged along as her sister hunted for organic farms that could supply fruit and vegetables to her restaurant.

The duo crisscrossed the country, stopping at farms in Pune and Nashik in the state of Maharashtra in western India, Shimla in the Himalayan

romaine lettuce, arugula or kale could be grown here,” she says.

Small farmers often didn’t have the means to market their organic goods or lacked official paperwork. Seeing a need for a conduit between India’s remote organic farms and customers who were increasingly demanding farmto-table food, Naheta launched Zama Organics in 2016.

Naheta coordinates pickups of produce from her network of small farms and then sells these goods via the Zama Organics website. Her business sources tea from Assam, pineapples from Moodabidri and olives for olive oil from Rajasthan. Indigenous farmers supply morel mushrooms and salt. WhatsApp is the favored communication platform between farmers and Zama employees, a buzz of messages flying from field to office.

Naheta started with just two employees and her business has since grown to 50 workers. “Our total revenue from our first year of operations was less than our current monthly revenue,” she says. “It’s crazy to look back and see where it all started.”

facilitate deliveries. COVID-19 struck a blow as restaurants and retailers slowed down or halted orders completely.

However, for Naheta, the positives outweigh the negatives. The pandemic helped to normalize online food orders and brought in a new set of customers eager for healthy produce to boost their immune systems. And Naheta sees her sustainable business model as the fruition of her childhood dream.

“No matter what we do, we’re impacting lives,” she says.

“That’s true for the farmers we work with, our delivery drivers and packers who are mostly bluecollar or migrant workers, and the well-being of our customers.”

Eventually, Naheta hopes to bring organic Indian foods to the international market. She’s already in talks to supply products to the Middle East. “There is a definite global demand and that’s very exciting,” she says.

Organic turmeric, figs or raspberries, grown on small, family-owned farms in India and brought to market by a USC Dornsife alumna, could be coming soon to a shelf near you. —M.C. Spring / Summer 2021 | 7

FROM THE HE ART OF USC Recognition

Powered by Seaweed?

Kelp elevator study shows promise for producing biofuel from giant seaweed.

RAYMOND STEVENS Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science The world’s largest general scientific society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) elected Stevens, Provost Professor of Biological Sciences, Chemistry, Neurology, Physiology and Biophysics, a fellow.

Said Stevens: “The AAAS fellows election comes with an increased responsibility to help make the world a better place, something that I take very seriously.”

YU DENG Sloan Research Fellowship Deng, assistant professor of mathematics, has earned a Sloan Research Fellowship.

The two-year fellowship, awarded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, recognizes distinguished performance and a unique potential to make substantial contributions to the field.

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Doing Good

The COVID-19 pandemic hasn’t stopped students from making the world a better place.

Biofuels come primarily from mass-produced farm crops. But researchers at the USC Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies, headquartered at USC Dornsife, are looking to the ocean for a potentially superior biofuel crop: seaweed.

Focusing their reserearch on giant kelp, Macrocystis pyrifera, one of nature’s fastest-growing plants, the scientists report that a new aquaculture technique dramatically increases kelp growth, yielding four times more biomass than natural processes. The technique employs a contraption called the “kelp elevator,” which enhances growth by raising and lowering seaweed to different depths to optimize sunlight exposure and nutrient supply.

The team’s findings suggest it may be possible to use the open ocean to grow kelp crops for low-carbon biofuel, similar to how land is used to harvest fuel feedstocks such as corn and sugarcane — but with potentially fewer adverse environmental impacts. Ocean crops do not compete for fresh water, agricultural land or artificial fertilizers, and ocean farming does not threaten important habitats when marginal land is brought into cultivation.

However, there are some challenges. To thrive, kelp has to be anchored to a substrate and only grows in sun-soaked waters to about 60 feet deep. But in open oceans, the sunlit surface layer lacks nutrients available in deeper water.

To maximize growth in this ecosystem, the scientists had to figure out how to give kelp a foothold to hang onto, lots of sunlight and access to abundant nutrients. Would kelp effectively absorb nutrients and survive deeper below the surface?

Beginning in 2019, research divers collected wild kelp, affixed it to the kelp elevator designed and built for the study by California-based company Marine BioEnergy Inc., and then deployed it off Catalina Island, near the USC Wrigley Institute’s marine field station. For about 100 days, the elevator raises the kelp near to the surface during the day so it can soak up sunlight, then lowers

Undergraduates in “Doing Good: How to Start and Run a Successful Nonprofit Organization,” taught by Kamy Akhavan, executive director of the USC Dornsife Center for the Political Future, are putting their classwork into practice by helping the homeless, immigrants and orphaned children.

Catherine Cummings, a law, history and culture major, and her organization Water Drop LA provided thousands of gallons of clean water to homeless Angelenos. An orphanage in the Philippines recently broke ground thanks in part to the efforts of Joanna Maniti, a business administration major at the USC Marshall School of Business.

Natalia Wurst, a senior majoring in public policy and psychology, is forming the USC Immigrant and Migrant Resource Center, which will act as a resource hub for immigrants in Los Angeles County.

Akhavan teaches his students how to build a board of directors, market an organization and procure funds. Guest speakers from nonprofits around the nation share real-life experiences and tips. At the end of the semester, Akhavan had his students pitch their nonprofit idea to a slate of previous speakers.

“I’ve been to a lot of pitch presentations in my career and there are always some that are kind of duds. These students were all top-notch, and any one of them would have received funding in a real-world situation,” says Akhavan.

Wurst, Cummings and Maniti all point to Akhavan’s class as essential to moving their projects forward.

“Professor Akhavan connected me with a whole new network of people in the nonprofit sector who helped me grow Water Drop to an even bigger organization than I could have ever dreamed,” says Cummings. —M.C.

P O N P H O T O BY M IK E G L IE R; S T E V E N S P H O T O C O U R T E S Y O F A N G E L A WA L K E R; D E N G P H O T O C O U R T E S Y O F Y U D E N G; K E L P E L E VAT O R P H O T O BY DAV ID G IN S B U R G; D O IN G G O O D P H O T O C O U R T E S Y O F J OA N N A M A N I T I

LISA PON Guggenheim Fellowship Pon, professor of art history, was awarded a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. She will use the fellowship to complete her book about the Renaissance artist Raphael, a project that she says goes against the idea of an art historical monograph to examine the partners and collaborations in Raphael’s networks.

it about 260 feet at night so it can absorb nutrients in deeper water.

“Forging new pathways to make biofuel requires proving that new methods and feedstocks work. This experiment … demonstrates kelp can be managed to maximize growth,” says USC Wrigley Institute’s Diane Young Kim, adjunct assistant professor of environmental studies. —G.P.

Lexicon

P O L I T I C A L S C I E N C E A N D I N T E R N AT I O N A L R E L AT I O N S

J U S T I C E BY PIER R E S U B L E Y R A S /A R T C O L L EC T I O N/A L A M Y; D U ND E S R EN T EL N PH O T O BY PE T ER Z H AOY U Z H O U

JUS COGENS dʒ s 'ko dʒ nz / noun Peremptory norm of international law protecting human rights that may not be violated under any circumstance.

Origin: From the Latin “compelling law,” jus cogens originated under Roman law.

More recently, rules governing interpretation of these fundamental norms were codified in the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.

Usage: Ratified treaties in conflict with a peremptory norm of international law are void.

“This century jurists will probably consider recognition of new jus cogens of gender and racial equality, the right to a fair trial, access to medicine and the Internet.

“Jus cogens is a sort of super norm. In his classic essay ‘It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s Jus Cogens,’ international law expert Anthony D’Amato says, ‘If an International Oscar were awarded for the category of Best Norm, the winner by acclamation would surely be jus cogens.’ ”

Alison Dundes Renteln, professor of political science, anthropology, public policy and law, teaches international law and human rights in USC Dornsife’s Department of Political Science and International Relations and at USC Gould School of Law. Her interdisciplinary publications focus on human rights, bioethics and global health, comparative jurisprudence, sensory studies and international public policy.

Spring / Summer 2021 | 9

FROM THE HE ART OF USC Numbers LIVING IN L.A. The annual USC Dornsife-Union Bank LABarometer livability survey reveals Angelenos plan to leave Los Angeles County even as residents’ consumer confidence is rising. It also shows that while Angelenos continue to be less satisfied with their quality of life compared to all California residents and people throughout the country, they perceive there to be less crime, vandalism, and drug and alcohol use in their neighborhoods than they did in 2019.

Exploring the Impact of Innovation

Bitcoin for your thoughts? A new center at USC Dornsife aims to help us understand the social, economic, political and ethical implications of innovation. By Stephen Koenig

1/10 Number of Angelenos plan to leave L.A. County next year.

40% Increase from 2019 to 2020 in the number of Angelenos who want to leave the county.

2.7

Percent rise in consumer confidence in L.A. County from June 2020 to February 2021.

Change from 2019 (37%) to 2021 (34%) in percentage of Angelenos who agree there is a lot of crime in their neighborhood.

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and the life sciences; and the social and ethical impact of new digital technologies.

Additionally, STPL hosts the USC Berggruen Fellowship Program, a partnership with the Los Angeles-based Berggruen Institute. Each year, six to eight prominent experts spend roughly a year interacting with USC faculty and students as they work on ambitious research projects.

Complex supply chain logistics have recently been at the forefront of Lakoff’s mind, as the pandemic revealed unanticipated challenges. Early in the crisis, there were difficulties in obtaining enough protective gear for medical professionals and essential workers. And who can forget the empty shelves in the toilet paper aisle? Massive changes were needed in the information infrastructure that links manufacturers, ports and trains to hospitals and retail outlets — changes that require both new algorithms to streamline delivery and new discussions of equity and ethics. Going forward, scholars could explore the assumptions underlying pandemic preparedness planning or ask how essential workers should be defined and protected.

USC has a wide range of faculty interested in the impact of science and technology on social life, but they are scattered across different schools and departments. STPL looks to serve as a bridge, amplifying research that will benefit from administrative structure and facilitating conversation among people who might not otherwise meet.

“I’d like us to be seen as a place where new ideas emerge, where scholars and students are able to develop novel projects with our collaboration and support,” says Lakoff.

PHOTO BY COSMIN SERBAN

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Innovation has always recast the ways in which a public collectively engages, laying bare its utility and promise well ahead of its oft-unintended consequences. No one foresaw that Gutenberg’s printing press would lead to the publication of a popular book outlining how to identify and sentence witches, bringing about the execution of scores of innocent people in the pre-Enlightenment.

But never has the pace of innovation rivaled what we are experiencing in the 21st century.

While we are drawn to reports on the latest gizmo or treatment for disease, it is increasingly clear that we need to better understand the social, economic, political and ethical implications of innovation — especially those that are not immediately obvious. This is the driving force behind the USC Dornsife Center on Science, Technology, and Public Life (STPL). Formally launched in December 2020, STPL is a venue for collaborative reflection and research on a scientific and technological ecosystem that is changing in real time.

“The center seeks to improve our understanding of the implications of new technologies, like artificial intelligence and genomics, that have got a lot of public attention,” says Professor of Sociology Andrew Lakoff, who is director of STPL. “It is also looking at the role of technologies that profoundly shape social life but tend to remain below the radar, like logistics and infrastructure.”

The center is designed around three broad intellectual areas that are particularly fraught in terms of the social and political impact of innovation: The implementation of policy to address the planet’s environmental crises; biomedicine

FROM THE HE ART OF USC Spotlight

Sweet Memories

Scientists find a direct connection between particular bacteria in the gut and impaired brain function.

S W E E T M E M O R IE S P H O T O BY T O M D E E R IN C K /N AT I O N A L C E N T E R F O R M I C R O S C O P Y A N D IM AG IN G R E S E A R C H; P E P P H O T O C O U R T E S Y O F N IK D E D O M IN I C ; C H OY P H O T O C O U R T E S Y O F B RY S O N C H OY

New research shows how drinking sugary beverages early in life may lead to impaired memory in adulthood. The study is also the first to show how a specific change to the gut microbiome can alter the function of a particular region of the brain.

Neuroscientist Scott Kanoski, associate professor of biological sciences at USC Dornsife, and researchers at UCLA and the University of Georgia, Athens, gave adolescent rats free access to a sugar-sweetened beverage.

When the rats grew to be adults, the researchers tested memory function controlled by two different brain regions: the hippocampus and the perirhinal cortex.

The researchers found that, compared to rats that drank just water, the rats that consumed high levels of the sugary drink had more difficulty with memory linked to the hippocampus. Sugar consumption did not affect memories made by the perirhinal cortex.

The scientists then checked the rats’ gut microbiomes and found differences between sugar drinkers and water drinkers: The sugar drinkers had larger populations of two particular species of gut bacteria.

Next, the researchers transplanted lab-grown samples of those bacteria into the guts of adolescent rats that drank just water. The rats receiving the bacteria showed memory impairment in both the hippocampus and the perirhinal cortex, suggesting that diet-related changes to brain function may actually be rooted in changes to the gut microbiome.

Finally, the scientists found that gene activity in the hippocampus changed in both sugar-drinking rats and rats transplanted with the bacteria. The affected genes control how nerve cells transmit electrical signals to other nerve cells and how they send molecular signals internally.

The results of this study confirm a direct link, on a molecular level, between the gut microbiome and brain function. —D.S.J.

Writing Behind Bars

Bringing poetry, philosophy and physics to prisoners in an effort to reduce recidivism and stereotyping.

Prison may not seem the best place to teach universitylevel classes, but to the surprise of instructors in the Prison Education Project (PEP) at USC Dornsife, the venue has proven to be ideal. With no phones or internet access, the classroom environment harkens back to a simpler time in education.

