Trojan Family Magazine Spring 2012

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uscTrojan Spring 2012

F A M I L Y

INTERSECTIONS:

THE LEGACY OF SOL PRICE

Adventures in Chinese Cinema

It Is Rocket Science

Tales From the Tribunals

We create

possibilities for

young people who

Be part of their dream.

DREAM.

Contribute to the legacy.

Every contribution transforms a student’s tomorrow.

USC Latino Alumni

A S S O C I AT I O N

Get involved. Call us at (213) 740-4735.

A legacy of the USC Mexican American Alumni Association since 1973

latinoalumni@usc.edu || www.usc.edu/latinoalumni

inside [ FEATURES ]

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The Sol Price Legacy

The Wild, Wild East

Rocketeers of Troy

Tales From the Tribunals

By Allison Engel

By Evelyn Jacobson

By Robert Perkins

By Gilien Silsby

Named for a retail revolutionary keen on social justice, USC Price is as interdisciplinary as its namesake.

USC alums use their East-West background and entrepreneurial prowess to trailblaze China’s cinematic frontier.

Undergraduates set their sights on making USC the first school to send a student-made rocket into space.

USC law graduates tackle the world’s most harrowing cases – genocide and war crimes committed in Cambodia, Rwanda and the Balkans.

[ COLUMNS ]

[ DEPARTMENTS ]

02 Editor’s Note

04 Mailbag

Extraordinary examples of USC’s reach toward greatness

07 Trojan Beat

03 President’s Page

USC’s new strategic vision, 10 national championships and more

The Trojan Family does so much to make the world a better place.

12 Support Report

52 Last Word Identify the seminal moments, machines and makers in the history of rocketry.

A boost for cancer care and a sweet gift

32 Keck Medical Center of USC USC organ transplant physicians participate in the ultimate act of selflessness.

37 Family Ties Connecting Trojans worldwide

42 Class Notes

On the cover: Illustration by Brett Affrunti U S C T R O JA N FA M I LY M AG A Z I N E

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editor's note

The quarterly magazine of the University of Southern California

Determination and Reach

EDITOR

Lauren Clark SENIOR EDITOR

ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO, in the Feb. 24, 1912, edition of the Los Angeles Times, sportswriter Owen R. Bird first dubbed USC’s athletes “Trojans.”

He later explained that, since USC at the time staunchly faced bigger and better-equipped teams, “it seemed to me that the name ‘Trojan’ fitted their case.” A century later, the nickname has evolved beyond the athletic field to characterize the determined spirit of one of the world’s top learning institutions.

Emboldened by that spirit, the Trojans are aiming even higher. In this issue, Elizabeth Garrett, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, discusses USC’s new strategic vision outlining an ambition to be, in her words, “the greatest research university of this century.” The document calls out one of USC’s unique strengths – connecting the individual to the world – as a key pathway toward the goal of greatness.

Evidence of that strength appears throughout the pages of this issue: in stories on the Trojan Family’s influence on public policy, its involvement in China’s booming film industry, its participation in international human-rights tribunals and its attempt to actually travel beyond this world – into space. These are extraordinary, but not atypical, examples of USC’s reach.

Fittingly, USC’s reach starts at home in Los Angeles. For the second year, the university will host the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, a celebration of the written word that is projected to attract 150,000 book lovers of all ages to the University Park campus on April 21-22. Literary panels, readings and signings will feature hundreds of authors, while myriad performances take place on outdoor stages. Many Trojans will be among the highlighted names. This year also will feature a Keck Medical Center of USC Health Pavilion providing health screenings, as well as an assortment of food trucks and cooking demonstrations on Cromwell Field and a book drive that will benefit students in the USC Family of Schools in South Los Angeles.

LAUREN CLARK

Diane Krieger MANAGING EDITOR

Mary Modina ASSOCIATE EDITOR

Shirley S. Shin

ART DIRECTOR

Sheharazad P. Fleming DESIGN AND PRODUCTION

Russell Ono Stacey Torii

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Allison Engel, Evelyn Jacobson Timothy O. Knight Matthew Kredell, Ross M. Levine Janice Rhoshalle Littlejohn Robert Perkins, Sara Reeve Gilien Silsby, Lauren Walser Suzanne Wu ADVERTISING MANAGER

Mary Modina | modina@usc.edu CIRCULATION MANAGER

Vickie Kebler

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U S C U N I V E R S I T Y C O M M U N I C AT I O N S

president's page

BY C. L. MAX NIKIAS

In the area of globalization, USC’s efforts are vast, ongoing and diverse. Over the past 10 years alone, we have hosted global conferences in a number of key cities, from Tokyo to Taipei, and last fall’s conference in Hong Kong was our most successful ever. Time and again we heard, “No one does it like USC.”

P H OTO B Y S T E V E C O H N

President Nikias enjoys spending time with students.

USC currently enrolls students from 125 different nations.

USC is so effective in this area because our community has deep international roots. Among American universities, we have the largest number of international students – due in no small measure to the outstanding strength of our graduate programs. We’re proud of this distinction and the attention it draws every year, but this headline doesn’t highlight the exceptional work our community does every single day, all over the globe. I can assure you: In profoundly transformative ways – and often with quiet determination – our faculty, staff, students and alumni do so much to make the world a better place.

Last December, for example, a cadre of engineering undergraduates traveled to a remote village in Honduras as part of USC’s Engineers Without Borders program. They installed a water pump, advancing a larger sustainable project, to bring water to hundreds of people without damaging the environment. Their impact will be permanent, relieving young girls from the laborious task of carrying water from a distant source.

Meanwhile, USC’s Institute for Global Health continues to partner with Operation Smile, an international nongovernmental organization that provides reconstructive surgery to children born with facial deformities, particularly cleft lip and cleft palate. There is a tremendous need for these procedures in low-resource settings around the world, and Master of Public Health students at the Keck School of Medicine of USC have traveled to study these conditions and investigate ways to alleviate their effects. They’ve pursued plans to build a permanent clinic in Ethiopia, examined the burden of the cleft palate in Guwahati, India, and helped gather DNA samples and other research information in the Congo.

We can find similar examples at the USC Marshall School of Business. With support from the Society and Business Lab, founded by professor Adlai Wertman, one student spent last summer in India. She developed software for HIV/AIDS organizations that work with women and children, enabling them to receive important emails and text messages about their medical treatment. The experience has opened this student’s eyes: She is now interested in working abroad and will study Punjabi, thanks to a Critical Language Scholarship through the U.S. Department of State.

The USC Sol Price School of Public Policy, meanwhile, has established special international labs for our students. These provide that crucial, clinical link between academic learning and professional practice – all in a foreign setting. Students work in multidisciplinary teams to tackle a common problem, tailoring their skills to meet the unique needs of the location, from China to Brazil to the United Kingdom.

In this issue, you’ll read about other examples, as well. You’ll learn about USC alumni who are partnering with filmmakers in China as they work to build relationships that will benefit the film industries of both countries. You will also read about the International Human Rights Clinic, the USC Gould School of Law’s newest clinical program, that brought alumni to Cambodia, Tanzania and the Netherlands to work on human rights advocacy with judges at international tribunals.

Taken together, this impressive suite of examples reflects the remarkable work the Trojan Family does all over the world. These contributions don’t always grab headlines, and much of this work slips by without applause. But as president, I’m privileged to see the university’s larger tapestry of contributions, to appreciate the breadth of our community’s goodwill and to see the scope of its impact. I am truly in awe, and I know we all warmly cheer our fellow Trojans, both for their commitment to bettering our world and for the honor they bring back to us. ●

U S C T R O JA N FA M I LY M AG A Z I N E

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mailbag “We Are Addicts” is an excellent and wellwritten article. I learned a lot. Is it possible to be addicted to good articles like this?

David Schlosberg MA ’07 S A N TA M O N I C A , C A

Has addiction been studied as an allergy or sensitivity? If we are allergic or sensitive to some environmental things, such as grasses, weeds, etc., can addictive substances contain similar compounds that could be tested for sensitivity? Just as we test for allergens, can we test for addiction to certain substances, such as alcohol?

Janine Sanders

Understanding Addiction

MARTINEZ, CA

[Has] any research been done on the effects of music therapy on addiction? Since the insula seems to function as an emotional control/perceptual center with regard to music, as well as with regard to addiction issues/ substances, I am wondering if the use of music therapy in addiction might be helpful.

Thank you for this wonderful article.

Erika L. Roth DPT ’00 S A N TA A N A , C A

The article (“We Are Addicts,” Winter 2011, p. 20) gave me a real out-of-body perspective on all the addictions I have and share with others in my life. I felt it easy to continually make poor choices, live as a victim of circumstance and give my power away. I have already been on this journey, but something in your article made everything just click. It might have been my favorite line, “Bad choices compromise our very ability to make choices.”

Jorge Zepeda ANAHEIM, CA

My 26-year-old nephew is an alcoholic. He briefly tried treatment that was court ordered but is still drinking and in a complete downward spiral. I am hoping he decides on his own he needs treatment. This is a heartbreaking disease.

Maribeth Bersani MS ’78

There is a factual error in the sidebar of the addiction article. [I]vermectin is commonly used in veterinary medicine as the main ingredient in oral heartworm preventatives, such as Heartgard. Medications commonly applied topically to the backs of cats and dogs, such as Frontline and Advantage, contain pesticides, such as fipronil and imidacloprid. They do not contain ivermectin.

David Sogg MM ’82 P I T T S B U R G H , PA

A L E X A N D R I A , VA

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WE WELCOME YOUR FEEDBACK. SUBMIT YOUR LETTER TO THE EDITOR AT tfm.usc.edu/mailbag

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spring 2012

My mom was an active sober member of AA for about 50 years until her death. She always said that “alcoholism is a disease,” and “you are never cured” but always “in recovery.” I went to many AA meetings with her and met people from all walks of life – none

PHOTO BY JEFFREY HAMILTON/GETTY IMAGES

USC professor Antoine Bechara replies: It is generally agreed that nonconventional methods [of controlling addiction] have a way of boosting the neural systems involved in self-control. In the case of music therapy, the reward from music could help substitute for the reward from drugs by engaging the same neural systems, including the insula. Some people have done it with success, but this method has not really been addressed seriously from a scientific perspective.

wanted to be addicted. I hope and pray that researchers in this expanding field can help those in need avoid the terrible social outcomes for addicts, their families and society.

Bob Whitney MA ’66 WILLITS, CA

Troy Camp Love Your story on Otis Healy (“For the Love of Troy Camp,” Winter 2011, p. 16) inspired me to donate to USC for the first time, not just monetarily but with my time as well. He truly embodies the five attributes of an ideal Trojan.

Arin Nazarian ’05 SAN FRANCISCO, CA

Lost in Translation I was disturbed by Liz Segal’s mention of international student Dilyara Kenzhegaliyeva’s “pretty, moon-shaped face” (“Gained in Translation,” Winter 2011, p. 26). Ms. Kenzhegaliyeva deserved to be discussed

in the context of her learning experience at USC, not identified as “a walking advertisement for her native Kazakhstan” through her beauty and tendency to dress fashionably. Although Segal contrasts this against Kenzhegaliyeva’s ironic donning of “a greasy hard hat” while in the field, the author still contextualizes her subject against her appearance, which would be bizarre and unacceptable if she were male.

Liz Willis-Tropea MA ’03, PhD ’07 S A N TA M O N I C A , C A

Politics Left and Right While Edward G. Robinson (“Little Caesar and the McCarthyist Mob,” Autumn 2011, p. 16) did everything he could to get the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) to “clear” him – claiming that he had been “duped and used” by the Communists – it is clear from his autobiography that he didn’t think he had done anything wrong.

To state that the government drove Robinson

out of the business is a misrepresentation. It was private individuals and groups who were responsible for the attacks on Robinson. It was HUAC that cleared him. Of course, he had to admit that he had been wrong.

Jimmie Hicks MA ’63 LOS ANGELES, CA

Pats & Pans Thank you for referencing John Waters’ “Odorama” idea (Trojan Beat, “Divine Trash,” Winter 2011, p. 8). The scratch-andsniff cards for Polyester were a definite improvement over earlier attempts to provide audiences with a whiff of the “real thing” on the screen. USC visiting professor Arthur Mayer regaled his cinema students with stories about his 1933 attempts to deliver odors at his New York (Paramount’s) Rialto Theatre. The problem was that said smells lingered for days afterward.

Bill Younglove MS ’73 LAKEWOOD, CA

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trojan beat ››

THE AUDACITY OF USC

Those of us who work on this campus depend on the support that we receive from the Trojan Family. In some cases that’s financial support, and that’s what the Campaign for the University of Southern California is all about. But it’s also the psychic support that we receive when we get feedback from alumni, or when a patient’s life is transformed because of the work that our doctors and scientists do on the Health Sciences campus, or when a community is changed because of the work that our students do as interns, or that our professors do when they’re studying ways to solve some of the greatest problems facing our society.

Provost and senior vice president for academic affairs Elizabeth Garrett discusses the university’s new strategic vision.

USC HAS LAUNCHED a new strategic vision

P H OTO B Y C H R I S S H I N N

that outlines the leading role the university will play in what it calls “the Age of the Pacific – an environment that is far more global, urban and integrated than ever before.”

“USC Strategic Vision: Matching Deeds to Ambitions,” the latest of four core documents that have guided USC’s growth since 1994, reflects the broadest participation to date. It is the result of 18 months of faculty-led discussion and input from the entire Trojan Family.

Many alumni participated through forums, an interactive website and direct communication with the Office of the Provost.

USC provost and senior vice president for academic affairs Elizabeth Garrett spoke with USC Trojan Family Magazine’s Lauren Clark about the development and goals of the strategic vision.

How does the new strategic vision compare to the three previous strategic plans?

The current vision’s ambitious goals would not be possible without the strong foundation that the prior plans built. You can see many themes that cut across the university’s strategic plans throughout the years: rigorous undergraduate education, global connections, our commitment to the local community and our association with Los Angeles – the great city that looks forward to the emerging economies of the Pacific Rim, Latin America and Asia.

But you will see some differences in the new strategic vision. It makes more explicit the importance of interdisciplinary work because of the consequences it has in society. That

READ USC’S STRATEGIC VISION AT www.provost.usc.edu/sv

may be seen, for example, in some of the research we do in the health sciences and through the translational research made possible by great clinical care. The strategic vision also differs a bit from its predecessors in that it puts more emphasis on great Ph.D. programs. And there’s more explicit emphasis on great faculty – retaining the transformative faculty we already have, adding more and creating new transformative faculty within our ranks as we nurture and mentor our junior professors. Faculty keep a great university moving forward to ever higher achievements of academic excellence.

What does the strategic vision mean for the Trojan Family at large? The strategic vision really is a product of a conversation with the entire Trojan Family. We had a series of forums, and a number of our alumni participated in those forums. Membership in the Trojan Family is a lifelong connection to USC, and that’s identified in the document as something that makes us unique.

Our communication with alumni was an opportunity not just for them to tell us their vision for their beloved university, but also for us – those who teach and do research on this campus – to tell them how far the university has come over the past 20 years and how audacious our ambition is now. USC’s ambition is to be the greatest research university of this century. The only way we reach that goal is with the support of the Trojan Family, as well as with the hard work of our faculty and students. No one group is sufficient. All are necessary.

How will alumni and other Trojan Family members be involved in implementing the new plan? The Trojan Family serves as an important messenger of USC’s ambitions.

They communicate it to other people in their neighborhoods who are considering where to send their kids to college and to people in their business communities or to foundations considering where to invest their money. This university has been successful both because its alumni are so dedicated and because we get tremendous support from people who didn’t go to school here. If you live west of the Mississippi and you want to be involved in a private institution that is permanent, influential, consequential and international, you have two choices: Stanford and USC. USC is going to appeal to people who appreciate the breadth of our offerings – we have a myriad of professional schools, plus a great liberal arts college, strong athletics and tremendous creative work and arts. So there’s this critical mass to make a difference in the world.

Where do you see USC in the next 10 years? We will have a greater number of transformative faculty. We have many, but we do not have enough to match our ambition. We will have a number of top Ph.D. programs, which will train the next generation of the professoriate. USC will be the place that people emulate, not just with respect to education, but also with respect to the kinds of results we produce – whether in the lab, in our scholarship, in our creative work or in our teaching. You will hear our name throughout the world. ● U S C T R O JA N FA M I LY M AG A Z I N E

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Distinguished Professor MIDORI of the USC Thornton School of Music received the World Economic Forum’s Crystal Award for her 20-year commitment to community engagement worldwide.

Previous winners include cellist Yo-Yo Ma and dancer Mallika Sarabhai.

