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WISH LIST
Summer Programs director Lynn Goodnight keeps a running list of dream programs – modeled on ones working nicely at other institutions. Look for these innovations at USC in summers to come:
Summer Seminars.
More college-level courses in political science, law, business, leadership, creative writing and music theory and performance.
“The Lemonade Stand”
A one-week entrepreneurship program for 150 middle schoolers. After a crash course in the how-to’s, kids go through the steps of starting their own business. The program will later expand into high-school grades.
Science Day Camp
A co-ed, campus-based version of the Catalina girls’ science program. This middle-school science day camp will eventually trickle down to elementary grades 4, 5 and 6.
Arts, Theater and Music
Four-, six- and eight-week middle-school camps in music, theater and arts. “There’s a huge need at the middle-school level,” says Goodnight. “I’ve got several counseling services saying: ‘Please, pull art and photography up on the priority list.’”
Acting Workshop in New York
A Manhattan-based spin-off of the Young Actors’ Summer Theatre Workshop, the four-week day camp for ages 8 to 15 now entering its third year at USC.
Music Camp
In addition to college-level Summer Seminars for serious musicians, Goodnight plans to launch a music day camp for younger children.
Overseas Camps
A series of academic programs with a foreign-study component, such as theater in London or art and architecture in Oxford, Florence and Paris.
Sports Camps
USC’s championship-winning coaches in diving, baseball, women’s tennis and women’s basketball are keen to open summer training camps for gifted high-school athletes. A recreational tennis camp is also in the works.
“There are lots of opportunities,” says Goodnight. “The thing we have to be careful of is not growing too quickly. Anything we do should be done in a quality, top-notch style – even if we have to have to wait a year.”
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hat did you do over the summer?”
It’s an innocuous enough question, the topic of many an essay assignment that greets children returning to school each September. At Lynn Goodnight’s house, however, the question is anything but innocuous. Her three teenagers recognize the seriousness of this debriefing, and their friends are used to being grilled on their summer adventures.
Lynn Goodnight |
Interrogation is just one of the tactics USC’s Sum-mer and Special Programs director uses in her relentless pursuit of pre-college programming intelligence. She has been known to use her kids as guinea pigs and moles. USC’s Science Program for Middle School Girls on Catalina Island, now entering its third year, is the direct result of 16-year-old Katherine Goodnight’s earlier reconnaissance work at Duke University’s marine biology camp. “My daughter did the Duke program and loved it,” Goodnight reports. So when she learned that USC runs an environmental studies center on Catalina Island, she cornered Wrigley Institute director Tony Michaels to propose a similar camp, only better. “We’ve got capabilities here that Duke doesn’t have,” she explains.
She likewise harbored a hidden agenda when her son Mark, 12, enrolled in a UCLA tennis camp last summer. “As the parent, I went through their cafeteria, ate meals there, taking note what UCLA is doing versus what we’re doing here.”
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oodnight’s office in the basement of Bovard is crammed with plastic storage bins containing files on real and dream projects. On a Monday morning in July, her desk looks as if enemy spies had broken in and rifled through her papers in search of a top-secret dossier. Actually, the weekend had passed without incident – itself an achievement given that she had entertained 15,000 hip-hoppers on campus during a two-day urban music festival that set some USC administrators to chewing their finger-nails. Taped to her computer monitor is a note requesting her presence at the provost’s staff meeting to report on the festival. Not to worry. She returns a half-hour later, smiling.
Lynn Goodnight’s matronly style, can-do optimism and Midwestern twang elicit a confidence that is important in this high-stress job. She is a pillar of calm when, a few minutes later, a flustered aide bounces in to report that a basketball camper has been injured and needs medical attention. Another aide soon appears to remind her that in 20 minutes she’s due at an emergency meeting concerning food shortages in the dining halls.
Such chaos is routine, Goodnight admits. Rarely does her office work get finished during office hours. A few nights later, running on Cokes and candy bars, she toils till dawn on a grant application that had been pre-empted by various crises. But despite this, she continues to revel in the possibilities inherent in a great university situated in a world-class metropolis – and can’t wait to get started on more programs.
At 19, son James’ pre-collegiate sleuthing days are over, but the others are bracing themselves for their next assignment. Will it be an undercover job in Cornell’s London theater program? Or a beta-test of a youth expedition to Antarctica (where USC biologists already conduct research)? At the back of their minds, the younger Goodnights must be wondering whether their own offspring won’t one day be drafted into service, perhaps to become the first teens to study astrophysics on a space station – pioneers in a summer program devised by their enterprising grandma.
Photograph by Irene Fertik
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