“We’re present with one another in a way that I don’t find in my other classrooms. No one’s checking their phone,” says PEP Co-director Nik De Dominic, assistant professor (teaching) of writing.

Since 2018, PEP has brought classes on subjects including film, biology and writing to prisons around the state, including the California Rehabilitation Center in Norco and the Santa Fe Springs women’s prison.

USC Dornsife faculty teach the classes and USC students serve as volunteer assistants.

Inmates at some prisons receive a reduced sentence in exchange for attending PEP classes.

For those who balk at the thought of prisoners receiving free classes, Kate Levin, co-director of PEP and assistant professor (teaching) of writing, argues that PEP provides practical benefits to the community.

“Research shows that if someone in prison just takes one class, they’re far less likely to recidivate,” she says. It costs a little more than $80,000 to incarcerate an inmate for one year in California. If programs like PEP can prevent inmates from returning to the system, it could save taxpayers a considerable amount of cash.

G Bajaj, a health and human sciences major who is PEP’s student co-director, says working with the prison population has broadened his perspective as he studies toward becoming a physician.

“In order to be a good health professional, you have to understand the different facets of the community you’re serving,” he says. “If you can’t understand someone that’s experiencing homelessness or someone that’s formerly incarcerated, how do you expect to advocate for that patient?” —M.C.

BRYSON CHOY ’22 QUANTITATIVE BIOLOGY QUANTITATIVE AND COMPUTATIONAL BIOLOGY

“Many unanswered questions in the life sciences can be viewed through an interdisciplinary lens informed by computer science and mathematics. I’m excited by the prospect of using my background in quantitative biology to tackle such outstanding questions.”

Chosen from a pool of over 5,000 students from 438 academic institutions, Bryson Choy has been awarded a coveted scholarship from the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation.

Choy, who hails from Honolulu, is currently working toward a bachelor’s degree and a progressive master’s degree.

He plans to use the Goldwater Scholarship to apply the computational techniques he learns at USC Dornsife to advance knowledge of human health.

In particular, he’ll focus on how the shape of certain proteins and biological molecules contributes to their role in disease and how they might be targeted with therapies.

“My future research will place an emphasis on elucidating the structure-function of clinically relevant proteins and biological macromolecules, as well as the development of novel computational tools for accelerating structure-based drug discovery,” he says.

—C.B-S. Spring / Summer 2021 | 11

Academy in the Public Square

URBAN T REES

A THRIVING PARTNERSHIP

USC Dornsife and the city of Los Angeles have launched a partnership to guide the growth of an urban forest of shade trees in Eastside communities vulnerable to heat waves and air pollution in a warming global climate.

Led by USC Dornsife Public Exchange, the USC Urban Trees Initiative provides a sciencebased approach to help advance L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti’s Green New Deal, which aims to plant 90,000 trees citywide, increasing the forest canopy by 50% specifically in low-income heat zones by 2028.

The initiative’s other collaborators include experts and students from USC Dornsife’s Spatial Sciences Institute (SSI), the Center for the Study of Urban Critical Zones, and the Landscape Architecture + Urbanism program, as well as the city’s Department of Public Works, community leaders and nonprofit organizations.

The new blueprint by USC researchers identifies four places best suited to plant shade trees across L.A.’s Eastside to bring cooling relief to thousands of people most at risk of heat waves and air pollution.

Better still, the scientific tools that the USC researchers used have wider applications to guide tree-planting efforts in other communities across L.A.

A NEW URBAN FOREST “Planting a thriving urban forest requires diligent planning and input from multiple perspectives,” says John Wilson, principal investigator for the project and director of SSI. “We have taken a deliberative approach based on robust data and community input to ensure that residents enjoy the many benefits of a rich canopy of trees.”

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USC DORNSIFE PUBLIC EXCHANGE Rio de Los Angeles State Park

Ernest E. Debs Regional Park

Montecito Heights Open Space

LEGEND Study Area Boundary

Heritage Square

5

Schools

Mount Olympus Park

Rose Hill Park

Rose Hill Rec. Ctr

East Los Angeles Park

El Sereno Rec. Ctr

Lincoln Heights Youth Ctr

110

LAUSD Campuses Public Park & Open Space

El Sereno

Lincoln Heights

Elysian Park

USC Health Sciences Campus 0

El Sereno Senior Ctr

Miles 0.5

Ascot Hills Park

Lincoln Heights Rec. Ctr

Los Angeles State Historic Park Lincoln Park

710

Wellness Park & Fitness Ctr

10

USC Health Sciences Campus Hazard Rec Ctr

Henry Alvarez Memorial Park Ramona Gardens Park

Ramona Gardens

+90,000 Under L.A.’s Green New Deal, the city aims to plant 90,000 trees citywide.

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Using an environmental justice lens, the USC Urban Trees Initiative focuses on a 3.5-square-mile zone northeast of USC’s Health Sciences campus in Boyle Heights.

The zone encompasses much of the Eastside communities of El Sereno, Ramona Gardens and parts of Lincoln Heights.

The area suffers from poor air quality and little shade. The median household income in the area is about half that of L.A.’s overall median income of nearly $62,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and people of color comprise most of the population.

+50%

+66%

L.A.’s Green New Deal calls for increasing the forest canopy by 50% specifically in low-income heat zones by 2028.

For example, at Ramona Gardens near Soto Street and Interstate 10, 183 trees could be added, a 66% increase.

2X

Experts say tree planting could double shade across L.A.’s Eastside.

FROM THE HE ART OF USC

USC researchers will guide where the city and others plant the trees, using computer models, air sensors and other tools to help determine the locations where trees would have the biggest impact on pollution, shade and heat islands.

“The data generated by our team will provide a detailed scientific road map to help the city and the community plant an urban forest that maximizes benefits to our environment and human health,” says Kate Weber, director of Public Exchange, which fast-tracks collaborations between academic experts and the private and public sectors to address pressing challenges.

For example, USC Dornsife’s new Carbon Census network, run by the Center for the Study of Urban Critical Zones, will deploy sensors that measure airborne pollutants to help determine where new trees would most reduce pollution and improve air flow.

TACKLING GLOBAL WARMING P U M P T O P L U G I M A G E C O U R T E S Y O F W O O D S B A G O T ; B U S P O E T P H O T O B Y IJMOAEGL ECS ABRYI LDLEENT N / I ISST O L AC N K

The scientific analysis will help city officials and community leaders create greenways and inform where they should concentrate their efforts to bolster climate resiliency, protect public health and promote ecosystems.

Renderings of one site at Ramona Gardens, near Soto Street, show how the public housing community’s vast, open lawns could be transformed into verdant forests of big trees.

“This partnership between the city and USC researchers is taking on global warming by improving sustainability where people live,” says USC President Carol L. Folt. “It’s a good example of how we can enhance the quality of life in our neighborhoods as we face the challenges of climate change.” —G.P.

From Pump to Plug

What will the end of gas-powered vehicles mean for Los Angeles, a city renowned for its car culture?

Vehicles could also become autonomous and drive themselves to connect with a charger.

At the symposium, firms located in L.A., Madrid, New York, San Francisco and Australia presented designs for how stations may look in 2022 and in 2023, reflecting ways fueling will continue to evolve. —M.C. and J.K.

Bus Poet

Mellon Mays Fellow finds inspiration for his fiction and award-winning poetry on the bus.

In Los Angeles, a city defined in large part by the automobile, gas stations have become inseparable from its identity. Some, like the Union 76 in Beverly Hills, with its sweeping Googie roof, are architectural icons. Others are memorable from film appearances. However, L.A.’s gas stations may soon have to radically adapt if they wish to survive.

Last year, Gov. Gavin Newsom mandated that by 2035 all new cars and light trucks sold in the state must be zero-emission.

Automakers are already responding. It’s increasingly clear that before the first half of this century is over, the dominant — if not exclusive — means of transportation will be electricpowered vehicles.

What will this mean for L.A., a city that is home to about 550 gas stations but relatively few charging stations?

Six of the world’s leading architecture, landscape and urban design firms shared their creative proposals — including eye-popping renderings — to address the challenges and opportunities posed by the projected growth of electric vehicle use in L.A. at “Pump to Plug,” a virtual symposium hosted by USC Dornsife’s 3rd LA project.

Founded and directed by Christopher Hawthorne, L.A.’s chief design officer and professor of the practice of English, 3rd LA is a laboratory for urban reinvention. The project, which focuses on L.A. as a leading model, looks at how cities around the world can become more sustainable, interconnected and equitable.

“Some of the issues that need to be addressed are: Where will people charge their cars? What happens to the gas station sites? And what happens at the Port of Los Angeles, where a shift to electrified trucking is so central to Mayor Eric Garcetti’s efforts to green the port?” said Hawthorne, who moderated the symposium.

Electric cars currently need hours to charge; and charging station customers may linger for a meal or to grocery shop.

But in five to 10 years, charging time could decrease, giving people only enough time to grab a quick snack.

Jack Kerouac, America’s foremost literary itinerant, saw little to appreciate in bus travel. But Joseph Debaerien, an English major at USC Dornsife, sees a missed opportunity. For Debaerien, not only are buses an ideal setting for writing inspiration, traveling by bus is an excellent way to experience social class in America.

“It has its own culture that stems from the working class,” he says. “You see people with Target shopping bags carrying everything that they own. That’s something that you never see on a plane or in a private car.”

Debaerien uses his own experiences as material for his fiction and poetry, having ridden the bus back and forth between his family home in Las Vegas and USC’s University Park campus on summer and winter breaks.

Debaerien spent his childhood bouncing from one city to the next, sometimes sleeping on floors and couches with his mother and siblings. By the time he arrived at USC at age 18, he had lived in six cities.

He enrolled as a psychology major but ultimately returned to his earliest enthusiasm, literature. Debaerien won first place at an undergraduate writing conference for “Bus Stop Poem,” which details a memorable experience while on a Greyhound back to Los Angeles from Las Vegas.

Recently awarded a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, Debaerien is now writing a paper that explores the bus as a site of both creativity and class consciousness. He has his eyes set on graduate school next, but isn’t sure where.

“I still haven’t found a place that really feels like home,” he says, noting that he plans to keep rambling until he does. —M.C.

Spring / Summer 2021 | 13

Our World ALUMNA The Universe

Could Alien Worlds Host Life?

Laurie Barge ’09, an astrobiologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, investigates the origins of life on Earth to make sense of how life could form on other planets.

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Growing up in a small, rural town in Northern California, Carolina Cortez ’18 missed the community and culture she remembered from her early childhood in Imperial County on the California-Mexico border. But now, as a graduate of USC Dornsife’s School of International Relations and a new fellow in the Rangel Graduate Fellowship Program, Cortez is pursuing her dream of becoming a diplomat to a Latin American country, a career that would draw on both her American and Mexican heritage.

“I want to give back to both of my communities,” she says.

At USC Dornsife, Cortez completed a study abroad program in Bilbao, Spain. After graduating, she worked in thenSen. Kamala Harris’ office for a year before being accepted into the Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange for Young Professionals program. Upon her return from Germany, Cortez volunteered with a nongovernmental organization in Mexico.

Now, thanks to the Rangel Fellowship, a five-year program that prepares young people for a career in the U.S. Foreign Service branch, she started an internship in Washington, D.C. in May with the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere, Civilian Security, Migration and International Economic Policy. —M.M.

FACULTY Latin America When Deisy Del Real’s studies on immigration took her to Argentina, she felt a sense of acceptance there that pleased her. The country had recently passed laws making immigration a human right, expanding constitutional protections to all people in the country regardless of legal status, and promoting mechanisms that ensured immigrants had access to legal services to help them start down the path to residency and citizenship.

The United States could look toward Argentina and some other South American countries when visualizing its own immigration policies, says Del Real. Currently Turpanjian postdoctoral fellow at USC Dornsife’s Equity Research Institute, she will join the faculty in the fall as assistant professor of sociology.

“The discussion tends to be open borders or full restriction, but there are a lot of things in the middle,” she says.

Public education efforts might also be useful, Del Real adds, noting that some South American countries have launched programs aimed at inspiring empathy between immigrants and the local population. —M.M.

P H O T O C O U R T E S Y O F N A S A , E S A , T H E H U B B L E H E R I TAG E T E A M (S T S C I /AU R A ), A . N O TA (E S A /S T S C I) A N D T H E W E S T E R L U N D 2 S C I E N C E T E A M

If you rewound the timeline of Earth to the beginning and then restarted it, would you get life again? If you tweaked some major condition, like taking away the moon or the continents, would life reemerge?

These are the questions astrobiologist Laurie Barge ’09 contemplates in her Origins and Habitability Lab at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Barge, who received her Ph.D. in geological sciences from USC Dornsife, is researching how life first sprang up on Earth and which conditions are most essential to its emergence here — and on other planets.

To do so, she simulates environments like ocean vents — which some scientists hypothesize played host to the first life forms — conducting experiments to learn more about their chemicals and minerals.

Barge was inspired by the research of USC Dornsife’s Professor Emeritus of Earth Sciences Kenneth Nealson, who used geology to search for signs of life on other planets, especially Mars.

In addition to her lab work, Barge is the science lead for the InVADER mission, which is sending a probe down to the deepest depths of the ocean to understand how life forms in deep-sea vents.

The more we know about the birth of life on our own planet, the better equipped we will be at finding signs of life on alien worlds, says Barge. —M.C.

ALUMNA Spain; Germany; Latin America; Washington, D.C.