Human Genome: Now in 3-D! Seems like everything is coming out in 3-D nowadays. That goes for the human genome, too. Using a new technique, a group of USC scientists led by Lin Chen and Frank Alber of the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences plotted out the location of each of the hundreds of millions of contacts DNA forms with itself and used computer algorithms to model the results in 3-D. The tiny and monstrously long DNA strand plays a central role in the functions of almost all human cells, and flaws in its structure are thought to cause various disorders. One of the most likely applications of this research will be to identify potentially cancerous cells based on structural defects in the cell’s genome, Chen says.

Come September, there’ll be a new school near the University Park campus. In December, USC Hybrid High School, affiliated with the USC Rossier School of Education, received a five-year charter from the Los Angeles Unified School District. Open year-round and geared for students at risk of dropping out, Hybrid High aims to graduate 100 percent of its high-need students.

What comes to mind when you think of Elizabeth Taylor? Violet eyes? Eight marriages?

For USC cultural critic M. G. Lord, it’s women’s rights. Drawing on unpublished letters and scripts, films and interviews, Lord spells out Dame Liz’s liberating influence in her new book, The Accidental Feminist: How Elizabeth Taylor Raised Our Consciousness and We Were Too Distracted

by Her Beauty to Notice (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2012).

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international students enrolled at USC during 2010-11, the highest count of any American institution of higher education for the 10th year in a row

HYBRID HIGH

LIZ, THE LIBERATOR

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8,615

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full-tuition scholarships enabled over the next four years, thanks to the Stamps Family Charitable Foundation’s $3.8 million gift to USC

A USC delegation hit the ROAD TO BRAZIL AND CHILE in December to build ties with top universities, corporations and policymakers in South America.

NEVER FORGET The 1994 Rwandan Tutsi genocide took more than 800,000 lives in less than 100 days. In a significant expansion of its Visual History Archive, the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education has launched a new effort to preserve and share video testimonies from Rwandan survivors and witnesses. It will add at least 50 testimonies this year.

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JANE HARMAN, former California congresswoman and current director, president and CEO of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, was elected to the USC Board of Trustees in December.

65 days USC scientist Katrina Edwards spent at sea in search of life hidden beneath the seafloor

consecutive NCAA titles nabbed by the USC men’s water polo team

THE LUPUS GENE There is no cure for lupus, and the underlying cause is not fully understood. But thanks to a study by an international team of researchers led by the Keck School of Medicine of USC’s Chaim O. Jacob, we now know the gene mutation that’s involved. The results were detailed in the Dec. 26 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Horror fans of John Carpenter’s classic Halloween can now view CAPTAIN VOYEUR, the director’s student project available at the Hugh M. Hefner Motion Picture Archives.

TRIAL BY COMBAT-STRESS Combat-related post-traumatic stess disorder is notoriously difficult to treat, but virtual-reality therapy developed at USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) offers new hope. With an $11 million, four-year grant from the U.S. Department of Defense, ICT researchers have partnered with doctors at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/ Weill Cornell Medical Center and the Emory University School of Medicine to test the efficacy of virtual-reality exposure therapy and prolonged imaginal exposure therapy. May the best therapy win.

String Madness An unprecedented celebration of the cello built to a crescendo in Los Angeles as major music institutions came together on March 9-18 to present the inaugural Piatigorsky International Cello Festival, named in honor of the late USC faculty member Gregor Piatigorsky. USC Thornton School of Music, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, The Colburn School and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra hosted hundreds of established and emerging cellists from around the world in a 10-day blitz of orchestral and chamber music concerts, master classes and interactive workshops.

THE EBB AND FLOW OF GLUCOSE A team led by USC neuroscientist Alan Watts identified for the first time a biochemical signal that helps regulate the amount of glucose in the blood. The discovery of enzymes known as mitogen-activated protein kinases could lay the foundation for better treatments for type 1 diabetes.

A collaboration between USC and local agencies led to the unfurling of 14 works of BANNER ART on 200 light poles around USC and Exposition Park depicting life in South Los Angeles.

250 home games USC Trojan Marching Band director Arthur C. Bartner has attended at the helm of The Spirit of Troy

Jovan Vavic aims for the record books with 10 national championships … and counting.

JOVAN VAVIC SEEMS AN UNLIKELY candidate to become the most successful athletic coach in USC history. He grew up in the former Yugoslavia, didn’t come to the United States until he was 23 years old and graduated from UCLA. After leading the men’s water polo team to its fourth consecutive NCAA title in December, Vavic has won a total of 10 national championships (seven with the men’s team, three with the women’s team), trailing only Dean Cromwell (12 in track and field) and Rod Dedeaux (11 in baseball) on USC’s all-time list. Both of those Trojan legends have athletic fields named after them at the university.

Already the winningest active coach, Vavic could join Cromwell atop the USC record books by the end of the year with the highly ranked women’s water polo team. Coaching both the men’s and women’s teams gives him two shots a year at a championship, and his teams always are in contention. On three occasions, most recently in 2010, he led both teams to titles in the same year.

“Jovan’s passion for success in everything he does with his teams, in and out of the pool, is staggering,” says USC athletic director Pat Haden. “It’s hard to imagine how difficult it is to win an NCAA championship, and to win four in a row is just phenomenal.”

Vavic brings an intensity to the pool from his days playing in Yugoslavia, where water polo was one of the most popular sports. He began playing at age 8, won four junior national championships on his club team and then played for six years in the top division, or what he calls the “NBA of water polo” in Europe.

“To me, it’s very interesting and challenging to figure out how to out-coach the other team and develop players,” Vavic says.

“Coaches here are more respected than in Europe. Guys like John Wooden and Vince Lombardi and John McKay here at USC are greatly respected in the community.”

It always was a dream of Vavic’s to come to the United States and experience the American way of life, like he had seen in Hollywood movies. He arrived in 1984 and for

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three years worked at restaurants and enjoyed Los Angeles. But he missed water polo.

His return to the sport was as a coach at Palos Verdes High School. Within a few years, he began classes to pursue a bachelor’s degree in history while serving as an assistant coach at UCLA. When the head coach retired shortly thereafter, Vavic was one of three finalists interviewed to take over the Bruins. He didn’t get the job, so he finished up his degree at UCLA and sent out résumés to every other university with water polo in Southern California.

HE GOT A CALL FROM longtime USC coach John Williams, who offered him an assistant coaching position. In 1995, Vavic launched the USC women’s water polo program from scratch and was promoted to co-head coach of the men’s team. He took full control of the men’s team when Williams retired in 1999.

Jovan Vavic, third from left, takes a victory leap with the four-time-champion men’s water polo team.

In his 17 years as head coach for the Trojans, Vavic has been honored nine times as Coach of the Year by the Association of Collegiate Water Polo Coaches. He’s had 11 USC players compete in the Olympics.

“He’s really intense to play for,” says senior Peter Kurzeka, the leading scorer of the 2011 men’s team. “He’s always on edge and doesn’t sleep in the latter parts of the season. I think each year we have the hardest-working team because we’re always backing him.”

Vavic has turned USC water polo into a family affair. His son Nikola is one of the stars on the men’s team as a sophomore, while daughter Monica just started on the women’s team. He and his wife, Lisa, have two other children, 12-year-old Marko and 11-year-old Stefan, who both play water polo, too.

His teams also have excelled academically.

In its unprecedented run of four consecutive national titles, the men’s team has maintained a perfect graduation rate each year.

Vavic, who graduated with honors from UCLA, says wryly, “I tell them if a dumb foreigner with a lack of knowledge in English can go out there and get a 3.5 GPA, there’s no reason they can’t do so.”

MAT THEW KREDELL

PHOTO BY DAN AVILA

A New Legend in USC Sports

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[ SUPPORT REPORT ]

A Boost for Cancer Care USC WILL FURTHER ENHANCE its cancer

care facilities, thanks to a $15 million donation from the Kenneth T. and Eileen L. Norris Foundation.

The gift will support construction on the USC Health Sciences campus of a new outpatient clinic building that will be named the Norris Healthcare Consultation Center. The facility will feature leading-edge technology and house multidisciplinary clinics focused on cancer care, including areas for radiation therapy, imaging and infusion therapy.

The Norris Foundation’s longstanding support for the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center and USC Norris Cancer Hospital has helped to create one of the premier cancer centers in the nation. The hospital is one of only a few facilities in Southern California built exclusively for cancer research and patient care. With this latest gift, the foundation reaffirms its continuing commitment to making cancer a disease of the past.

“We’ve seen how cancer patients are treated much more on an outpatient basis than they used to be,” says Harlyne Norris, trustee and past chairman of the Norris Foundation. “This new facility will transform the way people with cancer are treated today and in the future. We’re very privileged to be able to help keep USC on the cutting edge of cancer treatment.”

The $15 million donation from the Norris Foundation is the lead gift toward the new building. The gift will be augmented by additional philanthropic support that will be raised as part of the $6 billion Campaign for the University of Southern California.

“We are very grateful to the Norris family and foundation for their unwavering support of our fight against cancer and for their longstanding commitment to USC,” says USC president C. L. Max Nikias. “Harlyne Norris has been an exemplary trustee and key adviser to me. This generous gift will bolster our ability to set new standards in cancer care, not only in Los Angeles but also in our region and beyond.”

The overall strategy for the expansion and development of clinical, research and educational space on the Health Sciences campus was set out in a master plan approved by the USC Board of Trustees last January. This long-range strategy looks forward to 2035, and, over that time span, space devoted to patient care is planned to nearly double – from just over one million square feet to more than two million. This dramatic expansion represents a measure of the university’s investment in the future health of the people of greater Los Angeles.

USC officials note that this latest gift from the Norris Foundation is evidence of the growth and impact of the newly named Keck Medical Center of USC and its commitment to improving and expanding ser-

vices for patients.

“The Norris gift will provide a world-class outpatient facility that matches the worldclass talent of our physicians, nurses and staff, and the care they provide to our patients,” says Stephen Gruber, director of the Norris cancer center.

Outpatient care for cancer patients currently is provided in the Norris Cancer Hospital in a building designed in the late 1970s.

Moving ambulatory cancer care, along with other special services, to the new Norris Healthcare Consultation Center will facilitate the delivery of the highest level of patient service in a dedicated, state-of-the-art clinical building.

“Over 30 years ago, Kenneth Norris Jr. provided the visionary gift and inspiration to assist USC in securing the National Cancer Institute grant to establish one of the nation’s original NCI-designated comprehensive cancer centers and hospitals – in his words, ‘to make cancer a disease of the past,’ ” says William Corey, trustee and medical consultant for the Norris Foundation. “The trustees continue to honor that commitment.”

The Norris Foundation is a not-for-profit foundation established in 1963 and based in Long Beach, Calif. It has an extensive history of giving to USC, beginning with the philanthropic work of Eileen and Kenneth True Norris, who funded the Norris Medical Library, the Eileen L. Norris Cinema Theatre and the Norris Dental Science Center at USC. This latest gift of $15 million brings the foundation’s total giving to USC to nearly $200 million.

“State-of-the-art cancer research and treatment is incredibly important to the Keck School of Medicine’s mission of medical education, research discovery and patient care,” says Carmen A. Puliafito, dean of the Keck School. “We are confident this new facility will fortify USC’s position as a trusted leader in health care and medical research.”

The Keck Medical Center of USC includes Keck Hospital of USC and the cancer hospital, as well as USC’s 500-physician faculty practice. ●

From left, Peter Jones, Stephen Gruber, Harlyne Norris and William Corey

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$15 million Norris gift funds new clinic on Health Sciences campus.

Sweet!

Valerie and Ronald Sugar create a $5 million endowment to fund the dean’s chair at USC Libraries.

HOW CAN YOU HAVE A LIBRARY without a chair? Impossible as it seems, this was the case at USC Libraries until January, when USC trustee Ronald Sugar and his wife, Valerie Sugar MS ’72, donated $5 million to endow a dean’s chair. The Sugars’ gift is the first to support a named chair in the libraries and the largest to endow a dean’s chair in the history of USC. “This is an extraordinary moment for our libraries and for me personally,” says Catherine Quinlan, dean of the USC Libraries, who was formally installed as the first holder of the Valerie and Ronald Sugar Dean’s Chair on Jan. 25. “With this gift, the Sugars are helping the libraries support research excellence and innovative scholarship throughout the entire university.”

Among the activities the endowment will support are collections acquisitions and the development of inventive digital collections.

It also will support the Dean’s Challenge Grant, a competitive program that encourages innovation and provides seed money for pilot projects with the greatest potential to transform library services, improve collections and create an excellent research experience at USC. “Great libraries fuel the work that takes place at great research universities,” says Valerie Sugar, who graduated from USC’s library school, which ceased operation in the 1980s.

“Through our gift, we hope the USC Libraries continue to support a vibrant community of critical thinkers, seekers of knowledge and engaged world citizens for many generations to come.”

“We live in an era of rapid technological change,” Ronald Sugar adds. “By endowing the dean’s chair, we wish to ensure that USC will be able to recruit and retain insightful leaders, such as Dean Quinlan, in perpetuity and provide the resources to support their vision and capitalize on opportunities that arise in the future.”

The Sugars both have close ties to the university. After graduating from USC with a master’s in library science, Valerie Sugar

USC Libraries dean Catherine Quinlan, left, with Valerie and Ronald Sugar

held librarian and software user interface development positions at the Aerospace and RAND corporations. She joined the Friends of the USC Libraries Board of Directors in 2005 and has served on a Friends committee charged with increasing awareness of library services and collections – particularly the unique, rare books and other special collections that distinguish USC among its peers.

Ronald Sugar is chairman emeritus of Northrop Grumman Corp. He joined the company in 2001 and served as chairman and CEO from 2003 until his retirement in 2009. He holds directorships on the boards of Apple Inc., Chevron Corp., Amgen Inc.

anship this year, USC will be able to provide a widely diverse cohort of students with a signature USC educational experience, no matter where they live in the world.

“The USC Libraries are of central importance to the university’s academic mission,” says USC president C. L. Max Nikias. “This historic endowment gift from Valerie and Ronald Sugar ensures that USC Libraries will continue to lead the nation – especially in the building of innovative digital collections and resources.”

Quinlan became dean of the USC Libraries in 2007. An internationally recognized authority on information access and digitization, she has published extensively on library administration, change management and strategic planning, and the information-seeking behavior of students in physical and virtual library spaces.

Before joining USC, she helmed the library system at the University of British Columbia, where she launched a $74 million prototype for academic information management and dissemination.

Quinlan holds an MBA from Memorial University of Newfoundland, a master’s in library studies from Dalhousie University and a bachelor’s in music from Queen’s University.

“World-class library faculty, staff and research collections are vital contributors to USC’s continuing rise on the global stage,” Quinlan says. “The Sugars’ generosity will help ensure that our libraries are able to support our talented students and transformative faculty at USC. The impact of this gift will be significant, enduring and broadly felt at USC and beyond.” ●

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“Great libraries fuel the work that takes place at great research universities.”

– VALERIE SUGAR

and Air Lease Corp. A member of the National Academy of Engineering, Sugar currently holds the Judge Widney Professorship in Management and Technology at USC. He joined the USC Board of Trustees in 2003 and currently chairs its Academic Affairs Committee. He earned a Ph.D. in engineering from UCLA in 1971.

USC Libraries comprise 23 libraries and information centers, as well as the USC Digital Repository. Among the oldest private academic research collections in California, they constitute one of the most innovative libraries in the nation. With the creation of an online master’s degree program in librari-

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INTERSECTIONS: THE LEGACY OF SOL PRICE Named for a retail revolutionary committed to social justice, the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy is as interdisciplinary as its namesake.

By Allison Engel | Illustrations by Brett Affrunti IT IS HARD TO IMAGINE a more inspirational person to have a school of

public policy named after him than the late Sol Price. A brilliant innovator who revolutionized the retail business with his “low margin” warehouse stores FedMart, Price Club (which later merged with Costco) and PriceSmart, Price was charismatic and magnetic, with a firm moral compass and a lifelong commitment to social justice.

Last Nov. 29, when the USC School of Policy, Planning, and Development (SPPD) became the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy, Dean Jack H. Knott observed, “It’s rare to find a benefactor whose life mission is so closely aligned with our school.”

“We do research that makes a difference in society,” says Knott, who himself studies economic regulation and deregulation. “We research health care and transportation, train people to become real estate developers and urban planners and to run for political office. Our faculty members regularly give important testimony, such as before congres-

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sional committees or to a World Bank committee on housing issues.”

