Issue: Autumn 2005

President’s Page

By Steven B. Sample

As Neil Armstrong spoke to USC’s graduates last May, I vividly recalled how inspiring his “giant leap for mankind” was for countless people (including me) in 1969. Watching Armstrong take that first lunar step caused all the world to marvel at how vast are the frontiers of human knowledge, and how important it is for us to applaud and encourage those who, like Neil Armstrong, devote their lives to expanding those frontiers. Members of the Class of 2005, who listened to this distinguished USC alumnus at their commencement, have their own futures to invent. They’ll do so in a world radically different from that of Armstrong’s youth, when rocket engines were primitive and a career in spacecraft operations unheard of. Thus Armstrong told our latest graduates, “You cannot imagine the change and related opportunity that will arise for you in the years ahead,” but he reminded them they’d received “a great start” at USC in the lifelong process of learning.

Our Class of 2005 has received a great start indeed, and it is our collective responsibility to ensure that future generations of Trojans will receive just as great a start. Ever since its founding in 1880, USC has been reinventing itself – while remaining true to its core values – so as to better serve its students and society. For example, at the behest of the city of Los Angeles, USC physics students conducted experiments in 1917 on cost-efficient street lighting. During World War II the university offered cryptography classes. Until it became financially impossible toward the end of USC’s first decade, the university pursued a multi-campus plan that would bring education to the people rather than require Southern Californians to travel “abroad” to one central campus in Los Angeles. “If they cannot go to the College,” USC’s principal founder, Robert Widney, said in an 1886 speech, “it is the duty of the College to come to them,” because, he believed, multiple campuses would “educate a greater number of the human race” and “do more good to man, and that is our great object.” This ambitious plan – although it proved impractical – illustrates USC’s dedication to meeting students’ and society’s needs.

During this our university’s 125th anniversary year, we should reflect on USC’s long history of serving Southern California as we work together to enhance our future. In 1885, for example, USC’s leaders insisted that their new medical school offer a comprehensive three-year curriculum even though nearly all other medical schools in the nation had two-year programs. Today’s Keck School of Medicine of USC is heir to that legacy of relevance, rigor, and responsiveness. Its most recent graduating class was the first to experience a new curriculum specially crafted to prepare them for the challenges of 21st-century medicine.

Elsewhere, our School of Dentistry has instituted a new curriculum for doctoral students that focuses on problem-based learning instead of lecture-based pedagogy, while the USC Marshall School of Business’ new full-time MBA curriculum fuses leadership training with immersion studies into key industries in order to create what dean Yash Gupta calls a “highly integrative, global, innovation-laden program.” Likewise, to meet the needs of mid-career museum directors, USC College has reinvented its museum studies program. The new International Museum Institute provides advanced leadership training while fostering collaborations with local and Pacific Rim museums.

Our 125th anniversary theme is “Inventing the future, honoring the past.” USC’s history reveals a model for our future – one that embraces our traditions yet seeks the continual renewal and reinvention that will best serve the interests of individuals and of society as a whole. In this new century, let’s become the most productive, innovative, and influential research university in the world. It’s a leap that only Trojans have the audacity to attempt.