FROM THE HE ART OF USC

ALUMNUS Bell Gardens

CHAVE Z PHOTO COURTESY OF JORGEL CHAVE Z; NYC AND U.S. FOREIGN SERVICE PHOTOS COURTESY OF IS TOCK

In his campaign to be elected to the Bell Gardens city council, Jorgel Chavez took to his skateboard and traveled from one end of the city to the other, talking to residents about the problems they were facing and his plans for the community.

And it paid off for Chavez, who graduated in May with a bachelor’s degree in political science from USC Dornsife and a master’s degree in public administration through the Progressive Degree Program at the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy. In November the 23-year-old won a seat on the council, becoming the youngest person to hold a city council seat in Los Angeles County history.

As a proud lifetime resident of Bell Gardens and a graduate of the city’s public schools, Chavez says he’s eager to serve the community he loves.

“It means a lot to me, growing up in the city, to be able to give back and to advocate for the people here.” —M.M.

STUDENT New York City

ALUMNA China, Worldwide

U.S. Foreign Service

When New York City announced it would be greatly expanding outdoor dining in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, questions abounded as to how a city full nearly to bursting with cars, buses and people would be able to accommodate thousands of tables and chairs in its preciously limited outdoor space.

But it turned out that by cutting off some streets to car traffic and capitalizing on more limited late-night and weekend bus routes, the city was able to secure additional outside dining space for more than 10,300 restaurants through its (now permanent) Open Restaurants program.

Using geographic information sciences tools, Alexa Weintraub, a junior majoring in geodesign at USC Dornsife, created a map showing how street and sidewalk space could be repurposed to allow for more outdoor seating — without affecting public transportation.

Weintraub notes that her map, “Eating on the Streets: A New Pandemic Lifestyle,” can serve as a guide to how restaurants in other high-density, space-limited cities might be able to modify their dining spaces to prevent disease transmission.

“I think there’s a lot of potential for restaurants to continue expanding and coming up with innovative ideas for outdoor dining in the future,” she says.

Her instructor, Leilei Duan, a lecturer with the Spatial Sciences Institute, agrees, noting that Weintraub’s project has broader lessons for sustainability and city planning. —M.M.

Betty Thai, who graduated in May with a degree in political science and East Asian languages and cultures at USC Dornsife, has earned a fellowship that could lead to a job as a United States diplomat — an ideal fit for the first-generation graduate who wants to help tackle global challenges.

The Thomas R. Pickering Foreign Affairs Fellowship will cover Thai’s tuition and fees at a two-year master’s program.

The aspiring diplomat will also receive a stipend to cover living expenses and complete two summer internships — first at the U.S. Department of State, then overseas at a U.S. embassy or consulate. In exchange, Thai has agreed to spend at least five years as a foreign service officer after completing her degree.

Like many children of immigrant parents, Thai grew up in the role of cultural navigator. Acting as a crucial bridge between two worlds made her deeply passionate about understanding cultural differences.

After devoting her Saturdays to learning Mandarin as a child, Thai became the de facto translator and navigator for her American classmates while she studied in China through a Gilman Scholarship in 2019.

Now Thai, who is working toward a master’s degree at USC Gould School of Law, envisions a career devoted to advocating for vulnerable groups worldwide.

“I realized there are a lot of deep-rooted issues, especially facing underserved communities and minorities,” she says.

“I want to get involved in politics to help solve those issues.” —E.L.

Spring / Summer 2021 | 15

16

Mapping the Road to a Better Future The COVID-19 pandemic upended lives around the world.

Where do we go from here? By Meredith McGroarty

Even in Venice, Italy, the church catches and holds the eye. Its imposing proportions, lofty domes and opulent statues, not to mention its location on the Grand Canal, speak to its importance.

The high altar features an elaborate sculpture of the Virgin Mary, from whom the church derives its name — Santa Maria della Salute, or Saint Mary of Health. It’s a name that provides the key to its origins, for the baroque church was built to commemorate the end of a particularly vicious wave of the bubonic plague that swept through Venice from 1630 to ’31, killing nearly a third of the city’s population.

Santa Maria della Salute is one of two early modern churches in Venice that were constructed to celebrate life and the living following devastating outbreaks of disease, says Lisa Pon, professor of art history at USC Dornsife.

“People back then saw far more death than we have to date, and they saw it much more closely than most of us who are not frontline workers,” Pon says. “And yet, these two votive churches are celebratory in their decoration. They have the power to uplift us.”

But how does one capture that spirit of life, of renewal and recovery, after a disaster?

While estimates vary, the Black Death killed at least 25 million people — up to 60% of Europe’s population — between 1346 and 1353. Although the COVID-19 pandemic is not nearly as lethal, it had, as of June 2021, killed more than 3.8 million people worldwide. In the United States, at the time of going to press, more than 600,000 people have died of the disease, which has left families devastated, shuttered businesses and upended our way of life.

But as we emerge from the pandemic, is there an opportunity to learn lessons that can help us recover as individuals, as Americans, as humans? What can we do to help heal our own wounds and those of our communities? And can we use this moment to push for everything from better child care to better access to mental health services? People’s answers to these questions will vary widely, but here are some good places to begin.

GOING TO EXTREMES

Sometimes an epidemic is followed by a period of relief, or even indulgence. In the U.S., for example, the Roaring ’20s — a time when few boundaries were left unpushed — came fast on the heels of the Spanish flu pandemic.

William Deverell, professor of history, spatial sciences and environmental studies, notes that while multiple factors — including World War I and large-scale urbanization in the U.S. — were responsible for the way the 1920s unfolded, the Spanish flu also played an important role in shaping people’s views on life, death and pleasure. Those who could afford it spent money lavishly as the Jazz Age blossomed, seeking to live life to the full after the grief and deprivation brought by the hardships of the preceding decade.

“The pandemic — the death and the fear and the invisibility of it — made people scared.

And when the fear and the danger and the deaths of the Spanish flu subsided, it had an influence on the excesses of the 1920s,” says Deverell, director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West.

Spring / Summer 2021 | 17

The great unanswered question is whether history will repeat itself: Will the 2020s come roaring back once COVID-19 has subsided and the pandemic is safely behind us?

The jury is out, but experts, including Deverell, say it’s certainly possible.

LOOKING INWARD

COVID-19 attacked not just the body but the mind as well. The stress of losing a job, loneliness brought on by extended isolation, depression resulting from a friend or loved one’s death, fear of becoming infected with the virus and other factors ravaged many people’s mental health. Disadvantaged communities have been particularly hard-hit, according to studies by the USC Dornsife Center for Economic and Social Research (CESR).

The center’s Understanding Coronavirus in America tracking survey shows that since the start of the pandemic, a quarter of U.S. adults have lost a friend or family member to COVID-19, a third struggled to put food on the table, and half have experienced financial insecurity.

“In the face of stressors like these, it’s no surprise that two-thirds of U.S. adults have reported symptoms of mild-to-severe psychological distress at least once over the course of the pandemic,” says Kyla Thomas, associate sociologist at CESR. “Research suggests that for many — particularly those hit hardest by the pandemic, including Blacks, Latinos and low-income workers — the mental health effects of this kind of trauma will persist long after infections subside and 18

the economy reopens,” Thomas says.

At a time when the need for mental health services is acute, the good news is that more Americans are seeking help. The number of people seeking services from mental health professionals has risen, at least partly due to the convenience of home-based virtual sessions, according to Beth Meyerowitz, professor of psychology and preventive medicine at USC Dornsife.

Meyerowitz says that she hopes virtual mental health services, and people’s willingness to continue using them, will continue after the pandemic. But she adds that there are also several strategies people can employ to protect their mental health during the transition to post-pandemic life.

One involves a compartmentalization strategy, in which we focus on the small shifts we might need to make to adjust to our new lives.

“I think one thing we can learn is to break concerns down into manageable pieces so that it’s not, ‘How am I going to get back to life after the pandemic?’ but, ‘How am I going to get the kids enrolled in school?’” she says.

SOCIAL WITHDRAWAL

Large celebrations may be few and far between for a while, but social interaction on a smaller scale will also probably look different after the pandemic.

“The prospect of reentering the world is bringing up a lot of unexpectedly ambivalent feelings,” says Darby Saxbe, associate professor of psychology at USC Dornsife.

While some people might be excited to return to in-person holiday dinners or drinks with friends, not everyone is IL L U S T R AT I O N S BY D E N N I S L A N F O R U S C D O R N S IF E M AG A Z IN E

jumping at the chance to gather, party and hug, she notes.

And people may be even more hesitant about larger gatherings. Saxbe predicts that people will continue to watch movies, sporting events and concerts at home, rather than attend them in person.

Temporary work-from-home solutions are likely to become long-term or permanent. And now that we have grown adept at using video conferencing tools like Zoom, we may simply opt to connect virtually more often, instead of meeting in person.

Meyerowitz says that the isolation and introspection of the pandemic prompted people to reevaluate their priorities, and many may realize that pre-pandemic they had overburdened themselves with commitments they actually cared little about. Some people may have discovered their job isn’t as important to their well-being as they thought, while others might realize that the groups or activities they were previously involved with didn’t really make them happy.

“The idea is that we don’t go back to the life we left,” Meyerowitz says. “We should really think about what we’ve learned and what the important things are that we need to rebuild and what are the things that we can let go.”

REINTRODUCING CHILDREN TO THE WORLD

It’s not only adults who must navigate a post-COVID social landscape. Many children have spent the past year isolated from their friends and peers, relying on Zoom to meet their social and educational needs. Saxbe wonders about the long-term effects of a year spent largely on screens.

“Are we going to be a generation that is more isolated

“The idea is that we don’t go back to the life we left.” or spends more time on screens than any before? We were already heading in that direction — is that going to accelerate to where we’re going to have a much lonelier generation of kids?” she asks.

But Saxbe adds that children have lived through worse disruptions — wars, famine and natural disasters among them — and their resiliency and ability to adapt will likely help them recover from the pandemic without too much long-term trauma.

She notes that, unlike adults, young children tend to live in the moment and react to what is around them rather than spend a lot of time worrying about the past or future or what is happening to other people in other parts of the world. This makes it easier for them to adapt and recover from stressful world events.

“Children take their cues from parents and caregivers, and we know that supportive and nurturing relationships offer an important way to boost resilience,” Saxbe says.

A MOONSHOT MOMENT

Individually, people may feel tempted to pull back from public life, to look inward. But self-examination is not Spring / Summer 2021 | 19

enough, we must also look outward, to the chasms that the pandemic has exposed in our society, Saxbe says. Notably, more than a year of disrupted and disparate schooling, coupled with a scarcity of child care resources, have demonstrated the fragility of the work-life balance for today’s families. This is particularly true when both parents work outside the home. Between February 2020 and April 2021, more than 2.5 million women left their jobs, with most of the job losses occurring among low-income women and women of color.

“I think the potential upside is that the pandemic has brought increased attention, awareness and energy to the child care and educational deficits in our system, to the cost of chronic underfunding, and to the importance of policies that support low-income families,” Saxbe says.

But she hopes the pandemic has prompted Americans to view universal child care as part of the country’s infrastructure.

“I think we’re in a moonshot moment,” Saxbe says. “There are some once-in-a-generation opportunities to really create new policies around kids and families.”

SPIRITUAL RENEWAL

The dialogue surrounding COVID-19 has been largely political and scientific, but the pandemic had deep spiritual repercussions. For some, faith was a source of solace — or anger — during the crisis.

“Among other things, religion is a sense-making phenomenon. It helps you find your place in the world, and this is what is going to be needed because it’s likely that our world will be changed,” says Dorian Llywelyn, president of USC Dornsife’s Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies.

Llywelyn explains that he sees religion’s role not as a counter to science, but as a supplement — healing the emotional self as opposed to the physical one. And there’s one aspect of the emotional self he would like to see people cultivate as the pandemic recedes: empathy. The squabbles over vaccine distribution demonstrate that empathy tends to be lost when we lack what we need.

“It’s easier to feel empathy when something is very far away,” he says. “When it’s actually in your neighborhood and resources are scarce — that will be the measure of how empathetic we will become.”

HOPE FOR RENEWAL

The early modern Europeans erected monuments and churches to commemorate the end of epidemics and celebrate the prospect of renewal. While there will likely be a multitude of plaques, monuments and other structures to memorialize the people who died during the COVID-19 pandemic, what shape will our personal recovery take?

In this, too, we may be far closer to the spirit of the early modern Europeans than we might think.

During research she conducted in Rwanda, with survivors of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, Meyerowitz held a workshop on recovery. Participants split into breakout groups to explore different aspects of recuperation. One group addressed finding joy in one’s life.

“I asked people to raise their hands for the group they wanted to join, and two-thirds wanted to be in the joy group.

These were people who had been through genocide, and that is what they wanted — joy,” Meyerowitz says. “So, it’s not just a matter of getting past the bad — people really want to seek out joy in their lives.”

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The Post-COVID City — A New Quality of Life?

The COVID-19 pandemic prompted us, particularly those of us who live in cities, to rethink our public lives and routines.

Commuting, restaurant dining, even neighborhood walks — suddenly the staples of daily life needed to be reconsidered. But such a rethink is not necessarily a bad thing, and in some ways is even long overdue, according to John Wilson, professor of sociology, civil and environmental engineering, computer science, architecture, preventive medicine, and spatial sciences, and director of the Spatial Sciences Institute at USC Dornsife.

Wilson notes that climate change, wildfires and other issues are reason enough for public officials to make changes to create more resilient cities. The COVID-19 pandemic might provide that extra bump to push them from ideas to action.