The school is one of the best in the nation, ranked seventh among 269 schools of public affairs. Its many notable alumni include the current U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis MPA ’81; California Supreme Court Justice Joyce Kennard ’71, JD ’74, MPA ’74; Chris Van Gorder MPA ’86, CEO of Scripps Health in San Diego; and Bob Champion MRED ’96, founder and president of Champion Real Estate Co., one of the first companies to create innovative mixed-use project development.

When he became dean in 2005, Knott led a push to improve undergraduate education, and enrollment numbers have risen accordingly over the past six years. The curriculum has been revised, and all faculty members – no matter how senior – are required to teach in the program.

The school offers master’s degrees in public policy, health policy and management, public administration, urban planning and real estate development. Remarkably, Sol Price, from his base in San Diego, was involved in all these areas during his careers as a lawyer, entrepreneur, public policy adviser, real estate pioneer, philanthropist and political activist. Says his son, Robert, chairman of the Price Family Charitable Fund, “The only time he was unhappy was when he didn’t have enough projects on his plate.”

USC president C. L. Max Nikias calls the $50 million naming gift a game-changer. “With the Price family’s extremely generous gift, we will take the school to an even higher level of excellence, ensuring that it becomes the undisputed, international leader in the field of public policy,” he says.

SINCE DECEMBER 2009, when Sol Price died, his son Robert had been

thinking about a way to honor him. The Price family has multiple ties to USC. Sol, his wife, Helen, and their grandson David all graduated from the university. Sol earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy in 1936 and a bachelor of law degree in 1938. Helen graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English and history in 1937.

While attending his son David’s graduation from SPPD in May 2011, Robert was struck by the diversity of the students. He was particularly touched by the recognition of SPPD staff member Carmen Gomez, who was receiving a diploma after 22 years of effort, along with her son, Allen, who was receiving his degree from the school at the same time. “There is a stereotype that USC is a place of privileged people,” Robert says. “I think USC has changed a lot, and the people I saw are serious young people who are really motivated to do something and are coming from all walks of life.”

Robert and his wife, Allison, also were impressed with their son’s years as a Trojan. “I was very happy with his overall experience – the people he met, his classmates and the relationships he developed,” Robert says.

Nikias and Knott discussed with Robert how the Price family could honor Sol’s legacy by “sustaining research that would have a national impact on urban development and social policy,” says Knott. Knott went to San Diego and toured City Heights, a long-struggling neighborhood in which the Price family – through its nonprofit, Price Charities – has made a sustained investment in comprehensive redevelopment.

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The philanthropy’s City Heights involvement includes housing and commercial development, community- and school-based health centers, a recreation facility, a senior community center and schools with programs for students to travel outside their neighborhood.

The enterprise perfectly embodies the USC policy school’s mission to attack societal problems from multiple angles.

The family at first shied away from the idea of naming the school after Sol Price. “My grandfather didn’t like being in the limelight,” David Price says. “He was a kind of under-theradar guy.” But upon reflection, David and other family members decided that this public legacy would reflect Sol’s many positive works and inspire others. As Robert Price put it, “When I discussed the gift with my brother, Laurence, we agreed that, beyond the naming, it’s a relationship with USC in a field we care about.”

David, who has been teaching environmental education classes and heading kayaking expeditions for a leadership organization since graduation, hopes that USC can expand on what is happening in City Heights and bring some of its community-building successes to Los Angeles and elsewhere.

To that end, USC is launching the Sol Price Center for Social Innovation, a collaboration between the school and Price Charities that will promote sustainable and replicable models of community development in lowincome urban areas. The center will provide internships and other firsthand opportunities for students to work in urban neighborhoods.

“We hope our practical experience on the ground at City Heights will mesh with university research,” Robert says. “We’d like to take conceptual work and put it into application, much the way [the Keck Medical Center of USC] combines university research with a teaching hospital.”

This practical testing is critical, as the world is becoming more and more urban, thanks in no small part to immigration trends, Robert notes. “We think this gift will not only enhance the overall reputation of the school, but see it play a bigger role in the national dialogue related to urban issues.”

SOL PRICE SPENT HIS LIFE WORKING ON URBAN ISSUES, combining his firm belief

in social justice with a principled approach to business. Early on, he admired lawyer Clarence Darrow, who argued the Scopes trial and fought for the rights of others. That led Sol to law school, and, as a lawyer, he took his fiduciary responsibility to clients very seriously, says Robert. This carried over to his retailing

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career, “where he lived his life as a fiduciary for his customers and his employees, and for those in life who didn’t have the best,” Robert adds.

Sol learned these lessons from his parents, Jewish Russian immigrants with limited educations who, as labor socialists, helped organize female garment workers in New York’s Lower East Side. “My grandmother was a socialist until her dying days,” Robert notes. “She was very proud of her son’s business success, but her roots told her she wasn’t sure about big business.”

Robert, who is writing a book about his father titled Sol Price: Retail Revolutionary, explains that Sol, early in his law practice, enjoyed helping clients with business problems. A visit with a client to a Los Angeles

membership department store, Fedco, in 1953, proved pivotal. Rebuffed when they asked Fedco to expand to San Diego, Sol, his client and other investors started their own membership store, FedMart, in an empty warehouse owned by Sol’s mother-in-law.

FedMart was primarily self-serve and offered significant discounts. This was not business as usual, since the prices of many goods then were protected by fair trade laws.

FedMart simply refused to stock those items.

The store was an immediate success, and Sol began spending so much time there that he gave up his law practice and became head of the corporation. He turned out to be an

exceptional leader and mentor. As Jim Sinegal, one of his early hires who went on to become CEO of Costco, said at Sol’s memorial service: “I did not learn a lot – I learned everything, everything I know. That was the impact he had on me.”

Sol opened retail stores in underserved communities and respected the rights of all. When a FedMart store opened in San Antonio in 1957, segregation laws there required separate snack bars for blacks and whites. A friend of Sol’s pointed out that the law applied only to snack-bar seating, so Sol installed a single snack bar without seats where all customers could be served together.

He went on to sell FedMart (which then fired him), start Price Club, see it through its merger with Costco in 1993, form public real estate company Price Enterprises, create one of the first real estate investment trusts and launch PriceSmart, which operates Costcotype stores in Latin America.

And that doesn’t include the pro bono work Sol did for Jewish nonprofits and his work in helping establish the Weingart Foundation for longtime confidant (and major FedMart shareholder) Ben Weingart. As a lifelong Democrat who supported the American Civil Liberties Union and whose office was a must-stop for any Democrat running for national office, Sol also counted among his friends many Republicans. “He could have wonderful, warm relationships with people who were politically polar [opposite] to him,” Robert says.

In later years, in addition to his work with the City Heights Initiative, Sol had a hand in national policies as a board member of the Urban Institute and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which advocates for low-income Americans. During his tenure at the center, the earned income tax credit was inaugurated, helping many out of poverty.

As his son sums up in his soon-to-be-finished book: “Sol Price was the epitome of intelligent planning, innovation and a willingness to take risks. While he cared about giving a good return to shareholders, Sol cared deeply about the people he was serving – he genuinely hoped that he could make their lives better.”

What could be a more fitting legacy to inspire future Trojans as they shape our urban landscape and influence public discourse? ● Allison Engel, former director of communications at USC, is the associate director of the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities at USC. If you have questions or comments on this article, go to tfm.usc.edu/mailbag

1. FedMart, Kearny Mesa, San Diego, 1960 2. Sol Price with Miss Navajo and the Navajo tribal chief at FedMart, Window Rock, Ariz., 1969

3. Sol Price with son Robert Price at Price Club, The New York Times Magazine, 1985 4. Sol Price, late 1940s

5. Opening day of FedMart, Sports Arena Plaza, San Diego, June 29, 1971 6. FedMart Gasoline Station, 1973

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NAMING RITES The USC Sol Price School of Public Policy has had several organizational structures and names over the years, but a strong public service component has been present from the start. In fact, the school got its start by public demand. In the mid-1920s, groups of reform-minded women and city officials, concerned over government corruption and the lack of civic participation in Los Angeles, called on USC president Rufus B. von KleinSmid, suggesting that the university begin a school to address these problems. The result, in 1929, was the USC School of Citizenship and Public Administration, which included classes in urban planning. The university later formed a separate school devoted to urban planning. In the late 1980s, the two schools went by the names the USC School of Public Administration and the USC School of Urban Planning, spawning programs in public policy and health administration, and real estate development, respectively. They merged in 1998, creating the USC School of Policy, Planning, and Development. That name remained until last November, when the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy was born.

In addition to its academic programs, the school houses 11 interdisciplinary research centers focused on the study of governance issues, urban development and sustainability, and social policy.

GOVERNANCE ISSUES Bedrosian Center on Governance and the Public Enterprise Center on Philanthropy and Public Policy National Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events (CREATE) URBAN DEVELOPMENT AND SUSTAINABILITY Center for Economic Development Center for Sustainable Cities Lusk Center for Real Estate National Center for Metropolitan Transportation Research (METRANS) SOCIAL POLICY Population Dynamics Research Group Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics Sol Price Center for Social Innovation Tomás Rivera Policy Institute

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[ ADVENTURES IN THE WILD, WILD EAST ]

PIONEERING THE NEW

usc alums are using their east-west backgrounds and entrepreneurial prowess to build a bridge between hollywood and the booming chinese film industry.

CHINESE CINEMA

FEW AMERICAN MOVIEGOERS may have heard

of Let the Bullets Fly, but Hollywood insiders certainly are aware of this action-comedy starring director-actor Jiang Wen and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon heartthrob Chow Yun-Fat. Early in 2011, it became China’s largest grossing domestic film ever, taking in roughly 700 million yuan, or $134 million, at the box office and unseating Aftershock, director Xiaogang Feng’s earthquake action picture that brought in a record $105 million the year before.

It’s only a little more likely that American audiences have heard of The Flowers of War, an epic drama featuring Christian Bale and a lot of English dialogue. It became a 2012 Golden Globes nominee for best foreign language film and China’s top grossing domestic film for 2011, earning $83 million in 17 days. And Hollywood movers and shakers are sitting up and paying attention.

That’s because figures like these, while not at the level of chart-topping U.S. blockbusters,

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are revolutionary in China. Over the past two and a half years, the Chinese film industry has experienced an unprecedented boom. Currently, China ranks as the third largest movie market in the world, behind North America and Japan.

By 2015, it is expected to skip ahead to second place, behind the United States. China also is the world’s third largest film producer, after the United States and India, respectively.

Dig deeper into industry statistics and the numbers continue to impress: In 2010, China’s box office grosses soared 64 percent to reach $1.5 billion in tickets sold. This past year, they grew another 30 percent, reaching about $2 billion. That’s still less than one-fifth of Hollywood’s $10.2 billion gross for the same year, but the trend is clear. Domestic audiences are no longer the main revenue source for American films; nearly 70 percent of box office revenue for North America comes from overseas. And considering its rapidly advancing middle class of 190 million potential moviegoers, China

promises to be the biggest new market for Hollywood films.

Meanwhile the phrase “coming to a theatre near you” takes on new meaning when you factor in the current construction boom in Chinese movie houses. In 2011, China added 2,800 screens – that’s a rate of about eight per day – bringing the total to more than 9,000, compared to 2010’s 6,200 movie screens in about 2,000 cinema complexes. That number is projected to hit 60,000 before 2020. By comparison, the United States had slightly fewer than 40,000 screens at the end of 2009, according to the National Association of Theatre Owners.

Taken together, these facts present a new world of opportunity for American filmmakers blessed with the pioneering spirit, the crosscultural fluency and the business acumen to trailblaze the Chinese cinematic frontier.

David U. Lee ’97, MBA ’04 is a good example. A producer and entertainment

P H OTO B Y A N D R E W W AT S O N / G E T T Y I M A G E S

By Evelyn Jacobson

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SEE RELATED CONTENT AT tfm.usc.edu/spring-2012/

chinese-cinema

entrepreneur who has straddled the Chinese and U.S. film business for seven years, Lee has spearheaded several high-profile Englishlanguage, Chinese-themed productions. He produced the 2011 comedy-thriller Inseparable, starring Kevin Spacey; served as executive producer of the 2010 Jackie Chan flick The Spy Next Door, orchestrating its same-day release in China and the United States; was co-executive producer of Forbidden Kingdom (2007), a martial-arts movie starring Chan and Jet Li, and Shanghai (2010), a mystery thriller set in the 1940s; and ran a $285 million Asian film fund for The Weinstein Company, a major American studio.

It helps immensely that Lee has a foot in both worlds. Born in Taipei, Taiwan, he grew up in Hacienda Heights, Calif., with parents who encouraged him to speak Chinese. But he points to a trip to Shanghai during his MBA program at the USC Marshall School of Business as a career-shaping experience: The school’s Pacific Rim International Management Education trip first exposed Lee to the possibilities of working in China. “I was fascinated by Shanghai – the energy and how vibrant it was. I said to myself, ‘I have to go to China,’ ” he recalls.

USC is well positioned to give graduates like Lee a leg up in China’s booming cinema industry. In addition to its location at the gateway to the Pacific Rim, USC boasts a strong commitment to China through academic research, cultural conveners (such as the USC U.S.-China Institute and the East Asian Studies Center at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences) and numerous exchange programs with Chinese institutions (such as the Communication University of China and Fudan University). It’s hard to quantify how many Trojans are now or will soon be making a splash in Chinese cinema.

In China, as in America, the entertainment industry draws new talent not only from film schools, but also from a range of academic disciplines, including engineering, finance, law, journalism and music, to name a few. USC maintains top-rated programs in all of these fields. And it also is notable that, for the 10th

year in a row, USC in 2011 led the nation in the number of foreign students it attracts (8,615), by far the largest group of them being Chinese (1,951).

Crouching tigers For Lee, who currently heads his own production company, Leeding Media, with offices in Beijing and Santa Monica, Calif., there’s a strong sense of being in the right place at the right time. “The great thing about being an early mover is you’re setting the rules and setting the standards – doing really fun, exciting stuff,” he says. “But it’s really difficult, too,” notes the man who advised China Film Group Corp. on the structure of the co-production deal for The Karate Kid remake starring Jackie Chan and Jaden Smith. “There’s a lot of hand-holding and trying to get the two sides [Chinese and American] to understand each other better.”

But the good far outweighs the bad.

Looking at the horizon, Lee sees a stampede

“It’s clearly the tipping point.

Box office will continue to grow, and, increasingly, foreign companies will realize they have to have a piece of that.”

– D AV I D U . L E E ’9 7, M B A ’0 4

David U. Lee, center, with actor Kevin Spacey, left, on the set of Inseparable in China

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approaching. “It’s clearly the tipping point. Box office will continue to grow, and, increasingly, foreign companies will realize they have to have a piece of that,” he says. “Over the next five to 10 years, I think all mini-majors and major companies should have a China operation. You can’t miss out on the opportunities over there.”

Of course, the Chinese government is well aware of Hollywood’s interest and sets rules to protect its market, such as strict import quotas that limit revenue-sharing foreign films to 20 releases plus 14 large-format or 3-D films each year, with only 25 percent of profits going back to the overseas studio.

For China’s political leadership, the budding film sector is seen not just as an engine for economic growth, but also as a tool for wielding influence on the international stage.

The government’s stake in the industry – it’s a major investor in film production, distribution and multiplexes – is part of the latest FiveYear Plan, the Communist Party’s blueprint for economic development.

“Film is a great way to promote Chinese culture globally and establish the soft power of China,” observes Chinese culture scholar Shaoyi Sun MA ’97, PhD ’99. “The government realizes that it needs culture products to establish its image globally. This is why there are so many initiatives,” says the Shanghai native, who teaches in USC Dornsife’s East Asian Studies Center (EASC).

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But America has something the Chinese government desperately needs: expertise.

According to USC Dornsife political scientist and China expert Stanley Rosen, the government has the money to finance major films, but it lacks the infrastructure and know-how to consistently make high-concept blockbusters, such as the Harry Potter film series or Avatar.

So it is trying to learn everything it can from the U.S. film industry.

“The problem now is that China is trying to do a lot of things at the same time,” says Rosen, who directs EASC. “They’re trying to domestically and internationally build up their soft power by exporting films. They’re also trying to build their brands to compete with the U.S. – and film is one aspect of that.

[But] the most important thing for film [in China] is politics and political socialization, and that will trump anything else.”

As the Chinese film industry takes off, the demand for seasoned professionals goes hand in hand with the demand for experienced film educators to train the next generation of homegrown filmmakers.

An example of this is Lora Yan Chen MBA ’95, now a visiting professor at Beijing Film Academy, China’s most prestigious film school and Chen’s undergraduate alma mater, where she studied cinematography before coming to USC for her graduate degree in business.

