Endowing the Future
Sponsor: Tom and Linda Dean Maudlin
Without the generosity of farsighted donors, USC would never have come into being. Without the continued support of private philanthropy, it would never have become an internationally renowned research university. In the 1960s, the Ford Foundation made a $6.5 million challenge grant to USC, which the university had to match 3-to-1 in three years. The university raised the $19.5 million in just 15 months – a feat it surpassed with a second Ford Foundation grant two years later. In 1993, USC received what was then the largest cash gift in the history of higher education: $120 million from Ambassador Walter Annenberg. This station explores the role that private support has played in USC’s growth and maturation.
Love Affair with the Movies
Sponsor: Bill and Marie Allen
In February 1929, USC debuted the nation’s first university course in film. “Introduction to Photoplay” featured a full roster of celebrated guest lecturers and set the stage for the university’s influential School of Cinema-Television. Early cinema faculty included such Hollywood immortals as Douglas Fairbanks, D.W. Griffith, Irving Thalberg and Darryl Zanuck. This station provides a brief history of USC’s top-rated film and television programs and its close ties to the entertainment industry.
Student Musical Traditions
Sponsor: L’Cena, Robert and Ronald Rice
Music has always been an integral part of USC’s tradition, but the university’s reputation for musical excellence didn’t really begin to develop until the 1910s, more than 30 years after the university was founded. It was then that the men’s glee club gained renown as the best on the West Coast. In 1924, the USC band played for John Philip Sousa. This station celebrates the history of the Trojan Marching Band, the evolution of USC’s renowned vocal groups and the origins of Songfest.
A Trojan for Life
USC’s first alumni association was founded in 1885, a year after the university graduated its first class. A modest organization that mainly served graduates of the College of Liberal Arts, it nonetheless kept the alumni spirit alive until a university-wide alumni association was founded in 1923. Under president Edward L. Doheny, the association organized Trojan Clubs around the country and, in 1924, inaugurated the annual Homecoming celebration. This station traces the development of USC’s extensive and enthusiastic alumni network and the continuing importance of alumni to the university.
USC and the World Wars
The World Wars brought tremendous changes to USC. The composition of the student body altered, war-related courses and programs cropped up on campus, and new priorities emerged in the classroom and in extra-curricular activities. During World War I, some 1,000 students pitchedtents on Bovard Field, lived under Army regulations and attended classes in uniform. During World War II, 15 percent of the student body and 75 faculty members left the university for military service. By the end of the war, 75 percent of the male student body was in uniform. This station commemorates the sacrifices made by the university community in these years.
Becoming a Research University
USC began to transform itself into a research university during World War II, when the federal government set up several research projects on campus. A human centrifuge, installed in 1943, was used to study the conditions leading to blackout. But it wasn’t until President Norman Topping launched the Master Plan for Enterprise and Excellence in Education, which raised nearly $130 million during the 1960s, that research really came into prominence. This station outlines the importance of the Master Plan – the most ambitious fundraising campaign in USC’s history up to that time – in creating today’s USC, including the university’s election to the prestigious Association of American Universities in 1969.
Sponsor: Pete Peterson and Charles Dargan
A World-Class University
Sponsor: Carl M. and Sterling Franklin
Eminent faculty are the heart of a university’s reputation, and this station introduces many of USC’s most prominent faculty members, past and present. It also describes the important partnership between private benefactors and the academic enterprise they support, with special focus on Nobel laureate George A. Olah and patron Katherine B. Loker, who along with her late husband, Donald, provided significant funding and facilities for the chemist’s landmark research on super-acids, which led to cleaner gasolines.
Health Care
Sponsor: Ralph and Sigrid Allman
USC has been committed to educating health care professionals almost since its inception, but until the 1970s the schools of Medicine, Dentistry and Pharmacy led nomadic existences. All three spent time on the University Park Campus, as well as in locations ranging from Chinatown to East Los Angeles and beyond. This station documents their comings and goings, including the opening of the Health Sciences Campus in 1952.
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