Four-Year Report on the 1994 Strategic Plan

• Affordability, accountability, and the pressure for relevance
• Competition for students, resources and visibility
• Technology and information as agents of change
• Globalization of knowledge, careers, students, and alumni
• Increasing opportunities for scholarship and service created by special circumstances in the Southern California region

These trends are even more apparent today and continue to define the educational environment in which USC operates. The remarkable success of our Building on Excellence Campaign, which exceeded its $1 billion goal less than five years into its seven-year planned duration, has begun to provide the resources required for us to take advantage of these opportunities, while at the same time serving to increase our ambitions for excellence.

The present document reviews our progress to date and outlines actions for the next five years. As has been the case during the previous four years, our emphasis as we move forward must be on building academic programs of true excellence and importance. This demands that we recruit and retain those unusual faculty of exceptional quality who are capable of building preeminent programs.

I. History

Responding to a rapidly changing environment for higher education, the goal of the 1994 Strategic Plan was:

to seize those new opportunities that will enable USC to move over the next decade to a position of academic excellence that will define it clearly as one of the leading private research universities in America. We understand clearly that the leadership role we seek cannot be achieved by copying the successes of others, but rather must be earned through creation of a unique profile for USC.

In order to attain this goal, the Plan set forth four strategic initiatives to exploit USC's distinctive characteristics and create a truly competitive advantage:

1. Undergraduate Education

2. Interdisciplinary Research and Education

3. Programs Building on the Resources of Southern California and Los Angeles

4. Internationalization

The Plan also outlined strategies and actions to support these four initiatives. The present document first briefly reviews these initiatives and strategies and assesses our progress to date. The university has made significant progress in implementing these initiatives, and a recent reaccreditation report by WASC noted our progress in achieving the goals of the 1994 Plan. That the public is also noting our progress is underscored by the fact that our freshman applicant pool has grown by over 80% in the last four years, while at the same time the average SAT scores of enrolled freshmen have risen over 140 points.

The present document refines our strategic initiatives by proposing four new critical pathways of opportunity. Each pathway represents a field that advances all four of the strategic initiatives, each describes an area of great intrinsic importance and opportunity, and each builds on considerable existing institutional strength.

1. Communications:
Understanding and helping to solve technical, social, cultural, legal and political issues of communications in its many forms.

2. Life Sciences:
Coordinating and building on considerable expertise in the life sciences ranging from the basic biological sciences to clinical and engineering applications.

3. The Arts:
Coalescing our considerable strengths in the arts to move USC to the center of the cultural stage in Los Angeles.

4. The Urban Paradigm:
Exploring how complex urban environments function and how to improve them.

These critical pathways, described in detail in Section III, define important areas in which USC has a special opportunity to build strength and reputation. In addition, building strength along these pathways will provide capabilities that will enhance many academic programs not directly involved in a particular pathway, and will create broad academic strength that will enable USC to create excellence in other areas.

In addition, we recognize four potential areas of difficulty that will hinder our ability to successfully carry out this strategic plan unless appropriately addressed in the next few years.

• Graduate and postdoctoral student support
• Information technology
• Responsibility center management
• Improved utilization and planning of physical plant

Finally, this document proposes a number of strategies and actions that will require significant funding at the individual school level, and more importantly, at the university level.

II. Review of the Strategic Initiatives

1. Strategic Initiative in Undergraduate Education

In the 1994 Strategic Plan we promised to:

provide a distinctive undergraduate education that attracts large numbers of highly qualified applicants and gives our students the capacities and skills needed to excel in and contribute to a rapidly changing world. Critical differentiation will be obtained by:

(2) offering all students multiple opportunities to engage in interdisciplinary learning and career development utilizing the broad strengths of the university.

Undergraduate teaching is central to the mission of the University of Southern California. The integration of liberal and professional learning at USC is designed to provide knowledge and skills to our students, while at the same time helping them to acquire wisdom and insight, love of truth and beauty, moral discernment, understanding of self, and respect and appreciation for other cultures and communities.