She counts among her film school classmates Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige and Li Shaohong –

members of China’s elite “Fifth Generation” of filmmakers, a term that refers to the 1982 class of the Beijing Film Academy. On the school’s faculty since 2008, Chen teaches a course on the U.S. film industry in the school’s management department, preparing future Chinese agents, producers, distributors and exhibitors to work globally.

Her knowledge comes from years of trial and error. Through her company, China Media Consulting, Chen has helped clients large and small, including Walt Disney Imagineering and Paramount Parks, navigate the Chinese market. Chen’s most notable accomplishment was persuading the Chinese government to lift its ban on MGM in 2000 after the studio had offended with its release of Red Corner, a 1997 film starring Richard Gere as an American businessman framed for murder by top Chinese officials.

After living in the United States for 19 years, Chen recently started spending the bulk of her time in Beijing, where business is booming and the demand for her skills is high. “There’s money and energy, but in terms of people able to handle Western business, China is still on a learning curve,” she says.

Courses like Chen’s increasingly are repackaged as weekend seminars for industry professionals. These workshops attract high-ranking executives from investment and media companies keen to understand how the global film market functions and how the English-lan-

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Movie stills from Color Me Love, left, and The Law of Attraction, center, right

guage industry compares to the local industry, according to Jason Squire, a USC film professor who has lectured at workshops at the Beijing Film Academy and the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business in Guangzhou, China. “There is a sense of exploration and discovery in terms of media and an appetite for knowledge about the way Hollywood does business,” says Squire, whose popular text, The Movie Business Book, has been translated into Spanish, Japanese and, most recently, Chinese.

Chen says she would like to teach a similar course at USC on the Chinese industry, bringing the information loop full circle.

Ticket to the top As with many creative industries, numerous possible routes can lead to success in Chinese cinema. No single credential is required. USC is preparing China-focused film professionals not only through its cinematic arts and business administration programs, but also through various other academic programs, including ones offered through the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

“We are training a lot of young Chinese students in our communications management track and strategic public relations track,” says Tom Hollihan, a communications professor at USC Annenberg. “They are going back and assuming positions in Chinese entertainment companies.”

The business is attracting American expats

as well. One example is journalism graduate Zachary Franklin ’07, currently a publicity specialist at Beijing-based YOU On Demand, the first national pay-per-view and video-ondemand platform in China. This service, in partnership with Warner Bros. for film content, has the potential to reach 200 million cable households and may be part of a solution to the country’s rampant piracy problems. Franklin has spent the last four years in China, along the way earning a master’s degree in economics at Fudan University in Shanghai. “It’s about being in the right place at the right time,” he says. “It seemed to me that getting a degree in economics and then working in a country undergoing the amount of change that’s going on in China was the best opportunity.”

Another successful expat is cinematic arts graduate Christopher Bremble MFA ’96, a writer-director who had already “made it” in Hollywood when he started Base FX, a visual effects and post-production company in Beijing. Capitalizing on a demand in the Chinese market for Western-style visual effects, the business has grown from 12 employees in 2006 to a current staff of 225. While Base FX has done award-winning work on U.S. projects – Bremble won an Emmy in 2010 for effects on the epic war saga The Pacific, and his company received its second Emmy in 2011 for work on HBO’s critically acclaimed series Boardwalk Empire – its bread and butter is the domestic Chinese industry. Seventy percent

of the company’s projects are homegrown, including effects for such renowned directors as Zhang Yimou, Lu Chuan, Chen Kaige, Jia ZhangKe and Gordon Chan.

Other USC programs have been springboards for China-based film professionals as well. USC Viterbi School of Engineering graduate Rong Chen ’91, for example, combined his unique skill set as an electrical engineer with an MBA and years of operations experience, along with deep knowledge of the American and Chinese markets, to run the business side of Perfect World Pictures. A spin-off of Chinese game developer Perfect World, the production and distribution company created one of the country’s biggest critical successes in 2010, the whimsical The Piano in a Factory. Its most recent release, a romantic comedy called Love Is Not Blind, opened at No. 1 at the box office in China in November. It is the country’s most successful romantic comedy to date, grossing $55 million in its first five weeks – an impressive return on investment for a film that cost $2 million to make and market.

And proving that the Trojan Family is alive and well in China, Chen recently signed fellow USC grad David U. Lee, the aforementioned producer, to develop and produce movies for Perfect World Pictures, primarily for the domestic market.

The expats have an edge: “For Chinese companies, Hollywood is more sophisticated in

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Yin and yang Meanwhile, Chinese film companies are trying to boost the quality of homegrown films to extend their reach. “It’s a way to balance the influence of Hollywood and a way to compete and catch up,” says USC-based culture scholar Shaoyi Sun. “They realize Hollywood as a global industry is relying on the international market, and Chinese cinema would like to have more power on the global scene.”

At a USC film industry summit in 2010 focusing on co-productions and collaborations between Hollywood and China, “[the Americans] were falling over themselves to thrust their business cards into the hands of the Chinese reps,” recalls Clayton Dube, associate director of the university’s U.S.China Institute, which hosted the summit.

“But they were all very disappointed because the central message [from the Chinese] was, ‘We will not fund anything that will not make [back] our full investment in China. We do not want to speculate on global gross. We want a firm idea of what the films will do in China.’ ” Co-production is the buzzword on both sides of the Pacific. It represents one of the best ways for filmmakers in China and Hol-

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lywood to attain their mutual goals while skirting the country’s stringent import rules.

Encouraged by their government, Chinese companies team with overseas firms to capitalize on Hollywood’s knowledge and create projects that can appeal to both domestic and global audiences. And because a co-production is considered a domestic film in China, it can garner 47 percent of box office receipts for the overseas partner.

Last October EASC and USC Annenberg’s Norman Lear Center co-sponsored a two-day UCLA-USC conference on globalization of the Chinese entertainment industry. Marty Kaplan, Lear Center founding director and Norman Lear Professor of Entertainment, Media and Society, moderated a lively discussion about co-productions, with the experts on his panel predicting more co-productions and more Chinese investors looking for entertainment projects to invest in. “What makes co-productions so attractive is that they’re a way to end-run the Chinese quota of importing 20 foreign films a year,” Kaplan says.

“International co-production is the norm rather than the exception, and it’s the future in terms of filming and subject matter,” says Mark Jonathan Harris, a three-time Oscar-winning documentarian and Distinguished Professor at the USC School of Cinematic Arts (SCA).

With that logic in mind, he and USC Univer-

M O V I E P O S T E R S C O U R T E S Y O F D AV I D U. L E E

every way in this industry, and there’s a certain prestige in working with Hollywood – it’s branding and perception,” Chen says.

si sity Professor Marsha Kinder, a noted culture th theorist and global cinema scholar, launched a Chinese-American documentary exchange program. Now in its fifth year, the program p pairs film students from USC and the Comp m munication University of China, challenging them to create and produce a short docuth mentary on the topic of their choice in just m six weeks. si “The pitfall of co-production – and what people want to avoid – is something that p bbecomes mediocre and weird because it’s trying to appeal to two cultures,” says screenwriter Simon Sun MFA ’02. “The problem is the S script loses its meaning, and the film bombs sc in both places.”

A Beijing native who works in both the United States and China, Sun wrote The Door U (2 (2007), one of the first thrillers released theaatrically in China. “There’s a real demand for ccommercial films with a good cast and a good st story, but the problem with Chinese stories is th that they are shallow. There’s no back story, no psychology. If they want the film to travel, it must go deeper,” Sun says.

But government intrusion in the form of censorship is a real stumbling block. State censors must approve all film scripts in China before a permit is issued to start production.

With no rating system comparable to the one in the United States, films are expected to screen for audiences of all ages. Sex, excessive violence and themes that cast the Communist Party or Chinese government in a negative light are banned. Also off-limits is anything set during the Cultural Revolution, which often leads filmmakers to produce historical epics or action movies. A film also can be banned after it’s already made.

“Someone could spend a great deal of money on a film and find out at the last minute that it’s going to be banned,” SCA dean Elizabeth M. Daley told the Financial Times while in Hong Kong for USC’s Global Conference last fall. “I hope, for the sake of China, that as a culture we will begin to see this loosen up.”

With his understanding of both Chinese and American cultures, Sun feels that he’s in a good position to break through – creating a story that works both for China and the international market. Currently, Sun is working with veteran producer Bill Kong (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) to adapt the Wachowski Brothers 1996 hit film Bound for the domestic Chinese audience. In his version,

P H OTO C O U R T E S Y O F C H R I S B R E M B L E ; P H OTO C O U R T E S Y O F B E N E R W E I J I

the story takes place in 600 A.D. Independent producer Ben Erwei Ji MBA ’03 sees co-production as a good strategy for entry into the China market, but he knows firsthand how difficult it is to produce films that will succeed internationally. Ji has produced several films over the past three years in Beijing: Gasp (2009), featuring American actor John Savage, Color Me Love (2010) with Joan Chen and The Law of Attraction (2011).

All did pretty well in the Chinese market, but none has received theatrical release in the United States.

“It’s very hard to be accepted in the international market,” Ji says. “I believe that if you have a strong concept and style, [a film] should do very well in China and internationally. But it’s a tough job. Looking through all the movies that could work on both sides, only Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hero, and Kung Fu Hustle did well. Many companies are trying to find the right project, including the big producers and Hollywood stars. It’s very difficult to figure out.”

Theatrical box office is tremendously important in China because the ancillary revenue streams, such as DVD releases, are deeply diminished by piracy – a factor of the Chinese marketplace that hampers the industry.

Savvy producers like Ji have responded by

developing other sources of revenue, such as product placements.

With a growing consumer economy and increasing brand consciousness, Chinese companies are looking for international placement for their products in both Chinese and Hollywood films – a service Ji’s company, Angel Wings Entertainment, provides. In Iron Man 2, Ji placed China’s Semir Brand clothing, with Scarlett Johansson and Robert Downey Jr. both donning the casual wear in the film.

“Product placement is just beginning, and it’s becoming a hot topic for advertisers and agencies in China,” Ji says. “The companies care more about the business the movie will [generate] in China, because the domestic market is big enough. It can give the Chinese brand a big enough push to win a lot of Chinese consumers.”

Give this growing film sector some time, and the productions these inventive Trojans help create may no longer be like Let the Bullets Fly or The Flowers of War – obscure to all outside China but Hollywood cognoscenti.

They may instead be as familiar and as irresistible to Middle America – and to the rest of the world – as the Harry Potter films or Avatar. ●

“There’s money and energy, but in terms of people able to handle Western business, China is still on a learning curve.”

– L O R A YA N C H E N M B A ’9 5

If you have questions or comments on this article, go to tfm.usc.edu/mailbag

Emmy award-winning writer-director Christopher Bremble MFA ’96, left, started Base FX, a visual effects and post-production company in Beijing. Ben Erwei Ji MBA ’03, right, has helmed several China-U.S. co-productions and placed a Chinese clothing brand in Iron Man 2.

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[ USC’S SPACE PROGRAM ] Black Rock Desert, Nev., 2010. USC’s student-run Rocket Propulsion Laboratory launched the Silver Spur 3, its highest- and fastest-flying rocket to date. The students have built a new rocket that they hope to launch into space this spring.

ROC KETEERS OF TROY Undergraduates set their sights on the thermosphere as they prepare to launch the world’s first student-made rocket into space.

BY ROBERT PERKINS

T

HIS SPRING, A SMALL GROUP of

starry-eyed undergraduates hopes to make USC the first school to send a student-built rocket into space.

The handful of students who comprise the USC Rocket Propulsion Laboratory – a wholly student-run organization operating out of a workshop in the Rapp Engineering Building on the University Park campus – will take a hand-built, custom-designed rocket, appropriately named Traveler, out to the Nevada desert and propel it 100 kilometers into the sky – into space, that is.

If they get the Federal Aviation Administration clearance needed for the launch, if the rocket launches successfully, if it goes as high as they have calculated it should and if the onboard GPS units that are supposed to track its altitude do not malfunction, then the Rocket Lab students will have made history.

That’s a whole lot of “ifs.” But when you’re dealing with rockets, nothing is ever certain.

The very existence of the Rocket Lab is the somewhat improbable result of students with a dream meeting faculty with the faith – and resources – to help make that dream come true.

“I kind of see divine providence in the cre-

ation of the Rocket Lab,” says Ian Whittinghill ’07, MS ’08, one of its founding members.

While most undergraduates spend their freshman year just trying to get their bearings, Whittinghill arrived in fall 2003 with a ridiculously ambitious plan already mapped out: He intended to put a student-built rocket into space by the time he graduated.

He had something of a head start. His father, George Whittinghill, has spent his entire career in rocket propulsion. And the founder of Whittinghill Aerospace LLC, in Camarillo, Calif., had inspired his son to pursue a similar path.

Ian Whittinghill also received encouragement and guidance from Dan Erwin, chair of the Department of Astronautical Engineering at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering.

Erwin agreed to act as faculty adviser for the nascent rocket club, which would nonetheless remain entirely student-run.

“Whether or not he believed our dream was actually possible, he encouraged us to try for it,” Whittinghill says.

Erwin – along with colleagues Mike Gruntman and Joseph Kunc – submitted a proposal for funding to then-dean of engineering C. L.

Max Nikias. Nikias, now university president, responded by providing the Rocket Lab team with its own workspace and $160,000 to cover equipment costs.

“For the dean to entrust a sophomore undergrad with those kinds of resources, I am still floored with his trust and generosity,” Whittinghill says. “That’s one of the reasons I love USC.” In fall 2005, with the funding secured, Whittinghill met a freshman with similar background, experience and drive.

Like Whittinghill, David Reese ’09 had an interest in rockets nurtured from an early age by key individuals – namely his father, a mechanical engineer, and Robert Ause, his high school chemistry teacher at St. Margaret’s Episcopal School in San Juan Capistrano, Calif., who taught him how to mix propellant.

“He let me test-fire motors on the football field,” Reese recalls.

By the time he got to USC, Reese had been mixing his own propellant for three years and was capable of building a functioning rocket motor.

“I was very, very fortunate that Ian had done a lot of the legwork in terms of funding,” says

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much work was involved.

Almost every semester sees one or two launches or static tests of a new rocket engine.

Students toil long hours in the lab, especially in the weeks preceding a launch or test.

Sarah Hester, a senior from Yorba Linda, Calif., who is team leader for propulsion and also for logistics, spends about 40 to 50 hours a week in the lab when the team is preparing for an imminent launch – that’s on top of classes.

Of the 50 or 60 current members, a core group of 10 to 20 does the bulk of the work, says Alec Leverette, a senior from Houston who is the lab’s co-team leader for operations and global design.

Often, these core members head straight to the lab after classes and stay until the small hours of the morning – if they leave at all. The lab comes equipped with a cot for all-nighters.

“My friends have become Rocket Lab, and the Rocket Lab guys have all become my friends,” says Bill Murray, a senior from Lenexa, Kan., who is the other co-team leader in operations and global design.

BEYOND UNITING like-minded students and

allowing them to pursue their passion, the lab also looks great on a résumé.

“The Rocket Lab is run by students just bound for glory,” says Erwin, the astronautical engineering chair.

ATK, a Fortune 500 aerospace and defense company headquartered in Arlington, Va.,

hired one former lab member without even interviewing him – solely on the strength of his résumé and ATK’s favorable impression of the lab. When Erwin first told company representatives about the Rocket Lab, they “were terribly wide-eyed,” he says.

Other former team members have ended up at such big names in the aerospace industry as SpaceX, Boeing and Raytheon.

“It’s been fantastic. Rocket Lab has gotten me almost every job I’ve ever had,” says Hester, who has interned at Edwards Air Force Research Laboratory, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center and Blue Origin LLC. “People really like to see the hands-on experience. They also like to see that I’m pursuing my passion.

They eat it up a lot.”

At USC Viterbi, the program has spawned several spin-offs.

Around the time that Whittinghill was setting up the Rocket Lab, three key researchers from the Astronautics and Space Technology Division at USC Viterbi – Erwin, Kunc and Gruntman – were looking to create a center where students could get much-needed, real-world experience to prepare them for the space industry.

Recruiters “had been unhappy because they were getting graduates who were not tech savvy,” says Kunc, professor of astronautics.

“The idea was to create a program in which students are building hardware hands-on.”

The trio recognized Whittinghill’s Rocket

P H OTO S B Y R O G E R S N I D E R . O P E N I N G PA G E : P H OTO C O U R T E S Y O F U S C R O C K E T P R O P U L S I O N L A B O R ATO R Y

Reese, who now is pursuing a Ph.D. in aeronautics and astronautics at Purdue University.

