Brian Henderson Photo by Don Milici

Issue: Summer 2005

What’s New - Shelf Life - People Watch

News & Notes on All Things Trojan

Stem Cell Agents

California’s $3-billion embryonic stem-cell research agency takes off with two USC medical leaders in the driver’s seat.

With the passage last November of Proposition 71 – the groundbreaking California Stem Cell Research and Cures ballot initiative – a new era had dawned for regenerative medicine. Almost immediately, it was clear that USC would play a major role in that era. In December, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced his first five picks for the 29-member Independent Citizens Oversight Committee that would shape the new California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (CIRM).

Brian E. Henderson, dean of the Keck School of Medicine of USC, was one of them. He was also tapped for the group’s president search committee and its working group search committee. The citizen’s oversight committee governs CIRM, the state agency that will distribute $3 billion over the next 10 years to fund embryonic stem-cell research. The project represents the largest investment in science by any state.

“This is an important initiative not only to California but to the world,” Henderson said at the time of his appointment. “And it is significant that the Keck School of Medicine is an integral part of this process.”

Considered one of the world’s preeminent authorities in cancer epidemiology, Henderson is also the founding chair of the Keck School’s nationally prominent Department of Preventive Medicine, former director of the USC/Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center and founding director of USC’s Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute.

The first of several meetings of the Independent Citizens Oversight Committee – charged with governing California’s newly established institute to support and promote stem-cell research – held at the Keck School of Medicine. Photo by Jon Nalick

In early January, the committee held its inaugural meeting at the Keck School. Chaired by attorney Robert Klein, one of the authors of Proposition 71, the group discussed ethical issues, bylaws, procedures and the search for a president.

Two months later, the oversight committee announced its choice for CIRM chief executive: 29 members voted unanimously to hire USC neuroscientist Zach W. Hall.

Hall, who has resigned from USC to accept the one-year government appointment, is charged with running the day-to-day operations and overseeing the science of the agency.

A renowned scientific administrator, Hall was most recently director of USC’s Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute and senior associate dean for academic development in the Keck School of Medicine of USC.

In an interview shortly after his election, Hall told the Los Angeles Times: “I’m John the Baptist here to prepare the way to get things started, to set up the organization … to get it ready for the first-rate people who will surely be interested.”

Before joining the Keck School in 2002, Hall was vice chancellor at UC San Francisco and director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), one of the National Institutes of Health.

“Leaving the Keck School of Medicine and USC is not easy for me, as I have come to value both the academic community here and the many individuals who work so hard to make it a success,” Hall said at his USC farewell party. “There is no doubt that the school is on an upward trajectory and the next few years should be exciting ones.”

Time will tell what other relationships materialize between USC and CIRM. Donald Kohn, a professor of pediatrics based at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles and one of USC’s most noted stem-cell biologists, is chairing the Keck School’s Stem Cell Research committee, responsible for assisting in the recruitment of key stem-cell scientists and with organizing the Keck School’s response to CIRM’s call for grant applications.

“We’re at the beginning, with science’s first baby steps of trying to manipulate stem cells and genes,” Kohn says. “Just as we now have medicines that make penicillin seem like a weak antibiotic, we’ll look back in 10 to 20 years and be able to do many things we’re just beginning to think about now.”

A Challenge to Relearn the Past

David McCullough Photo by Berliner Photography

History’s Helper

“We’re raising a generation that is historically illiterate,” says public historian David McCullough to anyone who will listen. On Feb. 16, he sounded that warning to several hundred USC students and faculty members filling Town and Gown. The two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author and celebrated man-of-letters appeared as a guest in the President’s Distinguished Lecture Series. McCullough has done his part to turn things around, leading a renaissance of popular interest in American history. His own books, while meticulously sourced and researched, read more like gripping fiction than dry fact. His most recent, John Adams, hit the New York Times best-seller list at No. 1 and, remarkably, stayed there for more than a year. It also took the 2002 Pulitzer Prize, as did his 1992 biography, Truman. His forthcoming book, 1776, takes on the American revolution.

In his speech at USC, McCullough discussed the role of the founding fathers in the development of education and public knowledge. He blamed the current erosion of historical memory primarily on a system of teacher education that neglects the liberal arts. “You can’t love something you don’t know any more than you can love someone you don’t know,” he told the audience. But McCullough doesn’t lay the whole blame on school teachers. “The problem with education in America today is us,” he says. Stressing the responsibility of parents and other adults to transmit a love of history to children, McCullough declared: “History needs to be a part of the dinner table conversation.”