In addition, the ability to integrate research activities with professional and liberal education provides USC with a distinctive model of undergraduate education that sets us apart from other institutions.

Over the past four years we have thoroughly revised General Education, created new minors programs that help to broaden the educational opportunities of our students, and made numerous changes to improve the educational environment. Attachment A provides a detailed list of specific outcomes achieved since the strategic plan was launched.

We will continue to emphasize actions that will sustain and enhance these important outcomes. Our focus in the coming years will be to:

• Improve retention and graduation rates at the undergraduate level. Our goal is to increase our retention rates by two percentage points per year over the next decade.
• Encourage every undergraduate to break out of the disciplinary straightjacket by pursuing a second major or a minor that is intellectually distant across the academic landscape from his or her primary field of study.
• Enhance undergraduate education through research opportunities in communications, the life sciences, the arts, and the urban paradigm. These critical pathways touch many of our academic programs and can provide an academically rich coherence that will make undergraduate education at USC truly distinctive. (See Section III)
• Link the educational experience in the classroom with experiential learning that brings undergraduates into close working contact with our research faculty, augmented by outside internships, community service, and other similar activities.
• Involve our alumni more effectively in the education of our students through increased mentoring and internships.
• Significantly enhance the technological infrastructure that supports USC's undergraduate programs. (See Section IV)
• Create a more supportive undergraduate environment by increasing the number of residential colleges by at least two ( with one of those having an international theme), by developing freshman learning groups, and by building a new campus center encompassing student services and student programming venues.
• Develop and implement a stematic process for academic program review during the 1998-99 academic year.

These actions will continue the significant increase in the quality and effectiveness of undergraduate education at USC that has occurred during the first four years of this plan, and will lead to greatly increased retention and graduation rates.

2. Strategic Initiative in Interdisciplinary Research and Teaching

In the 1994 Strategic Plan we promised:

to become a world center for innovative interdisciplinary research and education in selected areas. We will emphasize programs that span the spectrum from basic to applied research, and programs with a high degree of societal relevance.

The interdisciplinary initiative seeks, through organizational flexibility, to overcome traditional disciplinary barriers and create genuine teams in research, graduate, and postdoctoral programs. By including the range from the most basic to the most applied, we underline the essential role of basic research in addressing important societal problems.

Attachment A provides a detailed list of specific outcomes achieved since the 1994 Strategic Plan was launched. We have initiated several interdisciplinary research and teaching units during this period, a number of which have already achieved considerable success and visibility. We will continue to provide support through enhanced funding and other mechanisms to centers and organized research units that facilitate interdisciplinary research and teaching. We have also identified some aspects of Responsibility Center Management that constitute barriers to interdisciplinary activities.

In the next few years we will focus upon the four critical pathways as the primary, but not exclusive, ways to implement our initiative on interdisciplinary research and teaching. Successfully implementing this initiative will require us to carry out the following steps during the coming years:

• Create university-wide structures that coordinate program development across academic divisions to stimulate interdisciplinary teaching and research in key areas.
• Coordinate our hiring of faculty in interdisciplinary areas, including the strategic hiring of senior faculty to lead the development of research and teaching in these fields.
• Review, and revise where necessary, departmental, school and university- wide tenure and promotion criteria to facilitate interdisciplinary programs; implement these changes by fall 1999.
• Make fund-raising for graduate fellowships in communications, life sciences and the urban paradigm a high priority in order to attract outstanding students to these areas. ( See Section V.)
• Modify present fiscal and management structure in order to better support interdisciplinary research in general and the four critical pathways in particular. (See Section V.)
• As a result of these efforts, we will be able to better utilize scarce resources and direct a greater fraction of our attention to areas of increasingly important interdisciplinary research and teaching.