“I got there, and it was like, ‘We have money, let’s build rockets!’ ” Nikias’ faith was justified. Within the Rocket Lab’s first academic year, its initial cohort of students – led by Whittinghill and Reese – had purchased or built the necessary equipment: a mandrel for making carbon-fiber cylinders, an oven to cure those cylinders and a big propellant mixer.

To show the university just how serious they were, the students built their first rocket at a frantic pace – in about two weeks, according to Reese – and launched it in May 2006.

That rocket, dubbed Del Carbon, remains one of the lab’s triumphs. It has flown three times, reaching a maximum altitude of 21,500 feet at speeds of up to Mach 1.4. It now hangs proudly from the ceiling of the lab.

Del Carbon, like the team’s later rockets, burns a fuel known as 7210. The rubbery mixture is 72 percent ammonium perchlorate and 10 percent aluminum (hence the name, 7210). It is similar to the fuel that powered the Space Shuttle’s solid rocket boosters. To mix the propellant, the team used a standard dough mixer you might find in a pastry shop.

About a dozen people showed up to help during the Rocket Lab’s debut. As word got out about the group, each semester brought more new faces – though only about half would stick around once they realized how

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Lab plan as a good start for creating just such a program.

So, while the bulk of the $160,000 that had been awarded by USC Viterbi went to buy equipment for the lab, a portion was used in 2006 to begin supporting other space-related initiatives – including plans to develop student-built microsatellites and a student-built lunar lander. These projects now are humming along at the school’s Space Engineering Research Center.

BUT FOR ALL ITS SUCCESS over the past six-

and-a-half years, the Rocket Lab has yet to complete its original mission of reaching space.

“It’s a goal I always thought we could accomplish while I was a student,” says Whittinghill. “Every project was inching us closer.”

Whittinghill completed his undergraduate degree in 2007 and earned his master’s degree in aerospace engineering from USC the following winter.

His dreams for the Rocket Lab still unrealized, he moved on to join his father’s company.

He now works as chief designer alongside the man who started it all for him. “We get to do what we love – together,” the younger Whittinghill says.

Meanwhile back at USC, the highest altitude that the lab has achieved is 60,000 feet, with a rocket named Silver Spur launched in October 2011. That’s just over 18 kilometers, nearly 82 kilometers shy of the goal. (The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale established the Kármán line, an altitude of 100 km, as the beginning of space. At this altitude, Earth’s atmosphere becomes too thin for an airplane’s wings to generate lift, with an abrupt increase in atmospheric temperature and interaction with solar radiation.)

Even so, the students remain confident they can send a rocket to the edge of space. The paperwork, Hester says, will be the trickiest part of the operation. “The technology has been around for a while,” she says. “It’s making sure that people know you know what you’re doing – that you’re not going to blow people up.”

They have competition. Other student teams – notably those at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, the U.S. Air Force Academy and California State University, Long Beach – have comparable programs with the same goal in sight.

Whittinghill and Reese have remained in close contact with the latest generation of the

Rocket Lab team, confident that USC will win the student space race.

“I know that moment is just going to make me so incredibly proud,” Whittinghill says.

“I can’t put words on it. I’m going to be even prouder, if that’s possible, to be a Trojan.”

The last group of students to have worked alongside Whittinghill and Reese now are seniors, bound inexorably for graduation. It is a sign of how committed the students are to the lab that they devote significant energy to passing on their knowledge to the younger members, so that no ground is lost.

Every Monday, the elder Rocket Lab members host a lecture series to discuss what they’ve learned over the past few years – composites, flight dynamics, whatever oral tradition needs to be passed on to the new team.

“Space has been the main objective to this point, and we’ve solved a lot of problems to get here,” says Leverette, who plans to study aerospace propulsion in graduate school.

Once the Rocket Lab fulfills its original purpose of sending a student rocket into space, the group will find a new goal.

“We have a couple of things in mind,” Murray says. He mentions the possibility of turning the Traveler rocket into a small, suborbital payload vehicle.

Currently, Traveler has enough thrust to carry 150 pounds to a height of greater than 100,000 feet, Murray says. Though that’s nowhere near enough power to put a satellite in orbit, it’s more than enough thrust to put an instrument pack into a ballistic suborbital trajectory, pushing it into space for a five- to 10-minute window to gather data.

Ultimately, the decision will almost certainly rest with Rocket Lab’s younger members, the freshmen and sophomores who listen intently at the Monday night lectures and have their own dreams and plans for space missions.

Whether or not the team’s rocket actually reaches space, USC is assured of setting a record – as the first school to launch both student-built rockets and student-built satellites this year, conducting boundary-pushing research historically reserved for government and private corporations.

As Murray puts it, with no hint of self-doubt or humility, “We want to make a USC space program.” ● If you have questions or comments on this article, go to tfm.usc.edu/mailbag

AERONAUTS OR ASTRONAUTS? The Department of Astronautical Engineering is a fairly new development at USC Viterbi – and a fairly unusual one. Created in 2004, it remains one of the few programs to offer astronautical engineering degrees. Most comparable programs offer aerospace engineering or aeronautical and astronautical engineering, which are not strictly space-focused but concentrate on aircraft as well.

The department’s clear dedication to spacecraft, coupled with its potential for myriad hands-on experiences, is a huge draw for potential students, according to faculty member Joseph Kunc.

Opposite, from left, seniors Alec Leverette, Sarah Hester and Bill Murray in the Rocket Lab workshop in the Rapp Engineering Building Above, from left, Miles Huang ’11 and freshman Jake Hunter examine fins on the Traveler rocket.

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LAWYERS

without BORDERS Three USC Gould graduates grapple with the world’s most harrowing cases – genocide and war crimes committed in Cambodia, Rwanda and the Balkans.

By Gilien Silsby

SHORTLY AFTER GRADUATING from the USC

Gould School of Law and taking the bar exam last year, three fledgling lawyers departed for far-flung regions of the world and found themselves immersed in cruelty, torture and murder.

Brian Rifkin in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Shannon Raj in Arusha, Tanzania, and Trevar Kolodny in The Hague, Netherlands, were among six 2011 USC Gould graduates who worked on trials involving some of history’s worst crimes against humanity: respectively, the Cambodian Killing Fields of the 1970s, the Rwandan genocide of 1994 and atrocities committed during the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

Their classmates Seepan Parseghian, Aysha Pamukcu and Jamie Hoffman also worked on these trials.

After spending their final semester at USC Gould’s International Human Rights Clinic (IHRC), the graduates were invited to work with the United Nations as judicial interns at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (in Arusha) and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. They received the coveted invitations after spending their last year at USC remotely working for judges at these human rights tribunals – a first for law students at an American university.

“The judges were impressed with the students’ work and were eager to have them on-site,”

says USC Gould professor and IHRC director Hannah Garry.

USC Gould dean Robert K. Rasmussen recruited Garry in 2010 to launch the clinic.

“I considered it a priority to establish a clinic at the law school that would prepare students for working in a globalized world,” he says, adding that USC Gould alumni contributed to grants that helped cover each student’s travel and expenses.

Once at the tribunals, the law graduates spent their days sifting through documents implicating the “most wanted” for genocide, including notorious leaders of the Khmer Rouge, Rwandan Hutu officials and architects of the Yugoslav wars.

The interns worked side by side with judges at the tribunals, where prosecutors brought charges of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions. In roles similar to that of judicial clerks in the United States, they drafted opinions, attended court hearings, wrote legal memoranda and examined witness testimonies.

Garry, who has worked on international human rights and international criminal law issues for nearly two decades, traveled to Cambodia last October, reconnecting with some of the interns and cementing ties with the ECCC. She and Rifkin witnessed such dramatic events as a German judge resigning from the bench. The judge said his work on

[ TALES FROM THE TRIBUNALS ]

From left, Hannah Garry, director of USC’s International Human Rights Clinic, Aysha Pamukcu JD ’11 and (facing camera) Brian Rifkin JD ’11 in a cell at the infamous S-21 prison in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where thousands were tortured and killed under the Khmer Rouge regime

Grim reckonings Growing up Jewish in Brooklyn, N.Y., Brian Rifkin developed an interest in human rights during family and classroom discussions about the Holocaust and Jewish history. He vividly recalls the first time he attended a public hearing for Nuon Chea, second in command to Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot. Their regime killed more than 2 million Cambodians between 1975 and 1979.

Needless to say, I had never before been in the presence of a person facing charges akin to those brought against Nuon Chea. When he entered the courtroom, there was an unmistakable atmospheric change in the visitors’ gallery. More than a hundred orange-robed monks in attendance, along with dozens of other Cambodian citizens, seemed to lean toward the courtroom at once, their eyes not leaving Nuon Chea. Though it was hard to discern the public’s level of interest during the prolonged examination, the facial expressions and gesticulations – particularly of the older visitors – when Nuon Chea arrived said a lot about the enduring intensity of survivors’ feelings about the defendant.

Shannon Raj, who hails from the San Francisco Bay area, says her Indian-Irish family “was always cognizant of current events, and they encouraged me to take opportunities like this one.” In Tanzania, she had the rare chance to participate in the rendering of the verdict in September 2011 against four former government ministers from Rwanda who were

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accused of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. When Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana’s plane was shot down in April 1994, these men became part of the interim government that presided over the horrific killing, often by machete, of 800,000 Rwandans.

The tension in the international courtroom was palpable, Raj says, as the former ministers listened to the verdicts after more than a decade of work on the case.

Their fate was a divided one. Just seconds after finding [minister of trade and industry] Justin Mugenzi and [minister of the civil service] Prosper Mugiraneza guilty of conspiracy to commit genocide, judge Khalida Rachid Khan declared that not one of the allegations against [minister of health] Casimir Bizimungu and [minister of foreign affairs and cooperation] Jérôme Bicamumpaka had been proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

The latter two men would walk free. Before I left the courtroom that day, I saw Mugenzi turn and shake Bizimungu’s hand.

Realizing that one would likely spend the rest of his life in prison while the other would be released, I couldn’t help but remember a statement by Louise Arbour, former president of the Rwanda tribunal: “I believe it is of critical importance that we define appropriately the role of international criminal justice, that we fully empower the courts to do what they are designed to do and that we resist the temptation to use them as inadequate substitutes for the many other ways in which civil societies must be reconstructed after war and sustained in their search for peace.”

Regardless of what any of us felt about the outcome, I felt I’d had a more powerful illustration of this basic pillar of criminal law than any casebook could ever provide me.

Thousands of miles away in The Hague, Trevar Kolodny witnessed a different grim chapter of humanity. A native of Southern California, who earned a bachelor’s in history at the University of Cambridge in Great Britain, Kolodny was in the appeals chamber at the tribunal for the former Yugoslavia when arguments were presented in a case known as Lukić and Lukić.

One of the defendants, Milan Lukić, was accused and convicted of burning dozens of Muslims alive on two occasions during the Bosnian War by locking them in houses doused in kerosene, lighting the houses afire and ordering his subordinates to shoot any victims who tried to flee through the windows.

The other defendant – his cousin, Sredoje Lukić – was convicted of helping with one of the house fires and beating inmates at an internment camp.

I imagine you can tell a lot about a man by the way he addresses the judges here: is he passionate,

TOP: Rifkin views photos of S-21 prisoners, many of whom were tortured or killed.

BOTTOM: Trevar Kolodny JD ’11 working at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, Netherlands

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new cases pending before the tribunal was hopelessly compromised by interference from the Cambodian government.

“I saw the tremendous challenges faced by judges at the tribunal in conducting investigations and trials in Cambodia,” says Garry, who has worked with organizations ranging from the tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the European Court of Human Rights and the International Human Rights Law Group.

“Not only are tribunals under-resourced in terms of legal and support staff, but there are all sorts of political pressures, making it difficult to work efficiently and independently,” Garry says. “USC’s International Human Rights Clinic has been able to provide an important resource and relieve some of the stress these judges are facing.”

Meanwhile, the clinic’s graduates have witnessed history. In journals kept during their time abroad, Rifkin, Raj and Kolodny describe experiences that changed not only the way they view the law, but also how they look at the world.

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Shannon Raj JD ’11, right, and Seepan Parseghian with judge Khalida Rachid Khan, president of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania

way possible, that, as horrible as the aggregate impact of these crimes might sound, you can only truly appreciate the horror when you stop and consider the harm inflicted on each individual victim. But when you’re dealing with 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust, the tens of thousands killed in the former Yugoslavia or 800,000 civilians killed in Rwanda, you realize that’s impossible.

Looking back

is he resigned, is he remorseful, is he dignified? The main defendant was clearly desperate, going well over his time limit, beseeching the judge’s mercy, waving documents and newspapers, and begging: “Look into my eyes. Look at my face! Is this the face of a murderer?” His cousin, in contrast, maintained a sad and quiet dignity, and only spoke two sentences, placing his faith in the fact that the correct decision would be reached. If I forget everything else from the tribunal, I will remember that moment.

Too many people lost During breaks from their two- to three-month internships at the tribunals, the USC law graduates spent time searching for answers to the tragedies they were examining by visiting memorials and historic sites.

One weekend, Raj flew nearly 500 miles from Arusha to Kigali, Rwanda, to see the country that was so ravaged by the killings.

I am writing from the candlelit tables at the Hôtel des Mille Collines in Kigali – the hotel whose story was conveyed in the movie Hotel Rwanda and which was the site of inconceivable tragedy and heroism during the Rwandan genocide. It feels eerie and unnatural to sit by the pool peacefully, when I know what happened here entirely too well. If I believed in ghosts, I might believe in them here.

Raj also visited a genocide memorial that was modeled after the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C. The big difference is that the black wall here is nearly entirely blank. A few hundred measly names are clustered on one side; the rest is an empty expanse of blank space. I was angry when I saw the long blank wall: Where were the other names? Why put up just a few? And after all these years, why was it so incomplete? The answer, I discovered, is that there were too many people lost. If you, your family and all your friends were killed, no one would be left to tell your name.

When this sank in, I felt my stomach drop in a way that no list of names could have ever done. I know that this is what we’re working for in Arusha: bearing witness to the tragedy that occurred and trying to create some justice in the mess of heartache that Rwanda experienced.

Midway through his internship in The Hague, Kolodny traveled to Amsterdam and visited the Anne Frank House, which told stories eerily similar to the modern-day war crimes before the Yugoslav tribunal.

Working in an appeals chamber, 20 years removed from the crimes of Yugoslavia, it is easy to view these things abstractly. The Anne Frank House once again reminds you, in the most visceral

Following their internships, the young lawyers returned to the United States and began their professional careers. Rifkin and Raj are litigation associates at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP, in New York, and Bingham McCutchen LLP, in Los Angeles, respectively. Kolodny is applying to graduate school to study international law in Great Britain.

As they reflect on their experiences at the war crimes tribunals, they share the conclusion that these international courts help reconstruct societies after intense conflict, even though their outcomes can be flawed.

“I believe the tribunals achieve a measure of justice for victims and [advance] important moral and legal principles,” Rifkin says. “My time [in Cambodia], however, taught me of the limits of such tribunals – their frustrating pace, the risk of political interference and timidity, and the challenge of engaging those most affected in a meaningful way.”

The internships also gave the graduates valuable knowledge about the practice of law on an international scale. Rifkin says of his exposure to lawyers and judges from around the world, “I learned a great deal from them about their own systems, their education, their political and legal outlooks.”

Even as these Trojans begin lives far removed from the frontlines of genocide, they know that they have been forever changed by what they saw and heard at the tribunals. ● If you have questions or comments on this article, go to tfm.usc.edu/mailbag

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[ KECK MEDICAL CENTER OF USC ]

Organ transplantation is a life-changing process, and the team at the USC Transplant Institute shepherds each patient along his or her journey.

Life Donat ed by sara reeve | photographs by philip channing

How would you feel if one day you woke up with body parts that originally weren’t your own? If you were the recipient of a donated organ, like Hilbert Armijo, you would feel like you’d been given a new lease on life.

“My future looks good,” says Armijo, 56, of Long Beach, Calif., who received a liver transplant at the Keck Medical Center of USC in November 2010. “I’ve been at my job 23 years, and when co-workers ask me how much longer I’ll be around, I tell them, ‘I’ve got seven more years until I retire.’ I can [make] it now.”

The USC Transplant Institute was formed in 2010 to unite the different organ transplant programs housed at the Keck Medical Center. USC has a long history of organ transplantation at both Keck Hospital of USC and Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. The medical center offers heart, lung, liver, kidney and pancreas transplantation services.