Illustration by A.J. Garces

Skin for Sale

In February a young man in Omaha made advertising history when he became the first human billboard. For a cool $37,000, Andrew Fischer agreed to temporarily tattoo the logo and tagline of SnoreStop, a snoring remedy, on his forehead. The following month, he rented his forehead to an online casino. Other human billboards have since offered their brows, as well as arms, hands and even a pregnant belly. USC business expert Jim Ellis sees these skin spots as part of a growing trend to blanket our environment with advertisements, right down to the bottoms of urinals and golf holes. “In advertising,” Ellis told the Los Angeles Times, “you get between 3,000 and 4,000 ads thrown at you in every single day, and ad agencies and advertisers will do whatever they can to get through.”

Health News

Illustration by Michael Klein

Benefishal Oils

Women with certain polymorphisms get twice the breast cancer-preventing punch of eating fish rich in fatty acids.

USC researchers who a year ago had found that certain fish oils appear to reduce breast-cancer risk now have discovered that the oils may especially benefit women with a particular genetic makeup.

The protective effects of fish oils – called marine omega-3 fatty acids – are linked to the cancer-fighting properties of the oils’ byproducts, say investigators from the Keck School of Medicine of USC and the National University of Singapore.

Women whose bodies do a poor job of flushing the fish-oil byproducts benefit most from consuming them, the researchers believe. This insight may help scientists better understand exactly how fish oils deter cancer.

“We found that women with certain common DNA patterns experienced more breast cancer protection from marine omega-3 fatty acids than women with other common patterns,” says Keck preventive medicine researcher Manuela Gago-Dominguez, lead author of the study published in the journal Carcinogenesis.

Findings came from the Singapore Chinese Health Study, a prospective investigation of diet and cancer risk in more than 63,000 Chinese men and women in Singapore.

The researchers had already found that among postmenopausal women in this group, those who ate the most omega-3 fatty acids – present in fish like salmon and mackerel – were 34 percent less likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer than women who ate the least omega-3 fatty acids from fish.

“Through this study, we have identified a novel gene-environmental interaction between certain genotypes and omega-3 fatty acids on breast cancer development,” says Keck School researcher Mimi C. Yu, principal investigator of the Singapore Chinese Health Study.

Scientists suspected that lipid peroxidation products – substances produced when the fatty acids break down – were behind the protection. Gago-Dominguez says certain enzymes in the body known as glutathione S-transferases (GST) help the body get rid of these lipid peroxidation products. Each person has certain genes that carry the recipe for making GST.

But these genes can be found in slightly different varieties – called polymorphisms – in the population. The differences between the genes can mean the difference between GST that clears substances efficiently out of the body and GST that works a little slower.

The researchers looked at the genetic makeup of study participants and grouped them according to which polymorphisms they had. They found that postmenopausal women who had low-activity versions of genes associated with GSTs (known as GSTM1, GSTT1 and GSTP1) had a lower risk of breast cancer.

Women with a combination of the lowest-activity forms of GSTM1 and GSTP1 had 64 percent lower risk of the cancer; and women with a combination of the lowest-activity forms of GSTT1 and GSTP1 had a 74 percent lower risk of the cancer. Among both pre- and postmenopausal women with high-activity versions of GST-related genes, fish oils don’t seem to reduce breast cancer risk.

In an earlier study, the researchers had looked at consumption of omega-6 fatty acids – found in such foods as cereals, eggs, poultry, most vegetable oils, whole-grain breads, baked goods and margarine. They concluded that, overall, eating more of these acids had no effect on risk. However, the scientists found that women who consumed little omega-3 fatty acids from fish and a lot of omega-6 fatty acids actually had an increased risk of breast cancer.

Fish & Breath

Red Fish, Blue Fish, Which Fish To Dish?

Just remember: omega-3, good; omega-6, bad. That’s the best way to make sense of a new study showing women with asthma risk passing down the respiratory illness to their unborn children if they consume lots of fish sticks during pregnancy. But eating other fish, like salmon and sardines, may actually help. According to research by Frank D. Gilliland, a Keck School lung-health expert, children whose asthmatic mothers eat omega-3 rich fatty fish during pregnancy are 71 percent less likely than other children to develop asthma by age 5. But children whose asthmatic mothers eat fish sticks are twice as likely to develop the disease.