3. Strategic Initiative to Build on the Resources of Southern California and Los Angeles

In the 1994 Strategic Plan we promised to:

create programs of research and education that utilize the special characteristics of Southern California and Los Angeles as a center of urban issues, multiculturalism, arts, entertainment, communications, and business. We must emphasize USC's programs that utilize Southern California's regional resources and create university partnerships for mutual benefit in teaching, research and community activities at the local and regional level. This includes university efforts to enhance professional development for those who work in established and emerging industries and professions.

The emergence of the Southern California region from its recession has solidified the role envisioned for it in the 1994 Strategic Plan. In terms of culture, demographics, and trend-setting ideas, Southern California continues to be widely regarded as the prototype of 21st century urbanism. It is here and now that the challenges and opportunities that will be common to many parts of the urban world of the next century can be studied.

Southern California is an economic powerhouse, and what happens here affects the fortunes of many countries around the globe. Southern California is a world center for a number of pace-setting industries including entertainment, communications biotechnology, biomedical devices, and health care. This region is also a seed bed for new industries and new delivery systems that are shaping global culture and global society. It is increasingly an international center of the arts. All of these regional attributes provide USC with a strong competitive advantage in a broad set of academic endeavors.

Our efforts over the past four years with respect to the Southern California initiative have led to many positive outcomes that are listed in Attachment A. We have established several programs and centers that support this initiative, many of which are beginning to attract significant external funding, and hired several faculty who contribute to teaching and research in this initiative. Our primary emphasis during the next few years in implementing this initiative will also be through the critical pathways of Communications, Life Sciences, The Arts, and The Urban Paradigm (Section III). Other future actions include:

• Evaluate the recommendations of the Provost's Commission on the Future of Health Care, and implement them where possible with the goal of making USC a leader in defining the evolution of health care in a complex urban environment — an area in which USC can play a major national and international role.
• Complete the evaluation of the desirability and practicability of establishing a charter school within the coming year. Such a school could be an ideal laboratory for development of new educational approaches in an urban setting.
• Continue and improve efforts to pursue shared goals with the ethnic communities of the Southern California region. These efforts also have important consequences for the Strategic Initiative on Internationalization.

These actions will enable us to further exploit the competitive advantages that we enjoy from our location, and thus help to further clarify the external image of USC.

4. Strategic Initiative on Internationalization

In the 1994 Strategic Plan we promised to:

build upon USC's strong international base of alumni, students, and established relationships and Southern California's position as an international center to enhance future global opportunities for education, research, and career development. Because of the characteristics of Southern California and of our students and alumni, we will focus on the countries of the Pacific Rim and of Central and South America.

It is even clearer today than it was in 1994 that "our students will have to function in a world that is rapidly becoming more international." Research and scholarship now easily cross geographic and national boundaries as communication and transportation improve. Based on these precepts, The 1994 Plan identified a challenging set of strategies to further its position as a premier player in international education and research. Attachment A outlines the outcomes achieved in this initiative. Several of our schools already have launched very creative educational initiatives involving international study, three international USC offices have been opened, and new research collaborations have been undertaken with Asian peers. Future actions to implement this initiative include:

• Continue to build needed expertise in international areas by using bridge funding from the Provost's office to hire faculty with appropriate backgrounds in selected disciplines.
• Improve effectiveness of our efforts by creating internal structures and policies that coordinate major international activities across schools.
• Improve "hands-on" learning about international issues by increasing the number of undergraduates taking a semester abroad by at least 50 per year (currently only about 200 of our undergraduate students take a semester abroad in any given year), and by encouraging other schools to create programs along the model of the Marshall School's PRIME program that provides international experience and learning for all of its full- time MBA students.
• Help all of our students benefit from our strong international student body by fostering programs on campus that bring international and domestic students into closer contact, and encourage and enable each group to learn from the other. Construction of an internationally-themed residential college will be a very important component of this effort.
• Build closer relationships with communities in Southern California that have strong ties to countries in the Pacific Rim and Latin America in order to open new possibilities for recruitment, research, and teaching.
• Continue to utilize the emerging global communications infrastructure to create new types of linkages with foreign universities and researchers, and to offer USC-based instruction in other countries.
• Continue to strengthen our international alumni network in order to enhance our presence around the Pacific Rim and of Central and South America.