Organ transplantation often is a waiting game. Time on a waiting list may drag on for years, but when an organ is located, the team assembles at lightning speed to put that organ safely into a patient.

“When you think about organ donation, the act is nothing short of miraculous,” says Cynthia Herrington, director of the USC Transplant Institute and associate professor of clinical cardiothoracic surgery at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. “Live donors show amazing courage and deep love to allow themselves to undergo an operation to remove a healthy organ for no personal benefit. In the depth of a family’s despair they see clear to save the lives of people they don’t even know. We as transplant physicians are so fortunate to be able to participate in the ultimate act of selflessness, the gift of life.”

On waiting One patient currently playing the waiting game is Los Angeles resident Loretta Heckard, 56. Every breath she takes is a struggle.

Having lived with chronic asthma since childhood, Heckard was accustomed to struggling for air. In 2007, her physician recommended she get an X-ray of her lungs to see why she was experiencing such a dramatic loss of breath. It was then that she was diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis – a buildup of excess connective tissue inside the lungs that displaces normal lung tissue, resulting in decreased lung function.

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LIVING HIS DREAM After a successful liver transplant, Hilbert Armijo (center) enjoys home and family. On his porch, Armijo is joined by his wife, Linda, and their children and grandchildren.

“They discovered that both of my lungs were very damaged,” Heckard says. “It was to the point where if I tried to walk from the car parked at the curb to my house, it was very hard – a very difficult journey for me.”

She turned to the physicians of the Keck Medical Center to help her breathe more easily. With medication and careful management, Heckard was able to get some control over the fibrosis and its resulting pulmonary hypertension. For almost a year, her disease seemed to go into remission when the fibrosis stopped its progression. But the shortness of breath returned, and X-rays confirmed that the disease had resumed its advancement through her lungs.

In early 2010, Heckard was placed on the waiting list for a lung transplant. She continues to wait for the call that will take her to a new phase in her life, in which she will be able to walk without supplemental oxygen.

“I think you never stop being anxious for an organ to come, but what’s beautiful is that I have the greatest doctors who explain to me in detail what our goal is and what they are trying to do for me while I’m waiting,” Heckard says. “So, yes, I’m anxious to get it, but, in the meantime, I’m comfortable and my health is being maintained.”

While waiting for a transplant, Heckard returns to the medical center every few weeks for evaluations, X-rays and treatment. She finds that the support of doctors, nurses and staff keeps her going even on her darkest days.

“Everyone knows me by name now, and they greet me with open arms,” Heckard says.

“And that’s wonderful because when you’re sick you can be down on yourself, but that

goes away once you come here. It’s the one time I don’t feel like I’m a misfit at all.”

Despite the time spent waiting for an organ, Heckard is optimistic about her future and still dreams of one day running around a track.

“I feel that my future is very bright,” she says. “One reason I’m still waiting for a transplant is that I would like to do things without having [supplemental] oxygen. I thank God for what I have, but I would love to run track.

I was a person who worked out diligently, and I’m looking forward to being able to run.”

According to John Donovan, liver transplant physician and associate professor of medicine at the Keck School, the USC Transplant Institute physicians and surgeons develop close relationships with their patients.

“Transplant physicians share their patients’ highs and lows – their disappointments and triumphs,” Donovan says. “There are many of each, for both the patients and their doctors, in the transplant experience. When patients get sick, we worry with them. If they get a liver offer, but it’s not a good offer, we share in their frustration and disappointment. After transplantation, when they come back healthy, we share the joy of success and regained health with them. There is a lot of emotion to share with patients and their families.”

A friend in need Lance Dempsey, 43, of Murrieta, Calif., feels his transplant experience is nothing but positive.

As a paramedic and lifeguard on Catalina Island, Dempsey leads a physically active life.

In addition to his energetic vocation, his hob-

WAITING HOPEFULLY While waiting for a lung transplant, Loretta Heckard maintains hope for her future.

bies include jujitsu, surfing and skiing. The last thing he might be expected to do is to voluntarily remove a healthy part of his body and spend weeks recovering. But last September, that’s exactly what he did at the Keck Medical Center – he donated a kidney to his friend and colleague, David Coiner.

Dempsey and Coiner, who works as a Catalina harbor patrolman and dive technician, had known each other for 15 years. The two served as volunteers on the local searchand-rescue team.

It pained Dempsey to learn that his friend was suffering from a genetic kidney disease and forced to go on dialysis every night. But Dempsey thought nothing else could be done.

When another colleague mentioned getting tested to see whether she could be a kidney donor for Coiner, who has O-negative blood, a lightbulb went off in Dempsey’s head.

“I got to thinking, ‘Wow, I’m O-positive. I wonder if O can give to O,’ ” Dempsey says.

“After doing a little research on the Internet, I saw that, yes, it looked like I could donate.

I talked to my wife … and explained that I wanted to donate. And she said her heart just sang because she really wanted me to do this.”

After a full barrage of tests, physicians determined that Dempsey was a closeenough match to donate his kidney to Coiner.

Dempsey then underwent a series of in-depth interviews with doctors, sociologists, nutritionists and social workers.

“Our first priority is to take care of the organ donor,” says Sophoclis Alexopoulos, PARTNERS IN CARE Liver transplant physician John Donovan confers with transplant coordinator Jacqueline Johnson to discuss treatment options for a new patient.

assistant professor of surgery at the Keck School of Medicine and surgical director of kidney transplantation at the Keck Medical Center. “We select the healthiest people, and when you look at those people who have donated compared to the general population, they live just as long and do not have higher rates of dialysis. Overall, it’s a very safe surgery.”

When the time for surgery finally arrived, the operation went smoothly without any complications. After a hospital stay of only two nights, Dempsey returned home to recuperate. Two weeks after GIFT OF LIFE When paramedic and lifeguard Lance Dempsey learned his friend needed a kidney transplant, he didn’t hesitate surgery, he was back swim- to volunteer. “Donating is such a positive experience. You’re going to feel so good about it – that’s the best part of it all.” ming in the pool and, after seven weeks of recovery, he returned to work. addictions had wrought on his body.

On Thanksgiving Day, the surgeons at Keck “People recover from organ donation comAfter being transferred from his local comHospital transplanted the new liver into pletely and can go back and do everything munity hospital to the Keck Medical Center Armijo. they had done before the surgery – there are for treatment of a mass in his liver, he learned A year later, Armijo feels his life is back no restrictions,” says Alexopoulos, who perfrom physicians about the opportunity to to normal. He returned to work and is again formed Dempsey’s surgery. “Lance wanted to receive a liver transplant. enjoying being a family man. go back to doing jujitsu three weeks after surArmijo received a transplant from an “The goal of all transplants is to make you gery, and I said, ‘Are you crazy? At least wait unknown donor in February 2010. After a healthier and live longer and re-engage in for your incision to [heal].’ ” successful surgery, he stayed at Keck Hospital life,” Donovan says. “After his transplant, Eventually, Dempsey resumed his hobbies. of USC for three weeks and then recuperated Hilbert went back to work. He’s doing all “Donating is such a positive experience,” at home for another 10 weeks. the things a transplant is meant to allow he says. “I’m going back to my normal, active Excited to finally return to work, Armijo him to do.” lifestyle. I do everything and it’s not going to was dismayed when he became exhausted Armijo is reminded every day of the gift of impact my ability to live. You’re going to get so while walking the stairs at his employer’s life that was given to him. much out of the process, you’re going to feel so parking structure. Colleagues noticed that his “I work with the cousin – I see him every good about it – that’s the best part of it all.” face was green and his eyes yellow. day, and he calls me brother,” Armijo says of His new liver was failing. the co-worker whose family made his miracle Believing in miracles “There is a lot of judgment that goes into happen. “He knows how happy I am and For Hilbert Armijo, receiving a liver transproviding a transplant and trying to maximize how thankful. Early on, I’d ask him to tell his plant not only affected his ability to live, but what is best for the patient,” Alexopoulos says. cousin how well I was doing, and how her also his will to live.

“And making them a partner in that – it’s husband’s liver lives on in me.”

In early 2010, Armijo was ready to die. “I important that they are your partner, that you Armijo makes sure he stops by to visit the wanted to give up,” he says. “I really thought I are not making unilateral decisions.” transplant team every time he comes to the would die. I’d made my peace.”

In August 2010, Armijo was relisted for a Keck Medical Center for a checkup.

He was suffering from severe cirrhosis and liver transplant.

“I really enjoy everybody there,” he says. had been told his condition was too far gone “My doctors at USC told me they wanted “Every time I go to see the doctors, I always for treatment. to put me on the list again, and I said, ‘No, go up to the sixth floor to visit the nurses Cirrhosis is scarring of the liver causing I don’t want to. God will help me.’ But the who took care of me. I just want to say ‘hi’ poor liver function. It is the final phase of doctors told me, ‘We believe in miracles, and ‘thank you’ again. They treated me so chronic liver disease. Once cirrhosis develops, too, but we think we need to put you on this good. I can’t get enough of saying thank you it is impossible to heal the liver or return its list. We need to be ready for it.’ And they to the doctors and nurses.” ● function to normal. were right.”

For more information about organ transplanArmijo had struggled with drug and alcoJust before Thanksgiving that year, a famtation at the Keck Medical Center of USC, hol addiction for many years, and although ily member of one of Armijo’s co-workers call (323) 442-5908 or visit keckhospital.org/ clean and sober for almost two decades, he died suddenly of a brain hemorrhage, and the still was dealing with the physical damage the family decided to donate the liver to Armijo. transplant U S C T R O JA N FA M I LY M AG A Z I N E

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Ultimate Trojan Family Get-Together Alumni return for Reunion Weekend.

Cappello ’81 says. “It brought back so many great memories and reminded me how special those four years at USC really were! I cherish that time and the lifelong friendships that were created at this very special university.”

TIMOTHY O. KNIGHT

Class of 1971 40th Reunion Committee co-chairs Gayle (Lensing) Rimerman ’71 and Bill Poland ’71

His and hers: Jack Allen ’60, MS ’64, MBA ’91 and Carolyn Sessions Allen ’61, MPW ’98 sport matching USC watches at the Class of 1961 50th reunion.

A member of the USC Trojan Marching Band playfully serenades Class of 1981 Trojans at their 30th reunion.

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USC trustee Marc R. Benioff ’86 gives the keynote at the 25th reunion celebration of the Class of 1986.

Class of 2001 alumni arrive at the California Science Center for their 10th reunion celebration.

P H OTO S B Y S T E P H E N B L A H A A N D S T E V E C O H N

ACCORDING TO numerologists, 11-11-11 was an auspicious day – the ideal time to marry, give birth, play the lottery and, if you’re a Trojan, bring together five generations for the 2011 Reunion Weekend celebration.

Expanding its program from three to five class reunions, the USC Alumni Association brought the classes of 1961, 1971, 1981, 1986 and 2001 back to campus for a two-day celebration of all things Trojan, capped by USC’s 40-17 Homecoming victory over the University of Washington.

More than a thousand alumni, some from as far away as Australia, Japan and Saudi Arabia, returned to campus to reconnect and reminisce while attending class reunion celebrations, academic lectures, campus tours and USC president C. L. Max Nikias’ reunion reception at the Ronald Tutor Campus Center Ballroom. Many also came back the next day for class reunion tailgate parties prior to Homecoming kickoff.

“I saw friends I have not seen since college, and yet the conversation flowed as if we had just seen each other yesterday,” Ramona

Our Alumni – Dedicated and Diverse

BY TIMOTHY O. KNIGHT

Half Century Trojans Still Fighting On SEVERAL GENERATIONS of Trojans gathered on Oct. 28 at the Half Century Trojans Luncheon themed “Honoring the Past, Celebrating the Present and Building the Future.”

Half Century Trojans president Terry Pearson ’53, MS ’63 and USC Alumni Association CEO Scott M. Mory shared the dais at Town & Gown, where USC’s senior alumni group welcomed its newest members: the Class of 1961, which celebrated its 50th reunion during Homecoming.

Al Checcio, senior vice president for University Advancement, called the Half Century Trojans “the custodians of the USC history and legacy of which we are all so proud.”

Fred Keenan ’37 was the senior-most member of the Half Century Trojans attending the event.

Speaking of building the future – literally – keynote speaker Kristina Raspe MCM ’08, MRED ’09, USC vice president for real estate development and asset management, discussed the ongoing development and

enhancement of both the University Park and Health Sciences campuses. Her presentation on the ambitious redevelopment plans for University Village was a luncheon highlight.

Following Raspe’s keynote, the Half Century Trojans paid tribute to three USC alumni whose devotion to their alma mater is matched by their history-making accomplishments. Distinguished Service Award honoree Millie Farnsworth ’46 was the first woman captain of the USC Trojan Debate Squad. Half Century Trojans Hall of Fame honoree From left, honorees Millie Farnsworth ’46, Sammy Lee MD ’47 and Verna B. Dauterive ME ’49, Verna B. Dauterive ME ’49, EdD ’66 of the Half Century Trojans EdD ’66 pledged the largest gift ever by an African American to a U.S. in- American to win an Olympic gold medal for stitution of higher learning – $30 million to the United States. He won the men’s 10-meUSC in 2008. And fellow Hall of Fame hon- ter platform diving competition at the 1948 oree Sammy Lee MD ’47 was the first Asian Summer Olympics in London. ●

USC Black Alumni Association Celebrates 36 Years

P H OTO B Y A M Y O P O K A ; P O S T E R C O U R T E S Y O F T H E K I N S E Y C O L L E C T I O N

IN A 1972 SPEECH AT USC’s baccalaureate ceremony, the late Rev. Thomas Kilgore Jr. – a renowned civil rights activist and colleague of Martin Luther King Jr. – chided the university for its indifference to minorities. USC president John R. Hubbard was in the audience and subsequently hired Kilgore as a senior adviser. Four years later, Kilgore founded the USC Ebonics Support Group, forerunner of today’s USC Black Alumni Association (BAA). Today, BAA is a primary

alumni resource, providing tuition assistance on a consistent and sustainable level to USC’s black undergraduate and graduate students.

To date, more than 2,000 USC students have received BAA scholarships, which include mentoring, pre-career development advising and a Toastmasters program.

In celebration of its 36th anniversary, BAA will host “An Evening of Art & Legacy: Bernard and Shirley Kinsey Present Their Distinguished Collection of African American Art and Historical Artifacts,” a special scholarship fundraiser on March 22 at Bovard Auditorium. A national touring exhibition, the Kinsey Collection has been displayed in seven museums since 2007, including a seven-month stay at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., where it drew 2.5 million visitors. Several pieces from the collecThis 1863 poster from the Kinsey Collection, published by the Supervisory Committee for Recruiting Colored Regiments, depicts U.S. troops at Camp William Penn, a training camp for black Union soldiers in La Mott, Pa.

tion – including works by noted painter Romare Bearden, the 1857 Dred Scott decision discussion papers and the original 18th-century publications of poems by Phillis Wheatley – will be brought to USC that evening and displayed during a post-event reception.

Bernard and Shirley Kinsey have a long association with USC. Bernard, a former Xerox vice president and former co-chair of Rebuild L.A., established a relationship with USC President Emeritus Steven B. Sample that led to the founding of USC’s Neighborhood Academic Initiative and the conferring of an honorary USC doctorate on civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks. “ ‘An Evening of Art & Legacy’ will be an exciting opportunity for BAA supporters to share their collective experiences while giving back, so that an increasing number of current and future black students can pursue their dreams at USC,” BAA executive director Michéle Turner ’81 says. “Dr. Kilgore would be proud to know that his legacy at USC continues to thrive and flourish in the hearts of alumni and BAA supporters.” ● U S C T R O JA N FA M I LY M AG A Z I N E

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alumni SCene Student leaders, team spirit, special effects and a symposium 2

1

4

1. High (Achieving) Society Society 53, named after the 53 students who formed USC’s first student body in 1880, is the student outreach program of the USC Alumni Association (USCAA). Pictured here on the steps of Widney Alumni House – where, aptly enough, those first 53 students attended class – are the 2011-12 members, including president Anthony Barkett (fourth row, far right). Eighteen new members came on board last year. Each year, the group plans and implements the Senior SCend Off, a spring “welcome” barbecue for undergraduate seniors transitioning to alumni status, and the Trojan SCuppers, informal dinners hosted by alumni for USC students.

2. Have Fun, Will Travel Thousands of Trojans enjoyed USC Weekender events hosted by the USCAA and its regional alumni clubs at away football games in Arizona, the Bay Area, Chicago/South

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Bend and, for the first time, Colorado. The USC Trojan Marching Band and the USC Song Girls stole the show, with special events that included architectural and Goose Island brewery tours in Chicago and pep rallies at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco, Chicago’s Navy Pier (pictured here) and Westin Denver Downtown.