“Fish sticks are deep-fried, and they contain omega-6 fatty acids,” Gilliland explains. Found in some meats and vegetable oils, omega-6 fatty acids appear to encourage inflammation in the body, including in the airways and vascular system. Researchers suspect omega-6 fatty acids may pose a problem when they greatly outweigh the amount of omega-3 fatty acids in the diet.

Scientists are investigating whether omega-3 fatty acids – dietary fats found in oily fish, nuts and avocados – may help protect against a variety of problems, including potentially fatal irregular heartbeats, immune deficiencies, cardiovascular disease and diabetes complications.

In Gilliland’s study, children whose mothers did not have asthma, but ate oily fish, did not show any benefit from the oily fish consumption.

Alexandra Levine

A Safe New Cancer Drug

Veglin – discovered at USC – is receiving standing ovations as Keck School-based clinical trials continue.

Researchers at the Keck School of Medicine of USC report that the anti-angiogenesis drug they developed – called Veglin – not only is safe for patients with a wide variety of cancers, but also lowers levels of a key protein that tumors need to grow and stabilizes – or even reverses – some cancers for a while.

Reporting at a meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, Keck School chief of hematology Alexandra M. Levine told clinicians that the drug remains safe even at a significantly escalated dose. Blood levels of key targeted enzymes have gone down in about 50 percent of the cases.

“Veglin continues to show its safety, even though we have escalated the dose significantly,” says Levine, who is medical director of the USC/Norris Cancer Hospital and holds the Ronald H. Bloom Family Chair in Lymphoma at the Keck School.

“Blood levels of key enzymes we are targeting also have gone down in about 50 percent of the cases, and we are pleased so far.”

Veglin originated with USC/Norris researcher Parkash Gill, a Keck School professor of hematology, oncology and pathology. Los Angeles-based VasGene Therapeutics (www.vasgene.com), co-founded by Gill, now leads its development.

In 2003, a team of scientists from the USC/Norris opened a phase I trial of Veglin for patients with any malignancy that failed to respond to previous treatment. The study is evaluating the safety of the drug at increasing doses and examining response. So far, researchers have increased the dosage tenfold, with no significant toxic side effects seen.

The 35 patients who have participated in the clinical trial so far have solid tumors of the kidneys, colon or lung; skin cancers, such as melanoma; and hematologic cancers, such as lymphoma, Kaposi’s sarcoma and myeloma.

Veglin clinically and visibly reduced cancerous tissue for several months in cases of Kaposi’s sarcoma and cutaneous T-cell lymphoma, researchers report. Patients with lymphoma, bronchoalveolar carcinoma, renal cell carcinoma, multiple myeloma and chondrosarcoma also saw disease stabilization or other clinical benefits from the drug.

The drug targets a family of proteins called vascular endothelial growth factors, or VEGF. Cancer cells develop rapidly and need an ever-increasing blood supply, researchers explain. As a result, tumors must encourage new blood vessels to develop around them – a process called angiogenesis. VEGF is critical to the growth of these new blood vessels.

But that is not all it does. VEGF also directly helps certain cancers grow.

Levine uses an analogy to explain the concept: “If a car were able to make its own gasoline, it would drive forever,” she says.

“The gasoline for the cancer cell is VEGF; it is made by the cancer cell and it comes back to work on the cancer cell that made it, causing the cancer cell to divide and proliferate.” Veglin is meant to counteract that.

Called an antisense oligonucleotide, Veglin is a bit of DNA that binds directly to the gene that produces VEGF - essentially plugging it.

Researchers hope that if Veglin can keep tumor cells from producing VEGF, it will block their growth and metastasis, while also killing the cancer cells themselves.

Patients enrolled in the trial receive Veglin intravenously over two hours for five straight days. They then get a week off. This cycle continues for four months.

Veglin lowered blood levels of one form of VEGF, called VEGF-A, in 47 percent of participants. It also lowered levels of VEGF-C in 21 percent of participants.

In addition to reversing cancer growth for several months in patients with Kaposi’s sarcoma and cutaneous T-cell lymphoma, Veglin stabilized cancer levels in patients with renal cell cancer for two or more months, chondrosarcoma for five months and bronchoalveolar carcinoma for more than seven months.