III. Critical Pathways

Four particular themes that can provide critical pathways to increased excellence and distinction for USC have emerged from among the many encompassed by the strategic initiatives. There are of course many compelling areas of research and teaching that fall within the strategic initiatives, and we should make efforts to achieve leadership in several of these. However, the four critical pathways take on special significance because of their high intrinsic importance and because they offer us certain advantages with respect to our competitors. Each is contained in all four of the strategic initiatives, and as a consequence, strength in these areas will provide an excellent base on which we can later build strength for other fields.

1. Communications

Communications was already cited in the 1994 Strategic Plan as an area of focus for USC. During the intervening four years the field has become even more important on a world-wide basis, transforming almost every area of human endeavor. USC is well positioned to play a leadership role in this revolution because of our location, because of existing academic strengths, and because of the resources provided by the Annenberg Center for Communication and the Annenberg Endowment.

Our Annenberg School for Communication and our Schools of Cinema-Television and Engineering are at the very forefront in complementary aspects of communications, and can serve both as a base and a focus for a broader university effort in this area. Indeed, over the past four years the Annenberg Center for Communication has enabled us to make considerable strides in building our strengths and coordinating our efforts in this area.

While USC should play an important role in many aspects of the communications revolution, over the next year we must identify a small number of critical problems in communications that will serve as the focus of our efforts for the next several years. This will define the areas of research and teaching in which we can achieve positions of real leadership. At the same time, we must provide some structure to our research and teaching efforts in communications so that faculty in various disciplines who are working in communications will find their individual work enhanced through a university-wide focus. Coordination across school and departmental lines in hiring, course offerings, and research will almost certainly be necessary if we are to achieve true excellence in these selected areas.

2. Life Sciences

The life sciences will be the dominant area of scientific research in the early decades of the 21^st century, and few universities will be considered as having significant science programs without major strengths in the life sciences. Southern California is one of the most active regions in the world in biotechnology and biomedical devices, and most of the major universities in the region are seeking to use this activity to provide a competitive advantage.

USC has significant competitive advantage in several fields of basic research in the life sciences, including neuroscience, functional genomics, cancer and computational biology, and a number of our clinical research programs are strong and growing. At the applied boundaries of the field, we have both excellent clinical medicine and several strong programs in Engineering that contribute to our efforts in biotechnology and biomedical devices, including biomedical and electrical engineering and computer science. The Alfred E. Mann Institute for Biomedical Engineering at USC will stimulate growth in biomedical engineering and related device-oriented research, and facilitate the movement of university-created technologies to the market place.

We must, over the next year, define very carefully where USC should focus its efforts in order to establish real excellence and an international leadership role in this critical field.

It is clear that many areas of basic biological research at USC are not strong enough at present to enable us to take the leadership position we seek, and thus selective strengthening must take place rapidly. Examples of selective strengthening are already underway in the College and in the School of Medicine, but a broader inventory of strengths and weaknesses in the life sciences across the university needs to be carried out in the coming year, and plans must be made to address critical weaknesses. Coordination across a large number of very diverse schools and programs will be critical to the success of this initiative.

3. The Arts

Southern California has long dominated the motion picture industry, and more recently has also come to dominate the television and popular music industries. Moreover, Southern California is rapidly assuming a leadership role in the field of multimedia.

And over the past few decades, Southern California has begun to emerge as a leading world center for the fine arts as well. Numerous museums, such as the Getty, the Norton Simon, the Huntington, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Autry Museum of Western Heritage, the Skirball Cultural Center & Museum and The Los Angeles County Museum of Art are recognized internationally for their excellence, and some of the world's most visible and outstanding artists and performers now make Southern California their home. Los Angeles architects are redefining architecture around the world, and musical institutions such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Opera are beginning to attract world-wide recognition.