3. Savvy About the Na’vi Paul Debevec, USC computer science professor and associate director for graphic research at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies, presented on digital animation at the TimesCenter in Manhattan on Nov. 22. Debevec is an Academy Award-winning visual effects director whose work has been featured in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) and Avatar (2009). The USCAA event was part of the “USC in Your Neighborhood” series designed to bring USC faculty to cities outside Southern California. Debevec was

joined by USC Viterbi School of Engineering dean Yannis C. Yortsos and USC provost and senior vice president for academic affairs Elizabeth Garrett at encore presentations in the Bay Area, New York and Southern California.

4. Global Groupthink Prior to the 2011 USC Global Conference, the USCAA held its first International Alumni Leaders Symposium at the Hong Kong Marriott Hotel on Oct. 13. Attendees included Al Checcio, senior vice president for University Advancement; Scott M. Mory, USCAA CEO (third from left); and Lisa Barkett ’81, USCAA Board of Governors president (seated, third from left). Alumni leaders shared best practices for engaging alumni, with presentations on topics such as maximizing club communications through social media and mentoring recent USC graduates. ●

P H OTO S B Y A M Y O P O K A ; D A N AV I L A ; J U L I E S TA P E N ; C O U R T E S Y O F U S C A A

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class notes 1940s

Robert Thompson DDS ’45 was honored

ANITA M. CASPARY MS ’43, founder

of Immaculate Heart Community, who appeared on the cover of Time in its Feb. 23, 1970, issue, died Oct. 5 in Los Angeles. She was 95.

After receiving her bachelor’s degree in English from Immaculate Heart College in 1936, she entered the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary convent. She later earned her master’s and doctorate in English from USC and Stanford University, respectively.

Caspary returned to Immaculate Heart College to chair the English department, and later served as president until 1963, when she was elected as Mother General of the Immaculate Heart Sisters, which she led for the next decade.

In the late 1960s, Caspary and the order were cast as “rebel nuns” for supporting progressive reforms that included abandoning the nun’s habit and suspending a fi xed time for prayer.

In 1970, Caspary and more than 300 nuns asked to be released from their vows, marking the largest exodus of nuns from the Roman Catholic Church in American history.

Caspary subsequently founded Immaculate Heart Community, an independent ecumenical organization that continues to provide services in the poorest neighborhoods of Los Angeles. ●

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CLASS NOTES ALSO APPEARS ONLINE. READ NEWS ABOUT EACH GRADUATE AT tfm.usc.edu/classnotes SEND US YOUR NEWS AT classnotes@usc.edu

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Francis Cartier ’47, MA ’48, PhD ’51 of Pacific Grove, Calif., received an award in recognition of outstanding service to Mensa, an international high-IQ society where he served as trustee of its philanthropic arm, the Mensa Education and Research Foundation, and served two terms as the foundation’s president. He writes a column in its quarterly Mensa Research Journal.

Daniel Madick ’47, MS ’52, MBA ’58 is founder of Palm Desert’s Learning in Retirement program, which offers noncredit courses to students age 50 and older on economics, current events, history and the arts. He lives in Palm Desert, Calif.

1950s

Stuart O. “Stu” Parsons MA ’50, PhD ’58 of Saratoga, Calif., was awarded the 2011 Arnold M. Small President’s Distinguished Service Award by the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. Previously, he worked as an engineering manager for Lockheed Martin Corp., and taught part time at the USC Institute for Safety and Systems Management for more than 20 years.

Gerald “Jerry” McMahon ’56 received the University of San Diego School of Law’s Lifetime Achievement Award. He heads Seltzer Caplan McMahon and Vitek’s litigation department and serves as chairman of its board.

Louis C. Vaccaro ’57, MS ’61 of Las Vegas and Old Forge, N.Y., completed his eighth book, a memoir titled Around the Corner: From Shoeshine Boy to College President. His academic career spans more than 40 years, including serving as president of six colleges and universities, and leading hundreds of international students to higher education in the United States. He recently com-

PHOTO FROM WITNESS TO INTEGRITY: THE CRISIS OF THE IMMACULATE HEART COMMUNITY OF CALIFORNIA

‘Rebel’ Mother of the ’60s

with the Lifetime Achievement Award of the American College of Dentists at the American Dental Association’s 2011 meeting in Las Vegas. He has been an American College of Dentists fellow for 50 years.

alumni profile ’78

pleted his second Fulbright assignment in Indonesia.

Partners Twice Over

Chuck Wackerman ’57, MS ’62 was honored at the 96th Founder’s Day Celebration in Seal Beach, Calif., for his decades-long commitment to teaching instrumental music to students in the Seal Beach and Los Alamitos school districts. He also was inducted into the California Jazz Alliance Hall of Fame. He serves as director of the McAuliffe Middle School Jazz Band in Los Alamitos.

Dann Angeloff ’58, MBA ’63, president of financial advisory firm Angeloff Company in Los Angeles, was appointed to the board of directors of Special Olympics Southern California. He is a founding member of the National Association of Corporate Directors and serves as chairman emeritus of its Southern California chapter. He is president-elect of the Half Century Trojans.

1960s

Kurt Hahn ’61 of Healdsburg, Calif., was elected to a three-year term on the board of directors of the California State Rural Healthcare Association. He is a board member of the North Sonoma County Healthcare District and a member of the USC 50th Class Reunion Committee.

Edward P. Roski, Jr. ’62, co-founder of the

PHOTO BY DIETMAR QUISTORF

Land of the Free Foundation, an organization that supports programs for U.S. armed service personnel and their families, helped to organize the foundation’s 2011 Veterans Day Golf Classic at the Pacific Palms Hotel.

He is chairman and CEO of Majestic Realty Co., and chairman of the USC Board of Trustees.

Nelson F. Tchakirides ’62 of Seymour, Conn., wrote two short stories, “Survivor,” about the experiences of an elderly seaplane pilot, and “Stalworth Syndrome,” a tale of the sea that intertwines myth, legend and reality.

David M. Todd ’67 received Phi Gamma Delta Fraternity’s 2010-11 Coulter Cup, a fraternity-wide national award that recognizes outstanding service to an un-

Eric Brown ’78 and Renee CottrellBrown ’78 laugh a lot. Remarkable, some might say, for a couple who live and work together as CEO and executive vice president of sales and marketing, respectively, at the Dallas-based Johnson Products Company Inc. But talking to the Browns, who have run two global ethnic hair-care companies for 25 of their 31 years of marriage while raising two daughters, it’s easy to see the friendship they share. It all began with a chance encounter at USC. “Renee was the very first person I met coming to Los Angeles,” says Eric, a Portland, Ore., native, recalling his first week of student orientation at USC. He hopped on a USC-sponsored tram that, back then, shuttled students to and from the south side to Westwood. “Coming back, I was the last one on. The only seat available was next to this lovely lady. I’ve always said it was fate. I just looked at her and said, ‘I’m done!’ ” The ride revealed shared interests in photography and jazz and, although it was clearly not love at first sight in her mind, Renee knew she had found a friend. “We truly had a friendship because, quite frankly, I was dating other people at the time I met him,” she says.

The admission prompts the now familiar laughter and knowing glances between them.

Renee, daughter of Los Angeles African-American business pioneer Comer J. Cottrell Jr., who founded the hair-care company Pro-Line Corp., was expected to date budding doctors and lawyers at ’SC – supposedly more suitable mates than Eric, who was from modest means and tooled around town on the RTD bus. She lived in a cushy campus dormitory; he in an abandoned fraternity house on 32nd and Vermont in a dilapidated room he furnished with crates, a hot plate and a toaster oven.

Even then, Eric and Renee seldom were away from each other, as both were part of the same clique of African-American students. But before leaving USC, Renee began seeing something special in the “shy kid” from Oregon.

“I always told my dad, ‘Eric has great potential,’ ” Renee says. The couple married and went to work at Pro-Line, and Eric became vice president of finance in 1986. Eventually, Renee’s father named Eric to succeed him as president in the late 1990s.

In 2009, with investors from California, the couple led a winning buyout of Johnson Products Company, one of the first African-American-owned businesses publicly traded in the United States, from Procter & Gamble Co. Now private, the company reportedly earns more than $25 million in revenues annually. And it is growing its philanthropic initiatives to promote ecological responsibility, empower local schools and raise awareness of domestic violence through its “No Excuse! STOP the ABUSE!” campaign, which also supports women’s shelters and foundations through multiyear grants.

“Most people say, ‘There’s no way I could work with my spouse.’ I think that is driven from the inability to allow the other to have their freedom to win on their own terms. The passion for the business – that’s what drives it 24/7. It’s not necessarily the work itself,” says Eric, who together with Renee indulges in travel, food and, yes, photography, in his spare time.

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Piece of cake.

Fight On. When doing what you love seems too difficult, it might be heart valve disease. We can get you back on your feet.

To learn more about minimally invasive heart valve repair, call (323) 442-5849 or visit KeckMedicalCenterofUSC.org/heart.

alumni profile ’66

dergraduate chapter. He lives in Newport Beach, Calif.

Sonnee Weedn ’68, MS ’73 is a practicing psychologist in Northern California who released Many Blessings: A Tapestry of Accomplished African-American Women, which highlights the lives of 31 contemporary African-American women, including former surgeon general Joycelyn Elders and Arkansas state assemblywoman Joyce Elliot.

1970s

Marko Perko ’70 of Beverly Hills, Calif., co-wrote Khamsin, a thriller about a black ops team led by a world-renowned doctor that sets out on a secret mission to rid the world of a terrorist organization. He also is the author of Did You Know That … ? and a member of The Authors Guild.

Lee Kanon Alpert ’71, his wife, Arlene, and their family received the Community Hope Award from Haven Hills, a domestic violence shelter in California’s San Fernando Valley that provides support for abused women and their children. The Alperts have been avid supporters of Haven Hills for more than 26 years.

William “Ed” Cameron MPA ’74 of Pasadena, Calif., received a Certificate of Recognition from the State of California’s Board of Professional Engineers for his 56 years of service to the profession. He retired as director of Water & Power for the city of Gardena, Calif., and is a life member and fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

PHOTO COURTESY OF CLAYBORNE CARSON

Kent Taylor ’75, PhD ’81 was promoted to professor in the Department of Pediatrics at UCLA. He is co-investigator on more than 100 research publications and is director of the Genotyping Laboratory for the Medical Genetics Institute at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

R. Barrie Walkley MA ’75 is U.S. consul general in Juba, South Sudan. Previously, he served as ambassador to the Republic of Guinea in 2001-04 and to the Gabonese Republic from 2004 to 2007. He also served as deputy chief of mission in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo. He and his

A ‘Monumental’ Achievement Boris Dramov ’66 has designed numerous buildings, parkways and plazas, including Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade and the America’s Cup Village in Auckland, New Zealand. But now he has designed something few architects in the United States can match: a monument on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Towering 30 feet high and stretching across four acres, the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial is one of the creations of which Dramov is most proud. Out of nearly 1,000 submissions to an international design competition, San Francisco-based ROMA Design Group – where Dramov and Bonnie Fisher, his wife and longtime professional partner, are principals – was chosen for the prestigious commission. Last October, thousands of revelers lined the Tidal Basin to witness the dedication of the first memorial on the Mall honoring an African-American.

“We tried to reflect what he stood for and who he was,” says Dramov, who pored over King’s speeches and listened to recordings of his sermons for inspiration. “It’s not easy to translate a person’s spirit [into a physical structure], especially someone like Dr. King.”

The granite monument features fountains, inscriptions and two cleaved boulders – the Mountain of Despair and the Stone of Hope, metaphors that the civil rights leader used in his “I Have a Dream” speech. A colossal statue of King partially emerges from one of the boulders.

His figure is unfinished, like the civil rights movement itself, Dramov explains.

“We took a layered approach,” he adds, “so the final product wasn’t just one single element but a full environment that would inspire those who came to the site.”

The natural elements incorporated in the memorial’s design are a tribute to King’s use of landscape imagery in his speeches. They’re also signature features of Dramov’s work; he strives to create enjoyable urban environments – a value he learned as an undergraduate at the USC School of Architecture.

“Our professors gave us the broader sense that we shouldn’t just be designing objects in space but designing buildings in ways that create better spaces,” he says. By way of example, Dramov points to his favorite place at USC – the shaded courtyards around Watt and Harris halls.

Incidentally, Dramov and Fisher (pictured flanking Clayborne Carson, director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute) first met at the adjacent USC Fisher Museum of Art, named for her great-grandmother, Elizabeth Holmes Fisher, who donated her art collection to found that institution.

After graduating from USC, Dramov earned his master’s degree in architecture from Columbia University in 1970. He landed at Harvard 10 years later as a Loeb Fellow in Advanced Environmental Studies. Dramov worked with a number of architecture heavyweights – including Lawrence Halprin, who designed the National Mall’s Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, and Ian McHarg, a pioneering landscape architect – before taking the helm at ROMA in the 1980s.

Under his and Fisher’s leadership, ROMA has transformed the San Francisco waterfront, created transportation hubs like the Downtown Transit Mall in San Jose, Calif., and designed sports complexes in San Diego, Minneapolis and Washington, D.C. Their work also can be found in places as far-flung as China, Russia and the Philippines.

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wife, Annabelle, were Peace Corps volunteers in Somalia.

Joseph Cheah ’77 wrote Race and Religion in American Buddhism: White Supremacy and Immigrant Adaptation, which addresses the under-theorization of race in the study of American Buddhism. He is an associate professor of religious studies at Saint Joseph College in West Hartford, Conn.

manager, where she is responsible for the agency’s Hispanic accounts. She has more than 12 years of industry experience, having managed accounts in the automotive, beverage, real estate and travel sectors.

1980s

Debbi Dachinger ’80 of Los Angeles is the Geraldine Knatz MS ’77, PhD ’79, executive director of the Port of Los Angeles, was elected the 29th president of the International Association of Ports and Harbors.

author of Dare to Dream: This Life Counts.

She also is the host of Dare to Dream, a syndicated, multi-award-winning radio program.

Claudia Welch ’78 released Sorority Sisters,

Maureen Sullivan ’80, ’81 is founding

a story about the bond between four women who meet as pledges of a sorority. She lives in Raleigh, N.C.

partner and principal of Pica+Sullivan Architects Ltd., a Los Angeles-based firm that spearheaded the design of the Downtown Women’s Center Project Home. The center was recognized with the 2011 National Preservation Award

Maria de la Parra ’79 joined Walton Isaacson’s Los Angeles office as an account

from the National Trust for Historic Preservation and as a 2011 Historic Preservation Award recipient from the Los Angeles Conservancy.

Martin Greene MS ’81 of San Diego was elected vice president at Booz Allen Hamilton, where he has spent the past 13 years working in the defense sector, primarily with the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps in the fields of intelligence and cyber operations. Previously, he served as an officer in the U.S. Navy.

Paul W. Jones ’81, MPA ’84 received the Distinguished Service Award from the American Osteopathic College of Anesthesiologists for outstanding leadership and service to the college. He serves as chairman of the Department of Anesthesiology and director of anesthesia services at Robinson Memorial Hospital in Ravenna, Ohio.

THE USC BLACK ALUMNI ASSOCIATION ALONG WITH USC SPECTRUM HOSTS:

An Evening of Art & Legacy Thursday March 22, 2012

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U S C T R O JA N FA M I LY M AG A Z I N E

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7pm

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Martha (Carnahan) O’Malley ’81 of Felton, Calif., retired from IBM after 25 years of service. She directed management of international customer complaints and provided systems engineering to the company’s Fortune 500 customers.

John Kennedy ’83 was appointed senior vice president of government and external affairs at Los Angeles Urban League, where he oversees the league’s fundraising efforts and serves as its liaison on government and public policy issues. Previously, he served as senior project manager for community involvement at Southern California Edison.

Daniel S. Levitan MBA ’85 has been a partner at the PNL Companies, a real estate and distressed debt investment firm in Dallas for the past 12 years.

Michael Conroy ’86 of Santa Barbara, Calif., was elected trustee of Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1649. He also is a volunteer coach for his son’s U10 boys soccer team, which made it to the finals of a 32-team league.

Andy Kaplan MBA ’86 was recognized by The Zimmer Children’s Museum in Los Angeles with its Discovery Award, which honors individuals who are leaders in their fields and communities. He serves as president of networks for Sony Pictures Television and chairman of the USC Board of Governors for the Center for the Digital Future.