“We have seen tumor shrinkage and stabilization in diverse disease types. These are good indications for a single agent,” Levine says.

“In the future, optimally we would combine it with other drugs.”

Researchers are beginning phase II clinical trials for patients with renal cell carcinoma, mesothelioma, leukemia and lymphoma at USC/Norris, with additional centers to be added later.

James Gauderman Photo by Philip Channing

Taking a Deep Breath

A USC study reveals the disturbing truth about smog’s damaging effects on the development of young lungs.

By age 18, many children growing up in smoggy areas have underdeveloped lungs that will likely never recover. These are the findings of a much-discussed USC study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The research is part of the Children’s Health Study, the longest investigation ever into air pollution and kids’ health. Between 1993 and 2001, scientists from the Keck School of Medicine of USC tracked levels of major pollutants in 12 Southern California communities while following the pulmonary health of 1,759 schoolchildren.

The 12 communities included some of the most polluted areas in the greater Los Angeles basin, as well as several low-pollution sites in the region.

Keck School researchers previously had found that children exposed to more air pollution scored poorly on respiratory tests. In this latest study, they analyzed the same children’s respiratory health at age 18, when lungs are almost completely mature.

“Teenagers in smoggy communities were nearly five times as likely to have clinically low lung function, compared to teens living in low-pollution communities,” says Keck School preventive medicine researcher W. James Gauderman, the study’s lead author. (People with clinically low lung function have less than 80 percent of the lung function expected for their age – a significant deficit that raises medical concerns.)

“The association we see with air pollution also is stronger in children who spend more time outdoors,” Gauderman said. “That is consistent with what we would expect from a detrimental effect of outdoor air pollution.”

One surprising finding of the study, Gauderman noted, is that ozone did not appear to play a major role in the pollution’s effects on children’s lungs. Instead, the offenders were nitrogen dioxide, microscopic particles known as particulate matter and acid vapors. All come directly or indirectly from the burning of fossil fuels (the exhaust from a car or truck, for example) as well as from emissions from industrial plants and other sources.

The findings made the front page of 14 newspapers across the country, including the Los Angeles Times and the Baltimore Sun. Reports also appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, USA Today, and Newsday among others.

The study’s findings also prompted numerous editorials calling for more stringent air quality standards – particularly at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach – and the passage of air quality legislation on California’s November ballot, as well as placing a priority on children’s health and development in Southern California.

Deficits in lung function have both short- and long-term effects. “If a child or young adult with low lung function were to have a cold, they might have more severe lung symptoms, or wheezing,” Gauderman says. “They may have a longer disease course, while a child with better lung function may weather it much better.”

Potential long-term effects are more alarming. “Low lung function has been shown to be second only to smoking as a risk factor for all-cause mortality,” Gauderman says.

Lung function grows steadily as children grow up, peaking at about age 18 in women and before age 25 in men. After a short plateau period, lung function declines by 1 percent a year throughout adulthood.

As lung function decreases to low levels in later adulthood, the risk of respiratory diseases and heart attacks increases.

In general, air quality in Southern California has improved over the last two decades, Gauderman said. “Our results indicate that continued reduction of air pollution, through the efforts of both regulators and the public, will lead to improved health in our children.”

The research team will continue to follow the study participants until their lungs reach full maturity.

When Parents Smoke

Cigarette Synergy

Some health dangers can’t be averted: They’re literally in the air that children breathe. But a new study out of USC shows that the children of smokers model many avoidable unhealthy behaviors on their parents. Scientists with the Keck School’s Institute for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Research recently investigated the effects of parental smoking on patterns of eating, time spent watching television, participation in vigorous physical activity, alcohol consumption and cigarette smoking among Chinese adolescents. Looking at 12,000 teens, Keck School researcher Bin Xie found that those whose parents were heavy smokers “consumed significantly less vegetables and fruits, significantly more meats and sweets, spent significantly more time watching television and were more likely to engage in cigarette smoking and alcohol drinking than those with parents who never smoked or quit smoking within the past month or before.” A doctoral candidate in preventive medicine, Xie collaborated with Keck School faculty researchers C. Anderson Johnson and Chih-Ping Chou. The findings were part of the ongoing China Seven Cities Study, a long-term follow-up health promotion and smoking prevention project conducted in seven cities on mainland China. Previous research had already shown a correlation between parental smoking and unhealthy behaviors in children in Western society. But until now, little was known about this relationship in the Chinese population.