“I’m hopeful that this year will help generate a reawakening, so that people think, ‘Well, what should the city be like?’ ” he says.

Wilson expects that a lot of real estate will open up as some large venues, such as movie theaters, conference halls and even office buildings left vacant when businesses moved to a work-fromhome model, close or are reconfigured. Those vacant spaces could be transformed into leafy public parks or squares, with plenty of trees to provide shade. This opportunity for urban improvement is similar to how the USC Urban Trees Initiative led by USC Dornsife Public Exchange — of which Wilson is a part — is determining how best to add trees in neighborhoods adjacent to the USC Health Sciences campus. Tree canopies are especially vital in

East Los Angeles neighborhoods, often in low-income communities where shade and air conditioning are scarce.

Another big opportunity now open to L.A. and other American cities is to reconfigure traffic and open spaces in order to encourage outdoor dining and walking, as opposed to driving.

“I’m hopeful that this year will help generate a reawakening, so that people think, ‘Well, what should the city be like?’ ” “In Europe, there’s a lot of outdoor dining because cities have these large squares with no traffic around them. If we were to do things like that, particularly in L.A., I think you’d find that those spaces would be pretty popular,” Wilson says.

Although he has no simple solution for disease-proofing a city, Wilson notes that making the changes he mentions will help create a healthier, more equitable population.

“L.A., for better or worse, has traveled down a certain trajectory. Is COVID a trigger to help us take a different route?

I believe risk and resources go hand in hand, so if you want big rewards, you need to take big risks. I think some of the communities that are now willing to take those risks will find value in that.” —M.M.

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A LL I N EE D IS A M I R ACLE History has taught us that in times of crisis, our desire for easy solutions makes us vulnerable to charlatans — but beware, their seductive quick fixes will not lead us to a lasting and genuine revival.

By Stephen Koenig

In March 2020, the governor of Puebla, Mexico, proclaimed that a vaccine for COVID-19 had already been discovered.

To stave off the virus, he advised, simply tuck into a plate of mole de guajolote, a local specialty dish of turkey in a rich poblano pepper sauce.

Can I get a second dose?

Modern science blew us away with the speed and ingenuity with which it developed highly effective COVID-19 vaccines. But the pace of scientific innovation is no match for the pace of misinformation. From the earliest days of the pandemic, it has been easy to find a smorgasbord of unproven treatments, prophylactics and medical devices living somewhere between laughable pseudoscience and dangerous exploitation.

Hucksters develop sophisticated strategies to target receptive consumers, particularly on social media.

You might not be the kind of person who would buy a colloidal silver solution that can turn your skin Smurfblue, but what about a synergistic herbal blend that boosts immunity? Despite frequent warnings from doctors and scientists, the market for miracle remedies has been robust.

It’s a problem that transcends intellect or politics. The virus is scary, and most Americans have never lived through a more uncertain time. Even when we acknowledge that there is no good reason to believe exaggerated claims, good reason may not overrule any reason.

“People become very susceptible when their stress levels are high,” says April Thames, associate professor of psychology and psychiatry. “Resources in the brain that are typically allocated to problem solving get allocated to managing anxiety and we look for quick solutions.”

Across time and cultures, history bears out this truth. The anxiety we experience in times of crisis makes us vulnerable to con artists and quacks peddling recovery for their personal enrichment. While most will agree that revival is best accelerated by a combination of empathy and expertise, plausible shortcuts have been proven to spark our innate desire for comfort on demand.

From the fabled “Fountain of Youth” to claims of weather manipulation to ubiquitous internet scams, history is filled with countless examples of shady actors offering miraculous

cure-alls. That said, not all pseudoscience is crooked. Many offering unproven remedies aren’t villains with a scheme, but well-intentioned zealots with misguided hubris.

Not surprisingly, California has ties to some of the more colorful of these characters. With the help of USC Dornsife experts, we’ll get to know a snake oil salesman, a rain man and a frozen man whose “solutions” epitomized the problem.

CAN I SELL YOU A SECRET?

It’s the memory boosting supplement, the healing crystals and the cancer-killing tea. It’s snake oil — a catch-all epithet for the massive category of products that claim to treat ailments or improve lifestyle, despite having no fact-based medical value.

True snake oil, however, hasn’t always had a bad reputation. In the mid-19th century, Chinese immigrants arrived en masse in the American West, bringing their traditional snake oils for soothing aches and pains. The claims were not, in fact, far-fetched. The water snakes used contained a moderate amount of omega-3 fatty acids, compounds that have proven effective at reducing inflammation.

Like many nostrums arriving from parts unknown, it didn’t take long for snake-oil products to catch on.

Enter Clark Stanley. Dubbed the “rattlesnake king,” Stanley toured the country by stagecoach, hawking his eponymous Snake Oil Liniment. A garish showman, he recognized that Chinese medicine would not seem as exciting or exotic as an elixir that leveraged the American West’s lingering mystique. Performing in a combination cowboy and Indian costume, he engrossed audiences with tales of two years spent with a Hopi tribe, from whom he claimed to have learned ancient healing practices.

It was just the warm-up act.

To the crowd’s amusement, Stanley wrangled a live rattlesnake from a sack. Handling the serpent like a child’s toy, he would rave about the medicinal properties of its oil before abruptly chopping off its head. Demonstrating his extraction process, the snake was boiled in a cauldron, causing fat to float to the top. Once mixed with Stanley’s proprietary formula, he claimed the oil cured “all forms of pain and lameness” from arthritis to reptile bites. We might assume Spring / Summer 2021 | 23

“Escaping mortality is likely the oldest snakeoil scheme in the world.

It’s a constant concern of humans everywhere — why can’t we live forever?”

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that Stanley was not only the salesman, but also a client.

As his star continued to rise, Stanley’s Snake Oil Liniment was sold around the country, finding its way into catalogues and drug stores. It took more than 30 years before the truth was revealed. In 1917, the United States District Court of Rhode Island, acting on analysis from the government’s Bureau of Chemistry, found that Stanley was misrepresenting his product. Not only was his liniment ineffective — rattlesnakes contain only trace amounts of the omega-3s found in water snakes — but snakes weren’t used at all. The product comprised a blend of mineral oil, cayenne pepper, camphor and beef fat.

“When strong claims are made backing up any product or method, that could be a red flag,” says Thames. “Scientists use cautionary statements and acknowledge there may be a subgroup of people who won’t benefit at all.”

Like many peddlers of patent medicines, Stanley walked away exposed, but wealthy. And before long, the snake oil salesman became an infamous mainstay of popular culture.

UNDER THE WEATHER

Health concerns are not the only problems prone to chicanery. Long before the global climate crisis became obvious, humans were concocting schemes to manipulate the weather as a remedy for stressed environments.

Claiming they could coax moisture from the sky, a cohort of amateur scientists called pluviculturalists gained increasing public attention after the Civil War. If anyone could turn skeptics into believers, it was Southern California’s own Charles Mallory Hatfield, who rose to fame early in the 20th century. With amphibious eyes and a vagabond fedora, he looked like someone Delta bluesmen meet at the crossroads.

As a young adult, he was a sewing machine salesman who grew increasingly fascinated with the pluviculture movement. Finding his father’s drought-stricken farm an ideal laboratory, Hatfield built 30-foot towers on which

he evaporated chemical solutions, sending noxious fumes into the atmosphere. When storms finally brewed, they brought much needed revival to the suburban Los Angeles property. By 1904, he was contracting with local farmers and business leaders for services to “accelerate moisture” using a 23-chemical cocktail that remains unknown to this day — though one witness recalled that the air smelled as if “a Limburger cheese factory has broken loose.”

Although Hatfield insisted that he didn’t create rain but merely coaxed it from the clouds, his reputation quickly grew, earning him rainmaking gigs with cotton growers in Texas and mine operators in Alaska. According to the written account of his brother and rain-coaxing partner, Paul, every one of the nearly 500 jobs the pair accepted was successful. More than that, the work was guaranteed, as Hatfield would only accept payment after the contracted amount of rain had been measured.

This policy extended to a handshake deal Hatfield made with the San Diego City Council in 1915. Concerned that protracted drought would disrupt attendance at the city’s much-anticipated Panama-California International Exposition, the council agreed to pay Hatfield $10,000 to fill the Morena Reservoir over the course of a year.

Within days, an evaporation tower was erected 60 miles outside the city. A week later, the skies opened up and would not relent. The torrent lasted 18 days, washing away bridges, inducing landslides and forcing downtown residents to navigate Broadway by rowboat. But this was only a prelude to the destruction unleashed when the nearby Lower Otay Reservoir burst under extreme pressure.

“A wall of water thirty feet high was released,” reported the Los Angeles Times on Jan. 29, 1916. “Sweeping down the valley, the great flood of water carried people, livestock and valuable property to destruction. Scores of residents were missing tonight.”

Meteorologists had predicted powerful storms up and down the Pacific coastline ahead of the commencement of I L L U S T R AT I O N S B Y T I M Z E LT N E R F O R U S C D O R N S I F E M A G A Z I N E

Hatfield’s evaporation tower. In fact, historians suggest that most of the rainfall Hatfield claimed to facilitate was forecast by scientists or aligned with longstanding weather patterns.

But many San Diegans pinned the destruction on Hatfield, some calling for his lynching.

“I don’t consider Charles Hatfield a quack or charlatan,” says Karin Huebner, academic director of programs at the USC Sidney Harman Academy for Polymathic Study, noting that he was a devout Quaker. “I think he was sincerely convinced of his concoction of chemicals, but I also think he studied patterns and may have had a special sense of weather.”

As for the $10,000 fee, Hatfield insisted he had delivered on the San Diego agreement. The council did not want to pay because acknowledging a contract would concede liability for millions of dollars in damages. Courts eventually ruled that the storms were an act of God, and Hatfield had little recourse but to continue attracting moisture elsewhere.

If nothing else, the great flood became a powerful marketing tool that helped Hatfield land opportunities as far away as Honduras. He worked until the Great Depression dried up business, forcing the prodigious rainmaker to pack up his secrets and hang up his umbrella.

HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL

Elixirs, oils, vaccines, precipitation: Legitimate or loopy, the history of remedies for our existential problems are frequently related to fluids and moisture.

“To some degree, the idea of fluids is connected with life, whereas the opposite, dryness and desiccation, is associated with death,” says Professor of Anthropology Tok Thompson.

It explains the abundant folklore related to a fountain of youth found across cultures. The legend maintains that those fortunate enough to take in these waters would never grow older. More generous versions speak of reversing the aging process and restoring vitality and strength. Twenty-first century stand-ins for rejuvenating waters may come in the form of kale juice or age-defying skin creams, marketed as

weapons against the ravages of Father Time.

“Escaping mortality is likely the oldest snake-oil scheme in the world,” Thompson says. “It’s a constant concern of humans everywhere — why can’t we live forever?”

If you have plenty of cash and even more patience, there’s a super cool answer to that question: cryonics.

Cryopreservation is a pseudo-scientific process where immediately upon death, a body or brain is prepared, flash-frozen and stored in industrial vats of liquid nitrogen.

The hope is that scientists will eventually figure out how to revive these individuals and have the cure to whatever it was they died from.

The industry started in 1967 when James Bedford, a University of California professor of psychology with advanced cancer, entrusted a trio — including television repairman and cryonics enthusiast Robert Nelson — to preserve his body upon death.

Bedford was placed in suspended animation and stored in various places in California, including his son’s home. Now in Scottsdale, Arizona, he continues to wait out the days among hundreds of individuals — including the head of baseball legend Ted Williams — and dozens of hallowed pets, preserved in one of four cryonics facilities around the world.

If it sounds far out, it is. According to Andrew Gracey, associate professor of biological sciences, it’s not just the fact that we don’t know how to revive these folks. We don’t know how to freeze them either. “For the process to have any real shot at working, it would require technology that can instantaneously freeze and thaw the body tissue,” he says.

The problem, Gracey explains, is thermal inertia. In the case of cryopreservation, it relates to the degree of slowness with which the temperature of tissue and cells become equal to that of the liquid nitrogen environment. As fast as the freezing process may seem, it’s not nearly fast enough to avoid damaging cellular structures.

“Life just doesn’t do well in that transition,” says Gracey.

Be that as it may, it wouldn’t kill you to try.

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Notes on a Post-Pandemic Economic Revival With Americans having saved an extra $1.7 trillion during the pandemic, the economy is about to get a jolt of consumer spending. But big questions remain about how the spending spree will alter our economy.

By Lance Ignon

Jacob Soll is like a lot of Americans. (Except for the fact that he’s a MacArthur Genius.) He wants to get out and spend some money.

After working from his home office in Los Angeles for more than a year, Soll, who trained as a chef before becoming an academic, wants to dine out at his favorite restaurants, browse through a bookstore, travel — do those things that add spice to life.

“I know that I myself am going to spend money just flying around the world to catch up with family and friends … and just going out to dinner,” says Soll, University Professor and professor of philosophy, history and accounting at USC Dornsife. “I’m going to do it. We’re all desperate to do it.”

And more people can now afford to do it.

As horrific as the COVID-19 pandemic has been, one of its few silver linings has been an increase in personal savings, thanks to government stimulus payments and a dearth of things to buy and do. Americans reportedly saved an extra $1.7 trillion during the pandemic, bringing total personal savings in the United States to $6.04 trillion at the end of March. The extra amount alone is almost identical to Canada’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2019.

Economists roundly agree that consumers are ready to spend a good chunk of that money — though how much remains a matter of some debate. Granted, lower-income families are more likely to have to spend their stimulus checks on basic necessities, such as food and housing. But people in higher income brackets who held onto their incomes have newfound spending power for trips to everything from manicurists to Monaco.