Lisa Lapin ’86 of Palo Alto, Calif., was elected trustee-at-large to the Council for Advancement and Support of Education’s board of trustees, as well as chair of its Commission on Communications and Marketing. She is assistant vice president for university communications at Stanford University.

PHOTO BY BILL YOUNGBLOOD

Todd C. Ganos MS ’87 of Carmel, Calif., is a columnist for Forbes magazine online. His column, “In the Money,” can be found at blogs.forbes.com/toddganos Lance V. McCollough ’87 of Temecula, Calif., is founder and CEO of ProSites Inc., a leader in medical and dental website design and Internet services that made the Inc. 500|5000 list of “America’s Fastest-Growing Companies” for the second consecutive year.

Fostering Literacy James “Jimmy” Reese ’46 is a busy man.

He’ll do some stock market trading, arbitrate a dog bite case and set up meetings for a new education intervention program at USC – all in a day.

At 92, Reese doesn’t plan to slow down any time soon.

“You have two choices when you wake up in the morning: Live life or stay in bed,” he says with a chuckle. “I choose to stay busy and enjoy every day. You never know if it’ll be your last.”

Reese, an active member of the State Bar of California for 66 years, currently is helping USC to launch an intervention program for 7- to 10-year-old, low-income boys attending public schools in Los Angeles. He has pledged $100,000 to the effort.

“Many of them are in fourth grade and can’t read,” Reese says. “If you can’t read, you can’t write and you can’t communicate. I think we have given up on these boys, and eventually they wind up incarcerated. I think a case may be made that their constitutional rights to a good education are being violated. I want to create a program that will teach these boys once and for all how to read.”

Reese grew up in racially segregated New Orleans. A pivotal moment came when he was about 10 years old, and his father made an ugly, drunken scene at his elementary school.

“My teacher took me in her arms and said, ‘Jimmy, you’re not your father. You can really be someone one day.’ I always remembered that. It carried me through,” Reese says, tearing up.

“I came out to California while I was on active duty in the military during World War II, and I met Crispus Attucks Wright [class of 1936 and 1938], who was one of about a dozen black attorneys in Los Angeles. I talked to him and saw what he did and wanted to do the same thing.

“I said I wanted to go to law school,” Reese says, recalling a visit to USC Gould School of Law dean William G. Hale’s office in 1943, the Friday before classes were scheduled to start.

“The dean’s secretary looked at me and gave me a test and told me to show up for classes on Monday. That was that.”

After graduating from USC Gould, Reese opened his own firm. In 1952, legendary singer Ray Charles asked him to work on retainer and later persuaded him to join Ray Charles Enterprises as in-house counsel.

Reese worked for Charles through the 1960s, although from 1965 to 1967 he received a special assignment from former Gov. Edmund G. Brown to head California’s Office of Economic Opportunity. In this position, Reese increased free legal aid from two programs to more than 100.

“This is one of the proudest accomplishments of my career,” he says.

In 1970, Reese became the first African-American Los Angeles Superior Court commissioner.

Five years later, Gov. Jerry Brown appointed him as judge to the Municipal Court and, eventually, Superior Court.

At 70, he retired from the bench to work for Judicial Arbitration and Mediation Services Inc., where he has heard more than 1,000 cases and developed a reputation as a skilled mediator.

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THE USC ALUMNI ASSOCIATION proudly thanks all the participants and sponsors who

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Photo by Stephen Blaha

Presented by

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Robert M. “Bob” Schilling MLA ’87 released Pole Position: Rex Mays, a biography based on his master’s degree thesis about the two-time auto-racing national champion and 12-time Indianapolis 500 driver. He lives in North Hollywood, Calif.

Julie Gidlow ’89, MA ’91 joined The Capital Group in Los Angeles as a research publications associate. Previously, she spent 17 years as editor at the now-defunct trade publication Radio & Records. She lives in Beverly Hills, Calif.

Bar Association. In 2011, he was instrumental in securing the passage of a bill legalizing civil unions for same-sex couples in Delaware.

Erin Richey ’99 of Long Beach, Calif., earned her National Board Certification for teaching in November. She teaches children with physical and orthopaedic impairments for the Long Beach Unified School District.

Kevin Scott ’95 of Hancock Park, Calif., was recognized on the “Top 100 Wirehouse Advisers of America 2011” list in the September issue of Registered Rep. He is a senior financial adviser at Merrill Lynch.

Brian David Goldberg MA ’96, PhD ’03 was re-elected to the Beverly Hills, Calif., board of education in November. He was elected president of the board in December.

1990s

2000s

Greig Smith ’00, MPA ’02 was appointed president of the Solar Power Division at Optiflex Properties and Development LLC, in Montebello, Calif. Previously, he served as a councilman for the city of Los Angeles for 32 years.

J. Scott Goldstein PhD ’97 was promoted Chris Kabel ’91 of Portland, Ore., was elected president of the Oregon Public Health Association. He serves as senior program officer at Northwest Health Foundation, which awards $6 million in grants per year in the Pacific Northwest.

to colonel in the U.S. Air Force Reserve and completed two years of service on the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon. He is senior vice president at QinetiQ North America and general manager of the National Systems Business Unit. He lives in Great Falls, Va.

Maryellen Kiefer ’01 of Long Beach, Calif., celebrated 10 years as a consultant with ComputerWorks NFP Solutions, a consulting firm specializing in financial software solutions for nonprofit organizations, governmental agencies and Native American tribal governments.

Scott Arkenberg MM ’92 celebrated 10 years of performing the Holiday Pops Chicago annual Christmas concert. He oversees the Music Education program at Alphonsus Academy & Center for the Arts and serves as music director at Saint James Church in Arlington Heights, Ill.

Matt Kovacs ’93 of Los Angeles was appointed executive vice president and general manager of public relations firm BLAZE. Previously, he served as vice president at Formula Public Relations and as marketing director at Lids.

Michael Trust MPA ’93 is an employee services manager for the South Bay and Long Beach, Calif., regions of HealthCare Partners.

Previously, he served as a human resources manager in the Department of Medicine at the University of California, Irvine.

Eldon Asp ’95 is co-author of the ’70s Mexican prison memoir Locked Up in La Mesa, which is in development as a cable television series. He lives in Manhattan Beach, Calif.

Mark V. Purpura ’95, director at Richards, Layton & Finger in Wilmington, Del., was named one of the country’s “Best LGBT Lawyers Under 40” by the LGBT U S C T R O JA N FA M I LY M AG A Z I N E

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Audrey “Ags” Surmacz-Johnson MPW ’01 of Beverly Hills, Calif., released The Sausage Maker’s Daughters, a story about a 24-year-old woman who is in jail for the mysterious death of her ex-lover who happened to be her brother-in-law.

Eric Bean ’02 was designated a certified consultant by the Association for Applied Sport Psychology, the international professional organization of sport and exercise psychology. He is a performance enhancement specialist with the U.S. Army in University Place, Wash.

Eric Kahnert ’02 was promoted to weekend evening news anchor at KUSA-TV, the NBC affiliate in Denver.

Sean A. Mulvihill ’02 of Hollywood, Calif., launched Hollywood Happiness Films, a production company that creates film projects encouraging happiness, health and peace. He stars in and directs the adventure comedy Holiday Spectacular.

Alex Grager JD ’04 was named a “2011 Rising Star” in Los Angeles Magazine’s list of the top 2.5 percent of attorneys under 40 years old in each state. He is an attorney at Los Angeles-based Feinberg Mindel Brandt & Klein LLP. Elise Graham ’04 of Dallas is a freelance unit production manager for independent films. She sits on the board of Women in Film Dallas and has worked on more than 13 films and several TV series for Fox.

Jeremy Blake Ross ’04 of Hermosa Beach, Calif., created the Obama Clock, an iPhone app that counts down to the next presidential inauguration while displaying statistics, such as the presidential approval rating, average gas price, unemployment rate and the national debt. Previously, he worked at Boeing Satellite Systems

Karen Linhart ’05 was promoted from media relations manager to public relations and social media director of USA Swimming in Colorado Springs, Colo. She serves as the primary media and public relations contact for the organization and oversees publicity for USA Swimming events and its corporate partners.

Nathan Lewis Collett MFA ’06, a filmmaker based in Nairobi, Kenya, was honored as Alumni of the Month by the U.S. Department of State for his work as founder of the nonprofit Hot Sun Foundation in Kibera, East Africa’s largest slum.

Kendra Kozen MA ’06 of Los Angeles is the public relations chair for the USC Trojan Junior Auxiliary, one of the oldest alumnae organizations that awards meritbased scholarships to junior and senior women attending USC.

Aaron Burgin ’05 was named senior investigative reporter at The San Diego UnionTribune. He lives in Vista, Calif.

Gina Gribow ’08, a student at the University of California Hastings College of the Law, was elected president of Law Students for Reproductive Justice. Previously, she worked for congresswoman Jackie Speier in Washington, D.C., for two years.

Jonathan Lin MBA ’09 of Brea, Calif., with business partner Jason Tao ’04, operates Kohburg Inc., a green early childhood furniture company. He worked with the USC Child Care Program on the University Park campus to set up the center’s first transitional kindergarten classroom.

MARRIAGES

Paul D. Adams ’77 and Lori Clark Groby Douglas Sutton ’79 and Marlowe Kepner Yvette Sanchez ’83 and Dan Burney Joshua Divelbiss ’04 and Elizabeth Burdick ’05, MA ’09 Jennifer (Passanisi) Rosko ’05 and Alex Rosko

Florencio M. Carlos ’06 and Ana Marisa Ybarra ’06.

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in memoriam

BIRTHS

Daniel S. Levitan MBA ’85 and Bronwyn Levitan, twin daughters, Samantha Grace and Alexandra Rose Kirsten (Kandler) Dunlap ’91 and Michael Dunlap ’91, a son, Maximus Michael. He joins sister, Devin, and brother, Zack. He is the nephew of Kevin Dunlap ’90

Todd Sharp ’91 and Stacey (Gilbert) Sharp ’92, a son, Spencer Aaron. He joins

ALUMNI

Patrick McDonald Martin ’00, San Gabriel, Calif.; Jan. 3, at the age of 35.

Steve Miletich MS ’49, Los Angeles; Oct. 21, at the age of 92

FA C U LT Y, S TA F F & F R I E N D S

Gordon A. “Bud” Naslund ’49, Sun City, Calif.; Aug. 28, at the age of 86

Don Andersen Tustin, Calif.; Nov. 18, at the age of 71

John F. Nursall ’49, MD ’52, Palos Verdes Estates, Calif.; Oct. 20, at the age of 90

John W. Beierle

Kenneth Amestoy Tipton

Sidney W. Benson

’49, San Diego; Nov. 19, at the age of 86

Brentwood, Calif.; Dec. 30, at the age of 93

Norman F. Salisbury

Emma Dell Foley

DDS ’52, MS ’62, Bakersfield, Calif.; Jan. 26, 2011, at the age of 93

Los Angeles; March 9, 2010, at the age of 86

PhD ’68, Upland, Calif.; Oct. 18, at the age of 74

brothers Jarrett, Ethan, Adam and Ryan

Gwen (Huling) Lopez Ozieblo ’96 and Robert Lopez Ozieblo, a son, Dustin Marcus

Brooke (Beare) Stjerne ’00 and Kyle Stjerne, a son, Gavin.

Harry Pachon REMEMBRANCE

Robert Vigen ’61, Seal Beach, Calif.; June 18, at the age of 71

Russell Benioff, father of USC trustee

André Pineda

Marc R. Benioff ’86, died on Jan. 16.

Julie O. Gardner

In memory of his father, Marc shares a short poem by Russell that Marc and his mother, Joelle Benioff, found after Russell passed away.

MS ’69, PhD ’72, San Diego; July 17, at the age of 75

A Thing Called Life Life is something we could create with Passion, or destroy with the pull of a Trigger; It means so much to we, who are living, But to those who are dead, nothing; They have lived out of their existence, A thing called life; A thing that humans crave to be forever, But with all their cravings and connivings, Only God wills what is to be; Life is our master and we live for it alone, We know not why or reason, but we know It is there; The breath of air that we breathe, The blood that flows in our veins, Or the will to create new life, All these we say are a thing called life.

Claremont, Calif.; Nov. 4, at the age of 66 Pasadena, Calif.; Sept. 27, at the age of 46

Charles Ray Ritcheson Thomas Parke Myers MPA ’75, Bella Vista, Ark.; July 19, at the age of 77

Washington, D.C.; Dec. 8, at the age of 86

James Rosenau Brent S. Baharie ’83, MD ’87, Seattle; Sept. 5, at the age of 52

Louisville, Colo.; Sept. 9, at the age of 86

Xavier Suazo Dave Yoder ’87, Mission Viejo, Calif.; Nov. 11, at the age of 46

MPA ’78, South Pasadena, Calif.; Dec. 20, at the age of 72

Richard “Dick” Thor Carol Ragan ’89, ME ’92, Boise, Idaho; Nov. 9, 1996, at the age of 29

MSW ’58, Redondo Beach, Calif.; Dec. 18, at the age of 80. ●

Ani Gasti MFA ’96, Orlando, Fla.; July 9, at the age of 46

Sue Lee ’96, Torrance, Calif.; Nov. 10, 2010, at the age of 38

››

READ THE OBITUARIES OF THESE MEMBERS OF THE TROJAN FAMILY AT

tfm.usc.edu/memoriam

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last word ››

SUBMIT ANSWERS OR VIEW PREVIOUS CONTESTS AT

tfm.usc.edu/lastword

IT IS

ROCKET SCIENCE Greek astronomer Archytas built the first device that used rocket propulsion – an artificial bird propelled by compressed air.

Today’s space rockets are the result of more than 2,000 years of invention, experimentation and discovery. See if you can identify these seminal moments, machines and makers in the history of rocketry.

2. The English word “rocket” derives from this humble Italian word for “spool,” perhaps because of its shape. The first rockets used in European warfare were fired in 1369, in Italy.

3. Named after its British inventor, this rocket could travel up to 9,000 feet. Deployed against the United States in the War of 1812, it was the subject of Francis Scott Key’s immortal lines: “And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air ... .”

4. The first guided rocket authorized by the United States to carry a nuclear warhead, this surface-to-surface missile traveled up to 75 nautical miles.

5. This German rocket scientist designed the world’s first long-range ballistic missile – used to deadly effect in London and Antwerp, Belgium, during World War II. Powered by alcohol and liquid oxygen, it could travel 200 miles. Later, working for NASA, he built the superbooster that propelled the Apollo spacecraft to the moon.

U S C T R O JA N FA M I LY M AG A Z I N E

spring 2012

9. This American scientist built and flew the

6. This 15th-century Italian inventor is credited

world’s first liquid propellant rocket in 1926.

Though it only climbed to 12.5 meters, it was the forerunner of the Saturn V moon rocket.

with designing a surface-running, rocketpowered torpedo that set fire to enemy ships.

10. Considered by many to be the father of

7. In a popular 1865 novel, this science fiction author described a moon launch using a giant cannon. Some of the details uncannily anticipated the Apollo missions of a century later: a three-man crew, a launch site in Florida and an accurate description of the feeling of weightlessness.

CONTEST RULES Name the rocket scientists, models and other explosive trivia described in the 11 clues and you, too, could have something to get all fired up about.

The five best entries will earn $30 gift certificates from Amazon. If more than five perfect entries are received, winners will be drawn by lot.

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8. This New Zealand-born rocket scientist, a NASA luminary and pioneer in space exploration, is one of the few nonpoliticians to have appeared on the cover of Time twice.

practical astronautics, he was the lead Soviet rocket engineer and spacecraft designer in the space race.

11. The world’s first intercontinental ballistic missile, this Soviet-made rocket was responsible for putting into orbit Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite. ●

Submit your answers by April 1 online, by mail to Last Word c/o USC Trojan Family Magazine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-2818, or by email at magazines@usc.edu.

I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y D O N G Y I W U

1. According to an old Mandarin civil service exam question, this 13th-century battle was the first recorded use of a rocket in combat.

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Change Service Requested

The new name in world-class medicine.

The University of Southern California’s (USC) renowned doctors and nationally ranked hospitals have a new name: Keck Medical Center of USC. Our new name is a symbol of USC’s commitment to change lives through the spark of scientific discovery and the healing power of compassion.

This innovative team includes the newly renamed Keck Hospital of USC (formerly USC University Hospital), USC Norris Cancer Hospital, and 500 faculty physicians of the Keck School of Medicine of USC. The Keck Medical Center of USC brings hope back to health care, connecting patients with some of the brightest medical minds in the country.

KeckMedicalCenterofUSC.org | 1-800-USC-CARE 1500 San Pablo Street, Los Angeles, CA 90033

Fight On.