A Narrowing View of Smog

Smog in Los Angeles

Air Pollution and Your Arteries

Living in polluted areas might do more than harm your lungs; it may accelerate the narrowing of your arteries. A team of USC environmental health experts, cardiologists and others from the Keck School of Medicine of USC have been looking into the relationship between the wall thickness of one’s neck arteries and the levels of certain air pollutants in one’s environment.

Their findings are disturbing: they show that exposure to smog may play an important role in the development of cardiovascular disease. “If confirmed, the public-health relevance would be enormous,” says Keck School researcher Nino Kuenzli, initiator and principal investigator of the project. “Atherosclerosis plays a major role in a broad array of diseases, and almost everybody is regularly exposed to ambient air pollution, 24 hours a day, over a lifetime.”

Kuenzli and his colleagues reviewed data from two clinical trials on 798 people, ages 40 or older, living in the Los Angeles area. The data included measurements of the thickness of the inner lining of the subjects’ carotid artery walls. The researchers then determined the levels of certain airborne particulate matter typically found in each study participant’s neighborhood. These levels varied from 5.2 micrograms per cubic meter (µg/m3) to 26.9 µg/m3.

And for every increase of 10 µg/m3 in particulates, the researchers found that artery-wall thickness increased by 5.9 percent. After adjusting for age, demographics, lifestyle and physiologic factors, the scientists found that each 10 µg/m3 increase in particulates accounts for a 3.9 percent to 4.3 percent rise in atherosclerosis.

Air pollution and narrowing of arteries were even more strongly associated in people over age 60 and those taking cholesterol-lowering medications.

If these novel findings can be confirmed in other studies, clean-air policies may be added to the list of atherosclerosis-prevention strategies – a list that currently includes lowering cholesterol levels, avoiding cigarette smoke and losing weight.

Illustration by A.J. Garces

Little Fauntleroys or Lords of the Flies?

You are what you eat, so the saying goes. Now we learn it’s true even on a behavioral level. Last winter, USC psychologist Adrian Raine rallied compelling evidence that an infant and toddler diet high in zinc, iron and vitamin B produces well-behaved children and teens, while an early diet short on these nutrients and on protein produces youths far more likely to lie, cheat, cuss, fight, bully, destroy property and abuse drugs. “There's more to anti-social behavior than nutrition,” Raine told Britain’s Daily Mirror, but nutrition, he asserted, “is an important missing link. Biology is not destiny; we can change the biological disposition to anti-social and aggressive behavior.”

Shelf Life

Faculty Books & Recordings

Photo by Mark Tanner

Museums, Mexican Style

Art historian Selma Holo examines the visual-arts activism that dramatically energized the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca.

Oaxaca at the Crossroads: Managing Memory, Negotiating Change
By Selma Holo
Smithsonian Books, $39.95

Oaxaca always had an identity separate from the rest of Mexico’s. Even though it was considered the heart of mexicanidad (“Mexican-ness”), the state and its institutions – museums, cultural centers, archaeological sites and artisanry – thrived no matter what political forces were shaping the nation, says art historian Selma Holo.

Holo’s new book, Oaxaca at the Crossroads, examines how the southern state conscientiously shaped its cultural memory in the arts, from the contemporary and the colonial to the urban and archaeological.

“The private activism of the artists, artisans and private businesses came together and made a change in Oaxaca which, on the scale that it energized the community, hadn’t been seen before,” explains Holo, a professor in USC’s College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and director of the university’s Fisher Gallery. “I thought it was really worth memorializing and critiquing.”

In 1994, Holo spent a year as a Fulbright senior researcher in Spain, intending to focus on her area of expertise – Spanish artists Goya, Picasso and Jusepe de Ribera. But she found herself fascinated by the country’s transition from dictatorship to democracy and the effect of this political transformation on cultural institutions. Her book Beyond the Prado (2002) was an in-depth examination of the way Spanish museums colored the nation’s sense of self.

That book reflected Holo’s scholarly shift from art history toward museology – the study of museums themselves and their impact on culture.

She was visiting Oaxaca in the summer of 2000 when Vicente Fox broke the ruling party’s 71-year lock on the Mexican presidency by beating incumbent Ernesto Zedillo.