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“Yes, we have more money saved, particularly because of the stimulus and the government payments to individuals,” says Wendy Wood, Provost Professor of Psychology and Business. “People may be ready to go out and take themselves on long-awaited vacations and buy things that they haven’t been able to really appreciate during lockdown.”

Soll agrees.

“If people get vaccinated and the virus is suppressed,” he predicts, “there will be a boom.”

But big questions remain. How much will consumers spend and what will they spend it on? To what degree will the post-COVID consumer economy change or remain the same? Who will benefit or lose? And can we use this transitional moment to build a more resilient economy?

“I don’t think people will spend everything quickly,” says Provost Professor of Psychology and Marketing Norbert Schwarz. “I think they will be scared that there will be additional waves of COVID coming. And, probably everybody will keep a little rainy-day fund because they’re worried that jobs may go away again.”

RETAIL DETAIL

Brick-and-mortar retail outlets were already under pressure from online shopping before the pandemic. In fact, more stores closed in 2019 than in 2020 — 9,300 compared to 8,300, according to Business Insider (although some estimates put the 2020 number at more than 12,000). Another 10,000 are predicted to close this year.

But as consumers open their wallets, new retail businesses will open their doors. However, Soll says mom-and-pop outfits may have difficulty competing. Bigger, more

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“If people get vaccinated and the virus is suppressed, there will be a boom.”

well-capitalized ventures will have an edge in reopening shuttered retail spaces.

“The big money will have a lock on much of it,” Soll says.

“And you’re going to see a lot of extinction of the small personal places because many people and small businesses got cleaned out trying to stay alive during COVID and ended up getting wiped out. That said, I think it will be a great moment for entrepreneurs and smart investors who can adapt and capitalize on this boom.”

With many consumers still traumatized by their first pandemic, business may not want to go back to business as usual. For those operations that have the good fortune to remain open, attracting consumers may require a fresh approach, especially during the initial stages of reopening.

For example, restaurants that continue to offer heated outdoor dining, fan-driven light breezes and hand sanitizer may have an advantage. It’s the same for stores when it comes to offering a safe environment.

“The basic principle of marketing post-pandemic enjoyment is that you want to be sensitive to your customers and convey that you meet their desires,” Schwarz says. “And so, if you have the kind of business, or are in the kind of location, where people are worried about COVID, then you have to say, ‘No reason to worry, we make it safe. So, come here, wear your mask, sanitize your hands and keep your distance — isn’t it wonderful?’ And, if you’re in a place where people don’t care and think it’s all just a nuisance, then you say, ‘We don’t care, either. Come in here, it’s nice and crowded.’ But beware, the next surge may ruin that strategy.”

HABITS DIE HARD? OR NOT

The future of consumer spending will rest in part on habits that last and those that wilt away. For example, if you took up gardening during the pandemic, will you still be buying planters and that cute, steel watering can if you’re spending your mornings and evenings stuck in traffic?

“Simply because you did it a lot during the pandemic — or you found it enjoyable — doesn’t mean you’re necessarily going to continue after the pandemic ends. It really depends on whether your family goes back to pre-pandemic work and school schedules,” says Wood, who researches how habits are made and broken. “Even if you formed a habit of making dinner at home during the pandemic — and started to like your own cooking — you won’t necessarily continue when you go back to work or into the office. The cues that triggered your cooking habit — being in the kitchen at 5 p.m., for instance — won’t be there anymore. Instead, you will likely fall back into old work habits from before the pandemic.

Driving home by that take-out restaurant will trigger your old dinner take-out habit.”

One of the most ingrained habits — and it didn’t take long to develop — is shopping online.

Online shopping was already on the rise prior to the pandemic, and being locked down only introduced its convenience to more consumers. E-commerce retail sales were 14% of total sales during the fourth quarter of 2020, down from a peak of 16.1% in the second quarter — when the pandemic first took hold — but up from only 4.6% a decade earlier, according to the Federal Reserve. Estimates vary, but U.S. consumers spent more than $860 billion online last year — up 44% compared to the previous year.

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“Even older consumers, who weren’t buying much online before the pandemic, have now formed habits to do so,” Wood says.

Post-pandemic, the cues to our online purchasing will still be there. So consumers are likely to continue going online to buy everything from jewelry to kitty litter.

But not everything is going online. We will still get out, Wood predicts, especially when it comes to shopping for clothes. She says consumers will probably return to their favorite stores to try on garments and make an outing of it with friends.

Pablo Kurlat, associate professor of economics, agrees with his colleagues that consumer spending will accelerate as the pandemic wanes. But he says there are still a lot of unknowns.

“So,” he asks, “are we going to go back to consuming about as much as we would have, had this not happened?

And if that happens, how fast? And then, are we going to choose a different bundle of goods to consume than we would have if this hadn’t happened?”

There are two schools of thought about how Americans will — or won’t — part with their newfound savings.

The first, known as Ricardian equivalence, holds that consumers will hang on to their stimulus checks because they know they’re going to be taxed to recoup some of the massive financial outlay that the government used to stabilize and revive the economy. In this case, Kurlat points out, “getting money from the government doesn’t change anything in terms of how much you consume.”

The second model is less rational but more familiar: People spend the money they can, without heed to the future.

“The truth is somewhere in between, probably,” Kurlat says. “Exactly where in between, we don’t know.”

BOOM OR BUST

With consumer spending accounting for 70% of the nation’s GDP, there’s no question that how, where and when people spend their savings will have a major impact on tomorrow’s economy. But there are related factors to consider as we emerge from this grim period and reassess our priorities.

Putting an end to the COVID-19 pandemic is, without doubt, a once-in-a-generation reason to celebrate. But Soll says we have to be careful not to bring on a global hangover by spending recklessly and neglecting to use this moment as an opportunity to build a better economy.

“If America can remain united and work on its strengths, which happen to be its giant research sector and its creative sector, and if America can hold together, then I think it will come out stronger,” Soll says. “But those are big ifs.”

Just as the U.S. did after World War II, Soll believes this is the moment for government to renew investment in academic research, which for generations has been the driver of innovation. The Global Positioning System, the internet, modern treatments for cancer and a host of other diseases — these and numerous other advancements started as fundamental research projects in universities.

“We have a huge scientific powerhouse structure, the biggest in the world,” Soll says. “But if we don’t invest in it, we’re going to be left behind. We’re living on what we built before.”

IL L U S T R AT I O N S BY M IK E E L L I S F O R U S C D O R N S IF E M AG A Z IN E

IL L U S T R AT I O N S BY T H O M S E VA L R U D F O R U S C D O R N S IF E M AG A Z IN E

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THE SHY ALUMNA Cat Moore ’05 long suffered crippling loneliness until she cracked the secret of creating relationships.

As USC’s director of belonging, she now helps students do the same. By Susan Bell

It’s unlikely that anyone meeting Cat Moore before her late-20s would ever have imagined her holding the position she now has as USC’s director of belonging.

Throughout her childhood and early adulthood, Moore was painfully shy and found it hard to make friends and fit in.

“I went to all kinds of different schools and really struggled to find my place,” says Moore, who was born in Canonsburg, a small steel town outside Pittsburgh in western Pennsylvania. “I spent a lot of my time up trees in the woods connecting with chipmunks because I just could not figure people out.”

She found connecting at high school to be so difficult that she dropped out and homeschooled herself alone in her bedroom in her junior and senior years.

She was still struggling to find friendship when she enrolled at USC Dornsife to pursue her dream of studying creative writing. But after taking a philosophy class her first semester with the late Professor of Philosophy Dallas Willard, she decided to become a philosophy major instead.

“Dallas was such a steady, warm, wise presence,” she says. “I was able to connect with him, and he was able to connect me to my deeper values and purpose, and help guide me. My life wasn’t working and I was desperately trying to understand these things, not only academically but personally.”

Moore knew that there were answers out there because she saw others succeeding at living the connected, joyful life she so longed to live herself. She chose to major in philosophy because she hoped it would help her find solutions to her difficulty in connecting with others. Her education at USC Dornsife became a personal quest to find the answers she felt she was missing.

“I was determined to crack the code of belonging,” Moore says.

“Through my studies, I realized it’s relationships, or what I call ‘the relational matrix of life,’ that is the foundation through which all other things happen. Relationships are the bedrock and the infrastructure of life.”

However, while she took satisfaction and comfort from the intellectual answers to her questions she had discovered at USC Dornsife, she still struggled to put what she had learned into practice. In fact, she says she continued to experience crippling shyness until she was 28, married and expecting a baby.

So, where did she finally find the elusive key to conquering her persistent loneliness?

Around the corner, in her local coffee shop.

“I HAVE MY BOOKS AND MY POETRY TO PROTECT ME”

Moore had begun hanging out in cafes in high school because they were a place she could comfortably be with people without having to interact with them.

“I spent so much time in cafes and yet I had never once said hello to someone,” she says. “I think of the Simon and Garfunkel line, ‘I have my books and my poetry to protect me.’ That was me. I would stack books on my café table so no one would try to sit down and talk to me.”

Then, as a mother-to-be, she began hanging out every day at her local coffee shop in East Los Angeles, but despite her defensive fortress of books, something changed.

“Pregnancy is such a conversational icebreaker and as my belly grew, people started breaking the ice with me.”

This made Moore feel so anxious she would sometimes take refuge in the restroom. But after a couple of months, she found she was able to respond.

“I realized, ‘this is something I can do. I can look at people. I can say hello. I can let them sit down for a couple of minutes.’

“It was just that little window that I needed to realize that I could interact with people,” Moore says. “I felt like I had been living in a snow globe my whole life. And it really only took one crack to shatter the whole thing.”

Once Moore’s son, Noah, was born, she brought him with her every day to the cafe, prompting more customers to interact with the young mother.

Soon, people were lining up to talk to Moore for a few minutes — what she calls “the latte window” — while they waited for their coffee to brew.

“People would sit down not knowing me at all, spill their life story or tell me whatever it was that was weighing on them, burst into tears, not even know why, and get up and say, ‘Oh my gosh. Thank you so much for listening to me.’”

Moore says this happened over and over again with people from every possible walk of life: homeless people, CFOs, rock stars, veterans, single moms.

When she told Willard of this extraordinary transformation in her life, he responded, “Being with each other, as we are, where we are, is everything. But we organize Spring / Summer 2021 | 31

CAT MOORE’S TOP FIVE TIPS TO IMPROVE MENTAL HEALTH

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All the elemental things are still asking for our attention right now, so practice good sleep, exercise/movement, nutrition, time in nature.

4

Find simple ways to serve others and create belonging for those around you.

Whether on screen or safely off screen, reach out to friends, family, neighbors and essential workers to see how they’re really doing, ask what they need and reassure them that they are not alone — we have gone through this, and will continue to get through this, together.

5

Remind yourself that this is one season, not your whole life, and we are all navigating change together. If we can embrace the limits and opportunities of this unique time, we’ll be free to experience the new possibilities of it and maybe discover the seeds of a new, hopeful vision for our shared lives.

As vaccines provide hope and we start emerging from the restrictions of the pandemic, USC’s director of belonging provides her top five suggestions to boost well-being.

“ALL THE LONELY PEOPLE, WHERE DO THEY ALL COME FROM?”

FINDING CONNECTION Clockwise from top left: Cat Moore in a local café; with her mentor, USC Dornsife’s late Professor of Philosophy Dallas Willard, and her son, Noah; learning how to cultivate a network of friends; enjoying an affectionate moment with Noah; and nurturing a baby goat as a child.

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Impressed by her community-building work and the research she had conducted on behalf of the Los Angeles Unified School District on the role of relationships in education reform, USC appointed Moore to be its director of belonging in 2018.

Moore says the creation of her post in USC’s Office of Religious and Spiritual Life represents a breakthrough for universities in their approach to student well-being. She credits Varun Soni, USC’s vice provost for campus wellness and crisis intervention and dean of religious life and the Reverend Jim Burklo, senior associate dean of religious life, for their pioneering vision and tireless work to make this role possible.

At a time when the nation is experiencing an epidemic of loneliness — with young adults particularly impacted, according to USC Dornsife’s Center for Economic and Social Research’s Understanding Coronavirus in America survey — Moore’s work has never seemed more relevant.

At USC, Moore has created workshops to teach her CLICK method to connect with others — and oneself — in order to defeat loneliness. For alumni, she designed SPARK, a stand-alone workshop to help people facing loneliness over

Find a contemplative practice, such as journaling or meditation, to process your experience.

3

Savor simple joys, allow yourself to be curious and in awe of life around you, and cultivate daily gratitude for the good you are still holding.

the holiday season. “The holidays are, honestly, always a difficult time for people, but we knew not being able to gather because of the pandemic was going to make it even harder,” she says. “So, we wanted to create a space for people to reimagine what’s possible.”

Moore says it’s immensely important for USC to have taken the lead in creating a position such as hers.

“As far as we know, there is no other position of this kind at any other institution of higher education,” she says. “What USC is saying with this non-therapeutic, non-intervention approach is that a sense of belonging and the experience of relational well-being are basic, healthy human needs and we’re going to create the conditions for those needs to be met.”

Moore says that we have found the restrictions caused by the pandemic to be particularly challenging because our usual social structures have dissolved or been severely narrowed. This change has forced us to become acutely aware of our own experience, needs and resources.

“We’re having to pioneer a path through a new social landscape without a map, without the familiar tools, processes and teams,” she says. “It’s a big, exhausting ask, but ultimately, we are building new muscles, discovering new things about ourselves and each other, adapting to new mediums and forms of connection, and learning how to accept the challenge on the tiny, moment-by-moment scale.”