USC has an opportunity to use the growing artistic vitality of the region to push its already high-quality schools in the arts to the next level of excellence, and at the same time to position itself as one of the leading cultural institutions of the region. An expanded and more visible and influential arts program could also have a major positive impact on the image of USC that would benefit all of our academic endeavors, enrich the undergraduate experience at USC, and bring new groups of visitors to our campus.

Over the next year we need to bring together our five arts-related schools — Architecture, Cinema-TV, Fine Arts, Music and Theater — along with the Fisher Gallery, KUSC, and the Spectrum Performance Series, to map out a campaign to move USC to the center of the cultural stage in Los Angeles. This campaign will involve strengthening some aspects of our academic units and developing a carefully-coordinated program of both professional and student on-campus performances.

4. The Urban Paradigm

The quality of life in any urban region results from a complex interplay among a group of factors that includes the physical and cultural environment, government, demography, and the economy. A rapidly increasing fraction of the world's population is found in large urban environments, and consequently understanding how these environments work and how to improve them is one of the major challenges facing contemporary society.

Because of its unusually broad array of professional schools, USC is already making many significant contributions to the study of urban issues. The Schools of Education; Social Work; and Policy, Planning, and Development focus much of their effort on these issues, and many of the other professional schools have significant programs in this area as well. The College of Letters, Arts and Sciences also has considerable strength in the study of urban issues, particularly in the departments of Geography, History, and Sociology. Southern California itself provides a competitive advantage for USC because it is a perfect laboratory for studying many of the trends and conditions that are already common in urban areas around the world, or are likely to become common in the early part of the 21st century. The Southern California Study Center (SC2) has, over the past three years, made major strides in coordinating and stimulating research in this area, and has achieved considerable external visibility and credibility.

Because of our great academic strengths in relevant disciplines and because of the advantage of our location, USC has the opportunity to make even greater contributions to the study of urban issues by focusing our efforts. Over the next year we need to define research themes that can provide coherence to our many and diverse efforts. As in the Communications and Life Sciences pathways, structures must be created that will facilitate coordination of faculty hiring and course offerings, so that all students and faculty working in this area can benefit from each others' efforts.

IV. University Infrastructure

We have identified four potential limiting elements that could significantly hinder the implementation of the Strategic Plan and its expansions. All four were noted in The 1994 Strategic Plan, but require even greater attention in the future. These elements are graduate and post-doctoral student support, information technology, Responsibility Center Management, and improved utilization and planning of physical plant.

1. Graduate and Post-doctoral Student Support

A cadre of very strong graduate and post-doctoral students is a significant factor in the ability of a university to carry out cutting-edge research, especially in the sciences and engineering. In addition, much of the reputation of a university among its peers comes from the quality of its Ph.D. graduates

USC is increasingly disadvantaged in its efforts to attract the best Ph.D. and post-doctoral students by a lack of university financial support. Science and engineering graduate students require support in their first years before government research funds are available, and doctoral students in disciplines where there are little or no government funds require support for periods of up to five years. Although government funds are often available for post-doctoral students, supplementary internal support for postdocs is frequently necessary in order to recruit and retain the best faculty.

Funds raised for Ph.D. and post-doctoral student support, especially in the areas of the critical pathways, should therefore be given the highest priority.

2. Information and Learning Technology

USC must rapidly begin to implement new learning technologies to transform the residential teaching and learning process. These learning technologies strengthen interest in learning, increase the knowledge base and intellectual capabilities of our graduates, and provide them with a competitive advantage in the multimedia communications revolution. Because of our institutional expertise in the technical, sociological, and production areas of communications, we should be able to provide a leadership role in learning technologies. However, at present we are falling behind many of our peers and competitors in critical areas, and must move rapidly and with increased clarity of purpose in order to remain competitive.