“I was curious to see if it was going to be the same thing as Spain,” she says, referring to the cultural changes she had documented in the post-Franco era. “But it wasn’t.”

The Mexican government already understood that it could strengthen its position in the world and its political position at home through supporting arts and culture. “They put a lot of money into the arts,” Holo explains. “I was knocked out by the museums there. I wanted to know what was happening to them as things changed.”

Oaxaca, in particular, seemed to be able to express itself through the arts. Holo attributes this to the resoluteness of the Oaxacan people.

“You had individual artists like Francisco Toledo,” Holo says. The Zapotec Mestizo-Indian artist was a leader and political activist in his home state, where he created museums, libraries, gardens and a cinemathéque. In 2000, McDonalds tried to open a restaurant in the Zócalo, the historical central plaza of Oaxaca City – a place suffused with the smells of traditional oaxaqueno and basque cuisines.

A group of artists, led by Toledo, arranged for a tamaliza in the plaza – a tamale supper with homemade tortillas and fresh fruit juices – to remind people of what they had to preserve. “Many artists were determined to keep the new arches out of view of the venerable old arches that mark the sacredness of the space,” Holo writes.

The artists prevailed.

“Oaxaca’s efforts in the realm of culture are an inspiration,” Holo concludes. “Its efforts have touched on many of the issues that concern any contemporary region wrestling with the power of the arts to positively influence and enhance its increasingly globalized communities as they struggle to participate in the world at large while preserving intact their local souls.”

Photo by Mark Tanner

Law School Lottery

USC’s Susan Estrich gives the insider’s perspective on strategies for getting the best legal education for your buck.

How to Get into Law School
By Susan Estrich
Riverhead Books, $15

For years nationally syndicated columnist and USC law professor Susan Estrich has fielded hundreds of nervous calls from young people applying to law school. In time, her advice became methodical, sometimes even brusque, as she outlined what prospective students must do to get noticed. When strangers started seeking her counsel, Estrich came up with an idea for a book.

“I wanted it to be truly useful,” says Estrich, who taught at Harvard Law School for 10 years before joining USC in 1991. “If you walk into any Barnes and Noble, you’ll see shelves and shelves of books on how to get into law school. Very few are helpful. I wanted to write this book in a conversational, honest way. Almost as though I’m talking to the student on the phone or over lunch.”

Though its titled How to Get into Law School, the book also covers how to choose the right law school, how to succeed once there and how to find a fulfilling legal career after graduating. Having spent years interviewing admissions directors, professors, veteran attorneys and students – including many at USC Law School – Estrich knows a great deal about the life and career questions applicants want answered.

“Whether you’re a college junior facing the LSATs, a senior sitting with disappointing test scores or someone who has always dreamed of a career in law, there is too much at stake not to ask the hard questions about what lies ahead,” says Estrich, the author of five other books, including the national bestseller Sex & Power.

She gives helpful insider information too. For example, most schools will claim they don’t interview prospective students, “but many do [it] informally anyway,” she reveals. “You must get that interview because it really personalizes you.”

The book includes advice from Bill Hoye, admissions dean at USC Law School, on writing personal statements.

What doesn’t work? Essays on a European vacation or a sob story. What does: Excellent writing and a statement that rings true.

The biggest challenge the average applicant faces, Estrich says, is separating herself from the pack.

“If you’re white, middle class and come from the suburbs, how do you make yourself sound interesting? How do you make a case for yourself? You need to find that one thing that really makes you special and that shows you will bring something of value to the school. We all have it – you need to find it and describe it.”

This advice comes from the first female president of the Harvard Law Review, the youngest woman to receive tenure at Harvard Law School, and the first woman to run a presidential campaign (Gov. Michael Dukakis in 1988).

Estrich also challenges her readers to ask themselves why they want to attend law school.

“There are many, many wrong reasons – like your father went to law school, you did well on the LSATs, you have nothing else to do, or it’s a year shorter than medical school. You need to be passionate about it and know this is really what you want out of life.”

She rejects the notion that students should aim only for Ivy League or other top-ranked schools.

The goal, she says, is to earn a law degree. “It’s that plain and simple, because that is the first step to being a lawyer. Who cares where you go as long as you get that degree?”