Asked what she hopes we can all learn from the difficult period we have traversed — and that many of us are still traversing — Moore says she hopes that we can gain clarity on what really matters to us and why.

“When the storm shakes the tree, many leaves fall off, but the roots dig down deeper,” she says. “I’m hoping we can all re-root in our cherished values and vision for our personal and shared lives and discover new ways forward together, starting with acknowledging that we all belong here, exactly as we are, and are irreplaceable.

“Whatever else is true of tomorrow, we can be sure that we’ll still have the power to create belonging for those around us by being present, listening and caring.”

O N P R E V I O U S PAG E: P H O T O BY A N N IE H O C K ; P H O T O S C O U R T E S Y O F C AT M O O R E , M O O R E P H O T O BY A N N IE H O C K

our lives to death to avoid it because it requires that we slow down and risk being known.”

Moore says that when she received Willard’s blessing that what she was doing to interact and connect with others was indeed meaningful, she felt she had discovered her life purpose.

“I realized the dire human need to be heard and cared about in these extraordinarily simple, organic ways. In creating my own sense of belonging, I recognized everyone’s common need for this. And in providing it for others I was, in turn, providing it for myself and my son.”

Through her community work in the café, Moore devised and trademarked the methodology she had successfully used to crack the connection conundrum, a process she calls CLICK: Connect, Listen, Investigate, Communicate kindness and Keep in touch.

2

Spring / Summer 2021 | 33

34

Clearing the Air As the climate crisis escalates, USC Dornsife experts are studying ways to quickly enact positive change and find a path to greener days. By Darrin S. Joy

I believe it’s too late. I’m a pessimist by nature, and a year of pandemic living hasn’t improved my disposition, but even taking those factors into account, I don’t feel I’m overestimating the threat. I think we’re all but doomed, effectively exterminating ourselves and countless other species by making Earth’s climate — our climate — increasingly unlivable.

I’ve held this view since long before Jonathan Franzen penned his provocative, fatalistic New Yorker essay in 2019 — and for many of the same basic reasons. Human beings don’t change until the pain of not doing so becomes too great to remain complacent. Instead, we plug along, blinders firmly affixed, ignoring the ruin we leave in our wake. By the time we react strongly enough to curtail climate change, the snowball (ironic metaphor, I know) will have gained too much momentum to be stopped. And in fact, it may already be unstoppable.

But Franzen had plenty of detractors arguing against his assertions — and so do I. People I work with at USC Dornsife, in fact. Scholars who, while willing to listen to us cynics and acknowledge some validity to our despair, aren’t about to succumb to hopelessness.

Instead, they’re looking for practical solutions — ways of working with human nature rather than bucking it, so politicians, business leaders, policymakers and everyday people find it easier to act in ways that will save us from ourselves.

TO DECIDE OR NOT TO DECIDE

Joe Árvai came to USC Dornsife in late 2020 to lead the USC Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies as its director — with an academic appointment as Dana and David Dornsife Chair and professor of psychology. Árvai specializes in risk analysis and decision-making, studying why people make the decisions they do and how they can make better ones. He also has an oceanography background and a passion for seeking solutions to the mounting climate crisis.

Hiring a Wrigley Institute director with a strong background in a social science like psychology rather than one steeped solely in the natural sciences, like biology or environmental sciences, is strategic. It’s part of

USC Dornsife Dean Amber D. Miller’s vision of expanding research that addresses the human side of the climate crisis to find ways to incentivize us to speed the development and adoption of beneficial policies and solutions. Árvai and I meet for the first time through the magic of Zoom, and as I confess to him my cynical resignation to the horrors that await us all, Árvai sighs, head in hand. He’s heard it all before.

Then he begins to show me the error of my ways.

“I think there are a few things that we need to realize. One is the fact that not doing something is a decision; we’ve made a decision to not act,” he says. “So, to just bury our heads in the sand and proceed by not taking action, that’s not passive in any way, shape or form. We are actually making choices to not do those things.”

Ouch.

Not only is my cynicism not helping, it’s poor decisionmaking that actually may be making things worse.

But then he generously lets me off the hook, at least a little. Making thoughtful, evidence-based decisions is hard, he says. After working for the past couple of decades with everyone from individual consumers to policymakers and from local government to the White House, he knows that decision-making doesn’t come naturally.

And one important decision-making skill is the ability to put options in context, and to see each decision as part of a continuum. Each decision leads to changes that, in turn, make future new decisions necessary. These future decisions also lead to changes that call for more decisions, and so on.

Choosing to install solar panels on your roof may help reduce your carbon footprint and lower your electric bill, but that means less traditional revenue for the utility company, which may then need to make decisions about their investments in future technologies such as advanced renewables or carbon capture. These decisions by utilities then create feedbacks that affect consumers of the future.

Making good decisions means trying to predict the potential consequences of options down the road, learning from what actually happens, and then teeing up the next round of decisions, says Árvai.

Now that he’s at USC Dornsife, it’s these expanded decision-making skills and how they affect approaches to Spring / Summer 2021 | 35

the climate crisis that Árvai is working to understand and improve, particularly among students.

“At the Wrigley Institute, we want to help educate the next generation of change agents working on the environment and sustainability. We need to start imparting new kinds of analytic skills so that when these students eventually become the CEO of Microsoft or Ford Motors or governor or mayor, they’re working from a more modernized curriculum that teaches what it means to be effective.”

TELL ME A TALE

“At the Wrigley Institute, we want to help educate the next generation of change agents working on the environment and sustainability.”

But making smart, defensible decisions isn’t just about analysing data. Part of the challenge in implementing lifesaving decisions is in how we think, Árvai says. It’s in the balance — or lack thereof — between analysis and emotion. Often discussions of climate change deteriorate when emotions run too high, but sliding too deep into analysis may be just as big a problem.

“I think a lot of our communications about climate change — communications that are meant to motivate people — fail because they’re too rich in statistics,” he says. “They’re too much of a numbers game.”

This is where a healthy dose of insight from the humanities and fine arts can help. By putting decisions in context and presenting information that balances decision-makers’ emotional and analytical needs, artists, filmmakers, writers and other storytellers can help them more effectively evaluate the potential risks and benefits of their choices.

“At the end of the day, we’re trying to get people to think in a more comprehensive way about alternatives, alternative pathways, alternative policies, different things you could do as an individual, as a consumer, as a policymaker or leader,” Árvai says. “We need chemists and physicists and ecologists and psychologists and sociologists to work with artists and painters and writers to create that context.

“It’s about building a system in which we recognize that we are all contributing to decisions we make as a society,” he adds — and ultimately working together to avoid disaster.

KEEP IT SIMPLE, SIR

Findings from a study coordinated by USC Dornsife Public Exchange in collaboration with the United Nations Foundation jibe with Árvai’s point about leaning too much on the analytical side of the brain.

Led by Wändi Bruine de Bruin, Provost Professor of Public Policy, Psychology and Behavioral Science at USC Dornsife and the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics, the study examined how well people undertood particular words used in public reports issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Bruine de Bruin is herself a noted expert in the psychology of decision-making. (She and Árvai have known each other for years.) She says that simplifying information can help make decisions easier, which is one reason Public Exchange and the UN Foundation initiated the research.

For the study, climate scientists selected the most important words in their communications. Their list of eight terms includes “mitigation,” “carbon neutral,” “unprecedented transition,” “tipping point,” “sustainable development,” “carbon dioxide removal,” “adaptation” and “abrupt change.”

The researchers then asked a group of participants with widely varying views on climate change to interpret the words.

Even among seemingly ordinary terms, study participants struggled to understand what the words meant in the context 36

of climate change, according to Bruine de Bruin.

“Even ‘adaptation’ and ‘mitigation,’ which are among the most commonly used words by climate scientists, are not widely recognized,” she says.

Bruine de Bruin attributes the confusion to the propensity for people to borrow word meanings from more familiar contexts, especially if they aren’t quite sure of the meaning as it relates to climate change.

“So for ‘adaptation,’ people think of adapting a book into a movie,” she explains. “For ‘mitigation,’ people confuse it with ‘mediation,’ like resolving a conflict.”

Add more nuanced terms and the confusion mounts. “ ‘Abrupt change’ to climate scientists means climate systems changing over the course of centuries,” Bruine de Bruin says.

“To a lay person, that’s not abrupt. And so that only makes it more confusing.”

The answer, she says, lies in providing more explanation or choosing words more carefully, so there’s no misunderstanding.

Bruine de Bruin says similar principles apply to visual communication, such as graphs and charts.

First, put less information in them, she says. Avoid trying to say too much at once.

Also, be upfront and clear. “Using the title to communicate the key message can be really helpful,” she adds. Rather than a vague title like “The Effect of Rainfall on Corn,” try something declarative: “More Rain Makes Corn Grow Taller.”

But even if communication is clearer, will it really change behavior? Bruine de Bruin thinks it’s a key part of the mix.

“Information alone does not necessarily change behavior, but having clear information is important,” she says.

Policymakers, for instance, need to be able to understand and justify their decisions. “If they don’t understand the explanation, then they’re not going to be willing to change the policies.”

GETTING CHARGED UP

But when they do understand, policymakers may opt to enact vital change. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, for example, faced with the clear evidence that gasoline- and dieselpowered vehicles contribute more than half of the state’s carbon pollution, signed an executive order mandating that all new vehicles sold in the state meet zero-emissions standards by 2035. In practical terms, that mostly means turning to electric vehicles (EVs).

But this mandate, as Árvai’s perspective on decisionmaking suggests, gives rise to other issues, including an important question: As California — and the world — make the transition to EVs, how can they position themselves to get the biggest bang for the buck?

USC Dornsife’s Public Exchange is tackling that question.

Public Exchange pairs academic researchers and scholars with public and private sector partners to identify, analyze and solve intractable problems. In this case, Public Exchange enlisted USC Dornsife economists to examine industrial policies and regulations to determine how the L.A. region can benefit as much economically as it will environmentally.

“We’re providing the quantitative analysis to say, you can spend your money in a lot of different places, but here’s what’s going to bring the biggest return to [gross domestic product] and regional growth,” explains USC Dornsife’s Kate Weber, executive director of the Academy in the Public Square and director of Public Exchange.

Their work suggests the benefits of moving to EVs may extend beyond cleaner air, that investing in electric vehicles not only won’t ruin the economy, but may actually boost it. After all, someone needs to manufacture the batteries or install and operate charging stations, and there’s plenty of room for innovation in vehicle technology and efficiency, to name just a few opportunities.

California has been an important leader in the transition to electrified mobility. If the nation’s largest economy can not only survive, but thrive in the transition to greener practices, it will send a powerful signal that what is good for the environment is also good for the economy. And that’s a beacon the other 49 states are bound to follow. “As California goes, so goes the nation,” after all.

A NEW DAY DAWNING?

News like this is almost enough to make me drop my pessimism altogether. Indeed, it’s hard to remain completely cynical after speaking with people like Árvai, IL U S T R AT I O N S BY A N N E L AVA L F O R U S C D O R N S IF E M AG A Z IN E

Bruine de Bruin and Weber.

It’s not that they’re extreme optimists. Quite the opposite, actually. It’s their sensible, reasoned approach to climate crisis issues — an approach blending research and know-how from disparate disciplines — that engenders more than a little confidence that there remains, at the very least, a good possibility of avoiding disaster.

I still ache knowing that the future will be tough, especially for coming generations. But as I watch the sun rise on another beautiful spring morning, I realize my sense of futility has to some degree faded. In its place grows a feeling of accountability. Each of us has a part — a responsibility — to do what we can, no matter how small.

As Wrigley Institute director Árvai says: “We know that we’re not going to solve the problem on our own, or today. But we’re at least contributing to viable, gamechanging solutions we can implement tomorrow and the day after. And, importantly, we hope that others will, as well.”

Spring / Summer 2021 | 37

Legacy

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More than 40 eminent historians, architects, artists, city officials, scholars and cultural and Indigenous leaders spent 18 months coming up with 18 key recommendations for how L.A. can commemorate and memorialize formative moments that have gone unrecognized, reshape L.A.’s civic identity and view the past as a window into the future.

Members of the working group included USC Dornsife’s Natalia Molina, Distinguished Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity, and a 2020 MacArthur Fellow; David Ulin,

associate professor of the practice of English; and William Deverell, professor of history, spatial sciences and environmental studies and director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West, which produced the report. The report was underwritten by the Getty Foundation. Laura Dominguez, Deverell’s doctoral student and a heritage conservation specialist, also participated.

Past Due imagines new possibilities for commemoration, including less permanent and more dynamic ways of paying tribute, such as grassroots community events.

Hawthorne notes that the report isn’t an instruction manual.

“This report really is meant to be a guidebook to help frame decisions and equitable processes related to these important issues,” he says.

Still, the report contains some concrete recommendations, including developing a memorial to victims of COVID-19.

Describing the working group as “one of the most magnificent committees I’ve ever worked on,” Deverell notes that there is no finish line for the project.

“As we think about our past, that’s a quest to seek out

community, to work at the levels of memorialization and acknowledgement,” he says.

“And that’s endless, as it should be.” —G.H.

Ethnic Mexican residents of Southern California prepare to board trains to Mexico from downtown Los Angeles’ Central Station in 1932.

The “Mexican Repatriation,” which aimed to remove Mexicans from social welfare during the Depression, deported up to two million Mexicans and Mexican Americans. As many as 60% are estimated to have been United States birthright citizens.