Four areas particularly need enhancement:

• information resources and technologies
• multimedia-based learning
• distance learning
• a digital library

3. Responsibility Center Management

Responsibility Center Management (RCM) has been one of the administrative hallmarks of USC since the early 1980's. It has served the university well by providing the resources and authority at the School and College level to carry out academic program initiatives. Our long history of balanced budgets is a tribute to this financial and budgetary management system.

Nonetheless, RCM has created behaviors and incentives that often benefit individual schools to the detriment of broader university interests. As a consequence, many interdisciplinary initiatives that demand central support and funding have been actively or passively discouraged. The strategic initiatives and critical pathways outlined in the present document will require a level of inter-school and central financial support and cooperation that are not encouraged by Responsibility Center Management. Thus, mechanisms must be found to modify USC's traditional version of RCM so as to facilitate inter- and multi-disciplinary research and teaching, and to better enable University-wide long-range planning and implementation.

4. Improved Utilization and Planning of Physical Plant

The 1994 Strategic Plan recognized that improved utilization of existing physical plant must be a high priority for the university. As we make major investments to improve our existing plant, we need to develop new ways to improve resource utilization. While some progress has been made in utilizing classrooms five full days per week, we still have a long way to go in this regard. In addition, we must plan for expansions and improvements of our physical plant that are less dependent on the vagaries of single-school fund-raising. Increased attention must be paid to expansions, improvements and maintenance of plant that serve the interests of the university as a whole, rather than the interests of a single school or department. Finally, although the Facilities Improvement Fund (FIF) has proved to be extremely effective in addressing some of our deferred maintenance needs, the quality of many of our classrooms, lecture halls, teaching laboratories and residence halls remains well below that of our competitors.

ATTACHMENT A

1. Strategic Initiative in Undergraduate Education -- Outcomes

Attracting the Highest Quality Students to USC

Improved the size, quality, and diversity of the applicant pool by developing and implementing comprehensive recruitment plan.

The freshman applicant pool rose from 11,711 in 1994 to 21,382 in 1998, an increase of over 80%.

The average GPA of enrolled freshmen rose from 3.5 in 1994 to 3.7 in 1998.

The average SAT of enrolled freshmen rose from 1102 in 1994 to an estimated 1242 in 1998.

The number of enrolled National Merit Scholars rose from 76 in 1994 to 140 in 1998, an increase of over 84%.

Developed and distributed new recruitment materials that enhanced the image of USC. These materials brought focus and clarity of message to major constituencies, including students, their parents, guidance counselors and teachers by casting all recruitment information in terms of the goals of the strategic plan.

Improved the quality and timeliness of all admission and financial aid services. This was accomplished through a systematic review of each transaction involved in processing applications and serving students. Reduced the time to process financial aid transactions by 65%. By 1998, all financial aid packages were completed by April 15th.

Worked closely with the USC Alumni Association to develop materials for Trojan Family members about preparing applicants for admission to an ever more selective campus.

Undergraduate Educational Programs

Developed and implemented a new general education program which is simpler, educationally more coherent, and intellectually more valid than the former program. The new program is designed to help all students understand the cultural and historical context of their lives; to think analytically about texts, events, scientific evidence and arguments; and to write clearly and effectively. The number of required general education courses was reduced to six, which enables the majority of our students the class and credit time to complete a minor or a second major within a normal four-year program.

Developed second majors, minors, and cross-departmental minors, including minors in a wide array of professional schools. These programs allow students to acquire breadth with depth by pursuing a second major or minor that is far removed across the academic landscape from their principal field of study.

USC now offers 94 academic minors, an increase of 40% over those available to students in 1994. Thirty-eight of these minors involve collaboration among two or more academic units.

All professional schools at USC now participate in at least one academic minor, with many participating in multiple minors.

Presently developing the Renaissance Scholars program to recognize students who successfully complete, with academic distinction, a major and a minor (or two majors) in widely separated fields of study.

Created the Trojan Life Cycle, a comprehensive approach to organizing the student experience that is designed to improve retention and graduation, aid in job placement, and encourage students to become active alumni.