Books and Music

A History of the African-American People (Proposed) by Strom Thurmond, as told to Percival Everett & James Kincaid (A Novel) by Percival Everett and James Kincaid Akashic Books, $15.95 An authors’ note makes clear that this novel is “a work of fiction.” Why is such clarification needed? Because Everett and Kincaid really are English professors at USC, and the late Strom Thurmond really was the senior senator from South Carolina. But that’s where reality ends. Publisher’s Weekly calls this epistolary lark – with its cast of loose-cannon congressional staffers, insane publishing interns, homicidal editors and greedy academic ghostwriters – “hilarious high-concept satire.”

Gang Cop: The Words and Ways of Officer Paco Domingo by Malcolm W. Klein AltaMira Press, $19.95 Through the device of fictional police officer Paco Domingo, USC sociologist Malcolm Klein untangles the inner workings of street gangs and their tortured relations with law enforcement. Domingo is a composite character – constructed from real incidents, news accounts and court testimony gathered over years. In this manner, Klein encapsulates what criminological research has revealed about gang culture and policing strategies.

Lux Aeterna Composed by Morten Lauridsen Hyperion, $22 This new all-Lauridsen recording features two major works by the celebrated USC composer: “Lux aeterna” and “Madrigali.” Performed here by the award-winning British choir Polyphony and the Britten Sinfonia, “this disc presents an ideal match of music to performing forces,” according to one reviewer. It closes with three Lauridsen motets – “Ave Maria,” “Ubi caritas et amor” and “O magnum mysterium” – which have been described as modern masterpieces in the traditional genre.

People Watch

Movers & Shakers

Illustration by Tim Bower

Beijing Buckaroo

USC’s Eugene Cooper may be a mild-mannered anthropologist here at home, but in China, he’s a rock star.

At USC, Eugene Cooper is an anthropology professor. In China, he’s a national celebrity.

A sinologist who specializes in Chinese folk customs, Cooper recently took second place in Beijing Television’s popular “Arts of Our Land” competition – a week-long talent show that features non-Chinese people performing Chinese arts.

More than 100 million viewers (well over the average “American Idol” viewership) tuned in for the finals, broadcast on the Lunar New Year.

In what his USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences students attest is characteristic Cooper gear (well-worn cowboy hat, flannel shirt, leather vest and dark denim jeans), the peripatetic professor had plucked his guitar and crooned two Chinese songs for the competition’s first round of auditions in Los Angeles.

One was a straightforward folk tune, “The Lovers of Kang Ding.” The second was his show-stopper. Doing his best imitation of Willie Nelson, Cooper warbled “Sailing the Seas Depends on the Helmsman” – a classic from the cultural revolution extolling Mao Zedong. The judges liked what they saw, and Cooper was whisked to Beijing for the nationally televised final competition in February.

But there was a hitch.

“As I had somewhat expected, when I arrived in Beijing I was told that the cultural revolution song was unfit for the competition,” says Cooper in his rusty New York accent. Turns out the song’s lyrics are attributed to a defense minister who later was disgraced for allegedly plotting against the chairman. Cooper’s irony, he realized, could be construed as mean-spirited.

After some brainstorming, Cooper decided upon the tamer but still edgy “Lift Up Your Veil” – a folk song about a husband’s first encounter with his bride. He had only a few days to learn the four verses and fine-tune his country-western rendition.

The tension mounted after he botched the song in rehearsals; but he recovered and nailed it at the finals. “The rhythm was consistent throughout, and the audience started clapping in time with me, which really gave me the freedom to relax,” he recalls. That helped propel him to a second-place finish; and he also took the “audience favorite” award.

Even some Western media took notice. Cooper’s exploits were written up in the Wall Street Journal and he was interviewed on “Marketplace” and Boston public radio.

As for future engagements, Cooper says he’s “entertaining any and all endorsement offers.”