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE HERALD EX AMINER COLLECTION/LOS ANGELES PUBLIC LIBRARY

Depictions of Los Angeles as it really is — and was — lie at the heart of Past Due, a report by the Mayor’s Office Civic Memory Working Group that examines how the city can more honestly examine its past and, moving forward, accurately and appropriately commemorate triumphant and tragic moments in its history.

Overseen by Christopher Hawthorne, professor of the practice of English at USC Dornsife and the city of L.A.’s chief design officer, the 166-page report was published in April 2021 and is available to view at civicmemory.la.

C O M M E M O R AT I N G L O S A N G E L E S ’ H I S T O R Y

D O R N S I F E F A M I LY Faculty News JEB BARNES, professor of political science, has been named a finalist for the Robert Foster Cherry Award for Great Teaching by Baylor University.

LISA BITEL, Dean’s Professor of Religion and professor of religion and history, was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship.

RICHARD BRUTCHEY, professor of chemistry, received a Phi Kappa Phi Faculty Recognition Award for his work on semiconductor solvent for thin film processing.

IRENE CHIOLO, associate professor of biological sciences, received a Phi Kappa Phi Faculty Recognition Award for her collection of 13 publications focusing on highways for heterochromatic DNA repair.

STEVEN FINKEL, professor of biological sciences and college dean of graduate and professional education, received the Raubenheimer Faculty Award for outstanding teaching, scholarship and service within the university.

SCOTT FRASER, Provost Professor of Biological Sciences, Biomedical Engineering, Physiology and Biophysics, Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, Pediatrics, Radiology and Ophthalmology, was awarded the Edwin G. Conklin Medal in Developmental Biology from the Society for Developmental Biology.

FRASER PHOTO BY JOHN LIVZEY

SHEEL GANATRA, assistant professor of mathematics, received a Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) award from the National Science Foundation.

CHRISTIAN GROSE, associate professor of political science

and public policy, was honored at the 2021 Western Political Science Association’s annual meeting for the best article published in Political Research Quarterly in 2020.

SARAH GUALTIERI, professor of American studies and ethnicity, history and Middle East studies, was awarded the Alixa Naff Migration Studies Prize by the Moise Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies at North Carolina State University for her book Arab Routes: Pathways to Syrian California (Stanford University Press, 2019).

ZAKIYYAH IMAN JACKSON, associate professor of English, was selected as the winner of the 2021 Harry Levin Prize by the American Comparative Literature Association for her first novel, Becoming Human: Meaning and Matter in an Antiblack World (NYU Press, 2020).

SCOTT KANOSKI, associate professor of biological sciences, received the Alan N. Epstein Award from the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior.

SAORI KATADA, professor of international relations, was elected vice president of the International Studies Association, one of the oldest interdisciplinary organizations dedicated to understanding international, transnational and global affairs.

ANNA KRYLOV, professor of chemistry, was named a 2021-2022 Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar.

PETER KUHN, Dean’s Professor of Biological Sciences and professor of biological sciences, medicine, biomedical engineering, aerospace and mechanical engineering, and urology, was awarded an honorary professorship at the University of Manchester, supporting his collaborative work on early lung cancer detection.

NAOMI LEVINE, assistant professor of biological sciences, quantitative and computational biology and Earth sciences, received a Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) award from the National Science Foundation. She also received the Raubenheimer Faculty Award for outstanding teaching, scholarship and service within the university.

ROBIN COSTE LEWIS, writer in residence, won the Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize, through which she will spend the 2021–22 academic year at the American Academy in Rome.

NANCY LUTKEHAUS, professor of anthropology and political science, received the Raubenheimer Faculty Award for outstanding teaching, scholarship and service within the university.

ADAM MACLEAN, assistant professor of quantitative and computational biology, received a Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) award from the National Science Foundation.

GRETA MATZNER-GORE, assistant professor of Slavic languages and literatures, received the Raubenheimer Faculty Award for outstanding teaching, scholarship and service within the university.

STANISLAV MINSKER, associate professor of mathematics, received a Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) award from the National Science Foundation.

NATALIA MOLINA, professor of American studies and ethnicity, was named Distinguished Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity for accomplishments that have brought great distinction to USC.

Continued on page 41.

HONORS

Inventor Honored

Provost Professor recognized for developing technology that provides unprecedented views of living organisms.

Scot t Fraser, Provost Professor of Biologica l Sciences, Biomedica l Engineering, Physiology and Biophysics, Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Me d ic i ne , Pe d iat r ic s , Radiology and Ophthalmology, has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine.

Fraser is one of just 90 researchers chosen from among the world’s leading scientists to become members of the academy this year.

Among the reasons for his election, the academy noted Fraser’s work “integrating biophysics, quantitative biology and molecular imaging to enable unprecedented views of normal function and disease in live organisms, from embryonic development to old age.”

Said Fraser: “I’ve always been fascinated by interdisciplinary teams that can bring new insights into old problems by combining the insights from science, engineering and medicine.”

Fraser, who earned his bachelor’s degree in physics and his Ph.D. in biophysics, says he gravitated toward research in biology “because there are so many open questions, and so many things that have been thought to be impossible to answer — but tricks from other fields make the impossible possible, if the team is willing to tackle it together.”

His research delves into early development, organogenesis (the process by which internal organs emerge and develop) and medical diagnostics. The work has spawned several start-up companies and has been used in a number of instruments and FDA-approved diagnostics.

“We keep our eyes open to translation of the work in the lab to industrial and clinical utility,” he said.

Fraser said his team works diligently to ensure collaborators in scientific and clinical fields also benefit from their efforts.

“We have built the Translational Imaging Center on USC’s University Park campus and the Translational Biomedical Imaging Center at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles to help support users with interests in fields ranging from regenerative medicine to cancer and diabetes. This is already empowering them to make new insights into their research challenges.

“What we hope to do is to make it possible for researchers and clinicians to have ‘aha’ moments, when they can see things for the first time.” —D.S.J. and Y.Y. Spring / Summer 2021 | 39

F A C U LT Y C A N O N professor of sociology and gender studies, traces a generational shift in the U.S. veterans’ peace movement through life-history interviews with six veterans of color.

Breaking News

Exploring the tragic event that sparked the first live television news coverage in America.

THE GLOBAL INDIES: BRITISH IMPERIAL CULTURE AND THE RESHAPING OF THE WORLD, 1756-1815 Yale University Press / Ashley Cohen, associate professor of English, weaves a complex portrait of the imaginative geography of British imperialism, exploring the pairing of India and the Atlantic world from literature to colonial policy.

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AN ECONOMIST’S LESSONS ON HAPPINESS: FAREWELL, DISMAL SCIENCE! Springer / University Emeritus Professor of Economics Richard Easterlin, known as the “father of happiness economics,” draws on a half century of his own research to reveal what makes us truly happy — and what doesn’t.

UNCONVENTIONAL COMBAT: INTERSECTIONAL ACTION IN THE VETERANS’ PEACE MOVEMENT Oxford University Press / Michael Messner,

TARELL ALVIN McCRANEY: THEATER, PERFORMANCE, AND COLLABORATION Northwestern University Press / David Román, professor of English and American studies and ethnicity, has edited — with Sharell D. Luckett and Isaiah Matthew Wooden — the first scholarly study of the work of McCraney, one of the most significant writers and theatremakers of the 21st century.

A CULTURAL HISTORY OF COMEDY, VOLUMES 1-6 Bloomsbury Academic / Andrew McConnell Stott, professor of English, vice provost for Academic Programs and dean of the Graduate School, explores how comedy has developed from antiquity to the present day.

CRY BABY MYSTIC Parlor Press / Daniel Tiffany, professor of English and comparative literature, has composed a book-length poem inspired by 15th-century English mystic Margery Kempe.

FISCUS PHOTO COURTESY OF WILLIAM DEVERELL/RICK CASTBERG COLLECTION

On April 8, 1949, 3-year-old Kathy Fiscus ran across a field of spring grass in San Marino, California, and fell into an uncovered well. Within hours, the small plot of land had erupted into a frenzy of activity as rescue workers attempted to retrieve her. Thousands of gawkers gathered to observe and pray while bright klieg lights sent from 20th Century Fox illuminated the scene.

Drawn to the excitement, television and radio reporters showed up. For 24 hours of the two-day rescue operation, the scene was broadcast to television sets across Los Angeles and on radio waves around the nation, thanks to the newly installed transmission towers on nearby Mt. Wilson, which towered above the field.

A new book by William Deverell, professor of history, spatial sciences and environmental studies, titled Kathy Fiscus: A Tragedy That Transfixed the Nation (Angel City Press, 2021), explores how this event kicked off the phenomenon of live, breaking TV news coverage.

“After this event, the number of TV sets sold in greater L.A. goes through the roof,” says Deverell. “There are probably about 20,000 TVs in 1949 in greater Los Angeles County and within a handful of years … there are 300,000.”

Reporters interviewed bystanders and workmen and filmed the parade of circus thin men and jockeys who appeared, volunteering to attempt to retrieve the little girl from the narrow well shaft. For two days, L.A. residents remained glued to their sets. Hundreds gathered in front of department store windows filled with TV displays, while others raced to neighbors’ houses to watch.

The cameras were still on when Paul Hanson, the physician who had delivered Kathy at birth, announced over a crackling P.A. that she had not survived the fall. Rescuers and bystanders began to cry. Viewers at home wept with them, miles away but still present thanks to the live television coverage that would redefine how Americans get their news. —M.C.

THE COMMITTED Grove Press / Viet Thanh Nguyen, University Professor and Aerol Arnold Chair of English and professor of English, American studies and ethnicity and comparative literature, explores commitment and betrayal in the sequel to his 2016 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Sympathizer.

BOYLE HEIGHTS: HOW A LOS ANGELES NEIGHBORHOOD BECAME THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY University of California Press / George Sánchez, professor of American studies and ethnicity and history, has produced an in-depth history of this dynamic, multiracial community.

D O R N S I F E F A M I LY OLU ORANGE, adjunct assistant professor of political science and director of the USC Dornsife Mock Trial Program, was named “a top lawyer of the decade” by the Daily Journal. A civil rights attorney, he is one of 18 lawyers selected for this honor from the 266,000 practicing in California.

NATHAN PERL-ROSENTHAL, associate professor of history, spatial sciences and law, was awarded a 2021–22 Shelby Cullom Davis Center Fellowship at Princeton University.

CHRISTIAN PHILLIPS, assistant professor of political science, received the Raubenheimer Faculty Award for outstanding teaching, scholarship and service within the university.

LISA PON, professor of art history, received a National Endowment for the Humanities Digital Humanities Advancement Grant, supporting her efforts to digitally reconstruct the private library of Renaissance Pope Julius II.

T S AI IMAGE CO UR TE SY OF AP/INVISION FOR THE TELE VISION AC ADEMY; © 20 20 TELE VISION AC ADEMY

ALISON DUNDES RENTELN, professor of political science, anthropology, public policy and law, was appointed to the California Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, the only independent, bipartisan agency charged with advising the president and Congress on civil rights and reporting annually on federal civil rights enforcement. She was also elected to the Class of 2023 Board of Trustees of the Law and Society Association.

ALEXANDRE ROBERTS, assistant professor of classics, was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship.

STEVE ROSS, Dean’s Professor of History, Myron and Marian Casden Director of the Casden Institute for the Study of Jewish Role in American Life and

professor of history, received the Raubenheimer Faculty Award for outstanding teaching, scholarship and service within the university.

BENJAMIN UCHIYAMA, assistant professor of history, received the John Whitney Hall Award from the Association for Asian Studies for his book Japan’s Carnival War: Mass Culture on the Home Front, 1937-1945 (Cambridge University Press, 2019).

University Professor Emeritus MICHAEL WATERMAN received the William Benter Prize in Applied Mathematics. Awarded to one individual biannually, the prize recognizes outstanding mathematical contributions that have had a direct and fundamental impact on scientific, business, finance and engineering applications.

DUNCAN WILLIAMS, professor of religion, American studies and ethnicity and East Asian languages and cultures, received a Phi Kappa Phi Faculty Recognition Award for his book American Sutra: A Story of Faith and Freedom in the Second World War (Harvard University Press, 2019).

CAROL WISE, professor of political science and international relations, received a Phi Kappa Phi Faculty Recognition Award for her book Dragonomics: How Latin America is Maximizing (or Missing Out on) China’s International Development Strategy (Yale University Press, 2020).

ERIN GRAFF ZIVIN, professor of Spanish and Portuguese and comparative literature, was elected to the Modern Language Association’s Executive Council.

Alumni News 1970s

TEE GUIDOTTI (B.S., biological

sciences, ’71) was elected a fellow in the Society of Risk Analysis; the American Association for the Advancement of Science; Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Honor Society; and the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland.

TROJANA LIT Y

Finding Magic

Endocrinologist Karen Tsai ’13 is a triple threat against COVID-19.

GARY PETERSON (B.A., political science,’72; M.S., education, ’74) earned his Ed.D. in leadership in innovation and continuous improvement from Concordia University Wisconsin in May 2021.

1980s

GLORIA BURGESS (Ph.D., speech communication, ’80), executive director of the John Maxwell Team, gave two TEDx talks in 2020 — “A Seat at the Table” and “Legacy: the Current of Life.”

1990s

MARY DRABNIS (Ph.D., chemistry, ’97) was appointed chair of the American Intellectual Property Law Association’s Patent Cooperation Treaty Issues Committee.

JENNIFER ESPERANZA (B.A., anthropology and linguistics, ’96) was promoted to professor of anthropology at Beloit College, Wisconsin.