Educational Environment

Created and filled a new position, Director of Undergraduate Programs, with a primary focus on dramatically improving our comparatively low rates of undergraduate retention and graduation. Started retention experiments to determine which approaches will have the greatest effect on retention and graduation rates.

Developed four residential colleges, including the Annenberg House (a special-interest residential option for undergraduates in one or more disciplines associated with USC's interdisciplinary focus on communications), which bring faculty and students together in living environments that strengthen the sense of academic community among the participants.

Created and filled a new position, Dean of Religious Life, to provide support for the more than 30 campus ministers at USC and to help students address moral and spiritual issues in their personal lives.

Established Spectrum Performance Programs to bring more arts and cultural programs to the campus. Each year 70 such programs are offered.

Established the President's Distinguished Lecture Series which brings to campus each year two or three of the world's greatest leaders (including such speakers as Margaret Thatcher, Shimon Peres, and Colin Powell).

Involved more students in the surrounding neighborhoods through a variety of community service and research programs.

Created "Your Portfolio," a web based learning tool that helps students explore USC's curricular and co-curricular programs, integrate their learning experiences, and publish their resumes on line for distribution to prospective employers.

Substantially improved the Greek system by: stressing high academic achievement; establishing new standards of behavior; developing new standards for controlling the consumption of alcohol; rehabilitating 28th Street and the back alleys of Greek Row; offering guaranteed loans to Greek houses for academic achievement; and significantly increasing the number of students participating in rush.

Created and filled a new position of Director of Summer Programs to develop an ongoing set of academic programs at USC during the summer.

Started a new USC Summer Seminars pre-collegiate program for talented high school students.

2. Strategic Initiative in Interdisciplinary Research and Teaching -- Outcomes

Interdisciplinary research and teaching units:

Established the Integrated Multimedia Systems Center (IMSC), which was selected and funded by the National Science Foundation as the national center for research in multimedia after a nation-wide competition.

Established the Alfred E. Mann Institute for Biomedical Engineering at USC (AMI- USC) based on a gift from Alfred E. Mann. AMI-USC will involve faculty and students from around the University, and will focus on the creation of biomedical products.

Established the Southern California Studies Center (SC2) to support and organize research, education, and outreach on matters pertaining to Southern California. Funded initially with a grant from the Provost's University Excellence Fund, and now also funded by a grant from the Irvine Foundation.

Established the Philip K. Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies with a gift from Bill and Julie Wrigley. More than eighty experts throughout the University are involved in various aspects of environmental research and education.

Created the Initiative on Violence that brings together more than 100 interested faculty and other professionals to analyze causes and cures for violence in our society.

Established the Institute for Genetic Medicine (IGM) with external funding from the Lucille B. Markey Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. The IGM involves faculty from basic and clinical departments and focuses on discovery that leads to new diagnostic and therapeutic medical strategies, tools, and devices.

Established the Annenberg Center for Communication, including the Egg Company Two new business incubator, with a grant from Ambassador and Mrs. Walter Annenberg. This Center brings together faculty from the Schools of Engineering and Cinema-Television, the Annenberg School, and other Schools and colleges.

Recruitment of professors in selected interdisciplinary areas:

• Environmental studies
• Asian and Latin American studies
• American studies

3. Strategic Initiative in Southern California and Los Angeles -- Outcomes

Internal Structures that Support Education and Research

Established the Southern California Studies Center (SC2)

Established the Annenberg Center for Communication

Established an Arts Management Group, involving the schools of Music, Architecture, Fine Arts, and Theater, KUSC, and the Fisher Gallery, which has begun to produce needed visibility for our excellent arts programs.

Specific Education and Research Programs

Expanded and strengthened the American Studies program and focused it on the Western United States and in particular on Southern California.

Established the Interdisciplinary Violence Research Initiative.

Created the California Earthquake Center.