Pioneering Black Practitioners

Clifton Dummett Photo by Ben Creighton

Eyes on Dentistry’s Prize

There were days in the pre-Civil Rights era when Clifton Dummett’s wife wondered why he was still alive. In his native Guyana segregation had been non-existent, so when the 17-year-old dental student came to America, he was “too ignorant to be fearful.” Dummett, now 86, became the first African-American dentist to receive a master’s degree in public health; at 28, he became the nation’s youngest dental dean at Meharry College in Nashville. Later Dummett was founding chairman of community dentistry at USC, where he remained on faculty from 1966 to his retirement in 1989. Yet his claim to fame goes beyond these firsts. Together Dummett and his editor wife, Lois, have authored nine books. A traveling exhibit based largely on their scholarship opened at Baltimore’s National Museum of Dentistry in 2002. “The Future Is Now: African Americans in Dentistry” revives a runaway slave who practiced dentistry in colonial times, a pre-Civil War dentist-by-default denied entrance to medical school, and a Reconstruction-era street practitioner who pulled teeth without dismounting from his horse. The exhibit travels to Detroit’s Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in June, and continues on to Washington D.C. and Philadelphia next year. Meanwhile Dummett shows no signs of slowing down. Most mornings he can be found at work in USC’s dental library, doing research on Robert Blackwell, a former teacher whom he calls “a luminary of the 1930s.”

Never Give Up

Collin Ashton Photo courtesy of USC Sports Information

USC’s Rudy

Collin Ashton attended his first USC football game when he was just 48 days old. How that “Trojan baby became a Trojan toddler, then a Trojan teen, then an undersized Trojan walk-on, and finally, this summer, a Trojan full-scholarship player” was the heartwarming subject of a Bill Plaschke column in the Los Angeles Times during the heady days before January’s triumphant national championship Orange Bowl game.

The scion of a family with a cardinal-and-gold pedigree reaching back six generations, the Mission Viejo youth never missed a home game. During tailgate parties he’d practice moves in the Coliseum parking lot, vowing to someday be a Trojan. A USC scout liked Ashton’s long snap well enough to offer him a uniform – but no scholarship. “I took [the offer] in a minute,” he recalls. “But I wasn’t thinking about long snapping; I was trying to figure out a way to get in there as a linebacker.” And he found one. In 2003, as a redshirt sophomore, Ashton became only the second walk-on to start for the Trojan football team in 20 years. Last fall he returned on scholarship.

Ashton’s story may remind Trojans of an Irish kid named Rudy. Days before the Orange Bowl game, Plaschke watched the team practice in the rain. Afterward Ashton joined him on the sidelines. “I’m actually here, I’m actually doing this,” he rhapsodized. “I’m the guy I once cheered... I get goose bumps just talking about it.”

Adam Clayton Powell III Illustration by Tim Bower

Multimedia’s Messenger

What is an award-winning journalist doing in the engineering school?

USC’s Integrated Media Systems Center is the nation’s designated hub for advanced engineering research in multimedia. So naturally its new director is an award-winning journalist.

Veteran newsman Adam Clayton Powell III smiles broadly when quizzed on his unexpected status as a leader in USC’s Viterbi School of Engineering. “This is Max’s vision of the third phase of IMSC,” he says, referring to engineering dean C.L. Max Nikias, himself the founding director of IMSC.

Nikias’s view of IMSC under Powell emphasizes cross-disciplinary research, with videogame technology, particularly educational applications, as the focus of a major push.

“IMSC has created absolutely dazzling technologies at the intersection of engineering and the creative content media,” said Powell, who helped start and then ran Internet and technology programs for the Freedom Forum (formerly the Gannett Foundation) for seven years.

“Now it is time to roll those technologies out more broadly through partnerships with relevant industries, the arts and K-12 schools.”

He also plans some non-traditional programs to connect with underserved communities around the United States and in other parts of the world.

“We have the toolbox,” Powell says (and the NSF-funded center has indeed proved itself a prolific innovator of immersive technologies since its inception in 1996). “Now we need to put the toolbox into the hands of people who can put it to work.”

In Powell’s mind, this includes just about everyone in America: from museum curators and performing artists to educators and schoolchildren.

That’s where a journalism background comes in handy, particularly one like Powell’s.

At age 12, Powell remembers describing the inefficiencies of incandescent lights to musician-producer Quincy Jones, an old family friend. (Powell later produced TV shows for Jones’ entertainment company.) Early in his career at CBS News, Powell caught management’s eye by proposing ambitious plans to computerize the newsroom at a time when other reporters were cursing their early Wang word processors. Later on, he wrote about science and technology for publications like the New York Times and Wired. And as a broadcast executive, he’s been a champion and early adopter of multimedia tools, notably in his work for ABC News, NPR and local television stations.

As a long-time member of the IMSC Board of Councilors, Powell has “explained what we’re doing to more people than anyone else,” Nikias says. Now the role is official.