LORI COX HAN (Ph.D., political science, ’97) is the inaugural holder of the Doy B. Henley Endowed Chair in American presidential studies at Chapman University, California, where she has been a professor of political science since 2005.

2000s

DIANA AKIYAMA (Ph.D., religion and social ethics, ’01) was ordained and consecrated as the 11th bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Oregon.

Continued on page 42.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Karen Tsai ’13 was working as a resident in internal medicine at LAC + USC Medical Center, where she got a firsthand view of the city’s rapidly worsening infection rate. Upon hearing about the dire situation her friends and colleagues in New York were facing, she knew she had to help.

So, in March 2020, Tsai and a colleague founded Donate PPE, a nonprofit aimed at amassing personal protective equipment (PPE) donations and dispersing them to hospitals and other places that needed them most. The result? Donate PPE sent face masks, face shields, gloves and other items to nearly every state in the nation, plus Uganda.

Later, the organization supplied equipment to schools, food banks and homeless shelters.

But Tsai didn’t stop there. After seeing the pandemic’s psychological effects on children during her daily work as a physician, she was inspired to create Monster Dance (Madeleine Editions, 2020), a multimedia ebook designed to explain the virus to kids. Tsai, who served as a consultant for the book, said a portion of the proceeds was donated to PPE efforts, some books were donated to children’s hospitals and some were sold at a low cost to classrooms.

One of Tsai’s former USC classmates, who works with the Television Academy on the Emmy Awards, was impressed with Tsai’s work during the pandemic and urged her and her brother — a physician who is chief medical officer of Donate PPE — to apply to present an award during the ceremony. Shocked to be chosen but happy to participate, Tsai and her brother, both in scrubs, presented the award for outstanding supporting actor in a drama series. (Winner: Billy Crudup in The Morning Show.)

Tsai says the pandemic pushed her to work outside her comfort zone, and the result was worth it.

“Don’t be afraid to ask for help. When things get rough, and people can come together, that’s when magic happens.” —M.M. Spring / Summer 2021 | 41

ALUMNI CANON place of nonwhites in broader American culture.

accepted lessons and offering new conclusions more relevant to contemporary society.

JENNIFER HALVAS (B.A., political science, ’01) was promoted to partner at Cityview, a Los Angeles-based multifamily investment management and development firm.

LINDSAY HARRISON (B.A., political science, ’00) was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers.

ONE STRANGE COUNTRY What Books Press / Stella Hayes (B.A., English, ’92) explores the themes of family, innocence and homeland in this raw and compelling debut collection of poems.

THE DARKEST GLARE: A TRUE STORY OF MURDER, BLACKMAIL, AND REAL ESTATE GREED IN 1979 LOS ANGELES Rare Bird Books / Chip Jacobs (B.A., social sciences and communication, ’85) sets his noir, true crime thriller during one of the deadliest eras in American history.

CONDITIONAL CITIZENS: ON BELONGING IN AMERICA Pantheon / Pultizer Prize-finalist Laila Lalami (M.A., linguistics, ’94; Ph.D., linguistics, ’97) asks “What does it mean to be American?” in this, her first nonfiction book that weaves together her own journey from Moroccan immigrant to U.S. citizen with explorations of the 42

A GRAMMAR OF PATWIN University of Nebraska Press / Lewis Lawyer (B.A., linguistics, ’05) offers the inaugural grammatical guide to one of California’s first languages.

ALOYSIUS THE GREAT Propertius Press / John Maxwell O’Brien (Ph.D., history, ’64) chronicles the mishaps and triumphs of an American professor working in London.

RESTORING THUCYDIDES: TESTING FAMILIAR LESSONS AND DERIVING NEW ONES Cambria Press / Jay Parker (M.A., international relations, ’85), with co-author Andrew Novo, analyzes how scholars have misinterpreted or overgeneralized historical evidence garnered from Thucydides’ work, re-examining and challenging commonly

A SHOT AT NORMAL Farrar, Straus and Giroux / Marisa Reichardt (MPW, ’98) explores issues around vaccination in this novel about the efforts of a 16-year-old girl to get vaccinated against her parents’ wishes after she contracts measles.

MARIE LARSEN (B.A., French, ’08) was named a partner of the law firm Holland & Knight LLP in New York, where she specializes in commercial litigation and maritime law.

DORRIS PANDURO (B.A., international relations, ’07) was elected to the Fairfield City Council in November 2020 to represent District 5. She is the first Latina to serve in this role.

JOSEPH PARK (B.A., biological sciences, ’10) joined the College of Podiatric Medicine at Western University of Health Sciences as an assistant professor.

THE LAWGIVERS’ STRUGGLE: HOW CONGRESS WIELDS POWER IN NATIONAL SECURITY DECISION MAKING National Institute for Public Policy / David Trachtenberg (B.A., international relations, ’78) draws on his experiences as a professional staff member of the House Armed Services Committee and as deputy undersecretary of defense for policy in this study of the executive-legislative branch dynamic.

Engagements, Marriages and Births

NERSES APOSHIAN (B.A., political science, ’14) married Kathryn Mgrublian.

LEILANI DIMOND (B.A., biological sciences, ’09; M.D., ’14) and James Chan welcomed a daughter, Zoe Moana.

RUSSELL HANDLER (B.A., economics, ’14) became engaged to Megan Cunningham.

LESLEY HOLMES (B.A., history, ’07) married ALEX HOLMES (B.A., social sciences, ’04).

The couple welcomed their first child, Seraphina May Holmes, in February 2019 and their second child, Alexander Matthaios Holmes, in 2020.

IAN LIVIE (Ph.D., history, ’10) and his wife Lana Adlawan welcomed twins Fiona Jane Livie and Graham David Livie.

LAURA RUSSELL (B.A., linguistics, ’19; B.A., communications, ’19) married CONOR McCREARY (B.M., performance, ’16).

In Memoriam

KATHI BERATAN (Ph.D., geological sciences, ’90) of Durham, NC (3/21/2021) at age 64; worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory; helped to map the surface of the planet Venus.

JOHN BOORMAN (Ph.D., economics, ’68) of Washington, DC (1/6/2021) at age 80; taught at USC and the University of Maryland before joining the International Monetary Fund.

MARY CLEAVE (B.A., mathematics, ’53) of Decatur, IL (9/12/2020) at age 92; founder Gallery 510; loved painting and ceramics.

JEREMY DAWSON (B.A., chemistry, ’20) of Carlsbad, CA (1/16/2021) at age 24; loved to travel and spend time with friends and family.

ROBERT ELFTMAN (B.A., history, ’75) of Vernon, CA (1/18/2021) at age 68; enjoyed working in his family business; involved in local church community; regularly coached or refereed his children’s sports games.

B. EDWARD HARVER (B.A., zoology, ’51) of Spring Valley, CA (1/7/2021) at age 95; served in the U.S. Navy during the Korean War; taught high school; served as a guidance counselor.

HENRY HAYDEN III (B.A., international relations, ’71) of Scottsdale, AZ (9/30/2020) at age 73; librarian at the Braille Institute and Chandler Public Library.

D O R N S I F E F A M I LY RICHARD JACOBSEN (B.A., political science, ’65) of San Diego, CA (11/14/2020) at age 77; served in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War; worked in San Diego County government as director of Social Services and deputy chief administrative officer; an avid reader and proud veteran.

ALFRED JOHNSON (B.A., international relations, ’57) of Vero Beach, FL (12/14/2020) at age 86; served as an officer in the U.S. Navy; adjunct professor at Seton Hall University; loved golf and history.

EMIL MATYAS (B.A., psychology, ’84) of Arcadia, CA (12/17/2020) at age 94; served in the U.S. Navy in WWII: loved reading on his front porch with his English bulldogs.

H E L LW A R T H P H O T O C O U R T E S Y O F U S C U N I V E R S I T Y A R C H I V E S / T R O J A N FA M I LY A L B U M ; R O S E M A N P H O T O B Y I R E N E F E R T I K

ROBERT MELBOURNE (Ph.D., history, ’96) of San Luis Rey, CA (12/24/2020) at age 91; served as a private with the U.S. Marine Corps and later as an officer in the U.S. Navy; worked on major dam and water reclamation construction projects in Boise, ID. TOM NOLAN (B.A., biology, ’77) of La Verne, CA (12/30/20); rode as “Tommy Trojan” at USC football games for many years; worked at Jet Propulsion Laboratory; volunteered with youth on Catalina Island at the USC Wrigley Marine Science Center.

CHARLES POMEROY (M.A., English, ’68; Ph.D., English, ’71) of Stanton, CA (11/4/2020) at age 85; professor at California State University, Long Beach; served in the U.S. Navy in the Pacific arena; loved to travel in his retirement.

SUSAN ROBERTSON (B.A., political science, ’62) of Los Angeles (9/12/2020) at age 79; active volunteer and board member on numerous charities; loved to travel with her husband.

OM RUSTGI (Ph.D., physics, ’60) of Williamsville, NY (4/24/2019) at age 82; professor of physics at SUNY Buffalo State for 32 years; constructed a “thin film” lab at SUNY and endowed an annual $2,000 physics scholarship.

NICOLETTE SCHWARTZ (B.A., international relations, ’83) of Scottsdale, AZ (11/22/2020) at age 60; member of the Gamma Phi Beta sorority; loved to travel; involved with numerous charitable organizations.

ZRELDA SEALEY (B.A., sociology, ’56) of Los Angeles, CA (12/6/2020) at age 98; taught in the Los Angeles Unified School District for 35 years; longtime member of the Wilfandel Club House; supported multiple charities.

ARTHUR TUVERSON III (B.A., history, ’67) of Las Vegas, NV (9/3/2020) at age 74; loved traveling, spending time with his family and playing football.

WILLIAM ZIDBECK (M.A., international relations, ’69) of Imperial Beach, CA (3/14/2021) at age 88; served in the U.S, Navy, earned his aviator “Wings of Gold” and rank of captain; taught high school biology; founded the Imperial Beach branch of the Optimists Club and Friends of the Imperial Beach Library.

SUBMIT ALUMNI NEWS FOR CONSIDERATION ONLINE AT dornsife.usc.edu/alumni-news.

Information may be edited for space.

Listings for the “Alumni News” and “In Memoriam” sections are compiled based on submissions from alumni and USC Dornsife departments as well as published notices from media outlets.

dornsife.usc.edu/alumni-news

R EMEMBER ING

University Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering-Electrophysics and Physics and Astronomy ROBERT HELLWARTH, died on Jan. 20 in Santa Monica, California, of complications from COVID-19.

Hellwarth — a Renaissance man who pioneered laser technology, sat in on accordion with Irish punk band The Pogues at a Los Angeles party and once asked Andy Warhol to sign a can of Campbell’s tomato soup — died at age 90.

Hellwarth was a beloved mentor, universally appreciated for his kindness and good humor.

Despite his modest nature, he advanced world-altering scientific frontiers, including optics and quantum electronics, making an early mark during Southern California’s aerospace boom by inventing and demonstrating “Q-switching.” This breakthrough supercharged the usefulness of the laser by boosting its power a millionfold, opening the gates to the field of high-power lasers.

Hellwarth joined USC in 1971, helping to build its physics and electrical engineering departments for the next half century.

His research focused on understanding and developing materials for nonlinear optical devices.

At USC, he developed a new, now widely employed method for generating the time-reversed version of a light wave, a process often called “optical beam phase conjugation.”

He also invented widely used laserspectroscopic techniques.

“Bob was an inventor in the fullest sense of what that means,” said Emeritus Professor of Physics and Astronomy Hans Bozler. —S.B.

Passionate Urbanist

Geographer Curtis Roseman pioneered his department’s renowned “Downtown L.A. Walking Tour.”

Emeritus Professor of Geography Curtis Roseman died Dec. 13, 2020, from a brain injury in Rock Island, Illinois.

He was 79.

A specialist in population geography, Roseman researched the migration and settlement of ethnic populations. He held a special interest in the way ties between people and places affected decisions about migration. He had secondary research interests in the historical geography of the Upper Mississippi River, downtown Los Angeles and the neighborhood around USC’s University Park campus.

Roseman was born and raised on the Mississippi River in Moline, Illinois, sparking a lifelong passion for the river and particularly its bridges. He joined USC Dornsife in 1985, serving as chair of the Department of Geography from 1985 to 1992. The department has since closed. Roseman was a lover of big cities and L.A. became his “lab” for teaching and research. He also pioneered the department’s highly entertaining “Downtown L.A. Walking Tour.”

One of his many passions was crisscrossing America on U.S. Historic Route 6, photographing and documenting the highway’s constantly changing story. Comparing his beloved, but less well-known, Route 6 to the iconic Route 66, Roseman coined the phrase, “Half the digits and twice the kicks.”

“Curt was a passionate urbanist, and the most supportive and encouraging of colleagues,” said University Archivist Claude Zachary, who collaborated with Roseman on several of the geographer’s books on USC and L.A. —S.B. Spring / Summer 2021 | 43

TROJA N COMM U NIT Y

COLOSSAL ACHIEVEMENT USC Dornsife graduates from the classes of 2020 and 2021 were able to celebrate safely in person in May, as they received their degrees at a masked and socially distanced ceremony at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum — the first time a USC commencement ceremony has been held there since 1950.

USC PHOTO/MICHAEL BAKER, GUS RUEL AS, DAVID SPR AGUE; C AMPUS PHOTO BY MIKE GLIER

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Spring returns to USC's University Park campus, along with a renewed sense of hope and purpose, as jacaranda trees blossom in front of the Amy King Dundon-Berchtold University Club of USC on West 34th Street.

Spring / Summer 2021 | IBC

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