Established the Alfred E. Mann Institute for Biomedical Engineering at USC (AMI-USC) to capitalize on the university's and the region's strengths in biomedical research.

Established the Philip K. Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies with a major portion of the Institute located on Catalina Island.

Established a Health Sciences Management group involving Dentistry, Gerontology, Pharmacy and the Independent Health Professions. Its first project was producing a distance learning course in geriatrics.

Helping to Create Excellence in USC's Neighborhoods

The Neighborhood Outreach Program has helped to significantly improve the USC Family of Five Schools, has lowered crime in our neighborhoods, and has helped create a stronger sense of community.

The Neighborhood Academic Initiative (NAI) graduated its first class in 1997 and 19 freshmen entered USC in the Fall of 1997. Twenty six NAI graduates entered USC in the Fall of 1998.

4. Strategic Initiative in Internationalization -- Outcomes

International Research and Teaching Involvement in the Pacific Rim and Latin America

Launched in 1997 The Marshall School's Pacific Rim Education (PRIME) Program. In Spring 1998, all 250 full-time MBA students participated in field visits at 60 different companies in Tokyo, Osaka, Shanghai, Nanjing, Jakarta, Mexico City, and Monterrey.

Launched numerous international curricular initiatives including the School of Policy, Planning, and Development's 12-month International Public Policy and Management Program for Asian healthcare officials.

Initiated a new architecture studio class in Malaysia in the summer of 1998 for undergraduates in architecture and urban planning

Developed multiple international research connections between the School of Medicine and institutions in Asia, with particular emphasis on its work with the Peking Union Medical College in Beijing.

Connections with Universities, Communities, Alumni and Corporations Abroad

Elected four prominent Asian leaders to USC's Board of Trustees.

Arranged a thirty-person delegation of USC's Trustees and senior leadership to Tokyo, Jakarta, and Hong Kong — to familiarize them with Asian societies and the important roles played by USC alumni

Established (in collaboration with UCLA, UC Berkeley, and Caltech) the Association of Pacific Rim Universities (APRU) which brings together the chief executive officers of 33 of the leading Pacific Rim research universities. APRU is modeled on the Association of American Universities (AAU), and President Sample of USC serves as APRU's founding chairman. APRU has been recognized by the presidents and prime ministers of the APEC economies as an important new institution that can facilitate economic development and the transfer of science and technology around the Pacific Rim.

Opened representative offices in Jakarta, Taipei, and Hong Kong, and have made plans for additional offices in other Asian countries.

Revitalized alumni clubs throughout Asia and Mexico, and held major alumni events in Tokyo (4), Beijing (1), Taipei (1), Shanghai (4), Nanjing (2), Hong Kong (4), Bangkok (1), Jakarta (6), Mexico City (1), and Monterrey (1).

Internal Structures and Policies that Support Educational and Research Linkages Abroad

Established Provost's Distinguished Visitors Program that annually brings five to eight Asia and Latin America experts to USC to meet with students and faculty for up to 10 days each. Eighteen such visitors have come to USC since January 1996.

Established Provost's Asia/Latin America Experts Program that subsidizes the hiring of senior faculty with Asian or Latin American expertise. Under this program, the Marshall School recently has hired an expert on Japan's financial system, and four additional searches are underway.

Created the Pacific Council on International Policy (PCIP) in collaboration with the School of International Relations and the Council on Foreign Relations. This council supports a visiting speaker program and a visiting scholar program, and organizes research seminars and study groups.

Won $2.1 million in grants since 1994 for USC's Center for International Business Education and Research (CIBEAR) from the U.S. Department of Education to support 50 teaching and research projects led by over 65 USC faculty.

Won over $2.08 million in grants since 1994 for USC's East Asian Studies Center (jointly with UCLA) from the U.S. Department of Education.

Created the Community Newspaper Council, which connects the Annenberg School for Communication to various ethnic newspapers in Southern California, thereby strengthening USC's relationships with communities that have strong ties to Asia and Latin America.