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Nate Brown’s agenda for the six teenagers in his “Media, Politics and Election 2000” seminar is, in a sense, quite absurd.
“My goal is to have my students be absolutely prepared to vote intelligently – although only one of them will be old enough to vote in November,” says the doctoral candidate and instructor in USC’s Annenberg School for Communication.
Brown, who teaches argumentation, debate and public speaking during the year, says he wants his Summer Seminars pupils to be able to dissect the candidates across the issues, understand how campaigns are made, how they’re run and how candidates strategize to win. To that end, he spends the mornings discussing American government, U.S. history and constitutional law, and spends afternoons exploring the wacky world of campaign communications.
“We look at TV commercials, analyzing the uses of positive and negative advertising,” he says. “We study the theme song selection – how that creates a mood for the campaign. We look at direct mailers and talk about how computers have enhanced that.”
The small class size means everybody participates much more than they would in a normal undergraduate course. Which may help explain why Brown finds these high schoolers more motivated than regular
college students. “It’s a six-hour day,” he says, “and they’re eager to learn all day.”
It isn’t all work and no play, however. On the previous Sunday, Brown – an expert on wilderness survival – led a group of Summer Seminars students on a hike in Malibu, introducing them to a variety of edible plants. Today, they’re back in class, watching CNN’s “Inside Politics.” A report that George W. Bush got booed at a campaign stop sparks an interesting discussion.
“Why do you suppose people in America feel free to heckle candidates?” Brown asks.
A student mentions the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech.
“Yes, in part,” Brown responds. “But I think it’s really because campaigns bring candidates down to the level of a product.
“They’re marketing themselves just like Coca Cola and Nike. The theme songs, the hats they wear, the clothing. I think that’s what generates that kind of attitude.”
By the time these kids leave the seminar, they may not be eligible to vote, but they’ll be an asset to any campaign staff.
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n loco parentis may not have much relevance in the 21st-century university, but it remains all-important to pre-college programs. In the eyes of the law, the difference between a 17-year-old and an 18-year-old is vast. Well aware of the stakes, Goodnight takes no chances. She keeps order by deploying a dozen counselors who, among other duties, discreetly monitor every aspect of Summer Seminars students’ lives, from stolen kisses to skipped meals. These counselors, each of whom is personally responsible for the 10 kids who sleep on his or her floor, report to Foral – a self-described “dorm dad” who prides himself on being the program’s “official wet blanket.”
It goes without saying that alcohol, cigarettes and drugs are forbidden. There are plenty of other rules, too. Unchaperoned forays off campus aren’t permitted. Neither is “cutting.” If a student doesn’t show up for class, a counselor will come knocking on her door within minutes. Night prowling is another no-no. Dorms are sex-segregated by floor, and “visiting” ends at 10:30 p.m., when each counselor holds a nightly floor meeting. The 11:30 p.m. lights-out is enforced by bedchecks, and counselors remain on duty past midnight, walking the halls to “make sure everyone has gone to bed and stays that way,” says Foral.
One of the inevitabilities of any program for teens is the blossoming of romance. “You’re going to have kids walking down the lanes here on campus holding hands, and you’re going to have goodnight kisses. That’s great, it’s a healthy, normal, happy part of being a kid,” says Foral. “But if it gets to the point where I would be nervous standing with their parents watching them do that, I put a stop to it.”
After 30 years as a high school teacher, Foral is an expert at quelling adolescent ardor. “I can ruin a moment quicker than you can believe,” he boasts. “That’s one of my talents.” On any July evening, you’ll find Foral hovering at the dorm entrance. “If I’m out there, and the porch light is on, nothing happens on the lawn,” he says. “When kids come in, I know who they come in with. I know who they go out with. We’re around. We’re very unobtrusive – it’s not oppressive. But we’re there.”
When students break the rules, the punishment is comically familiar: they’re “campused” (the university equivalent of “grounded”), confined to their rooms after classes, no visitors, no phone calls. Foral doesn’t mind leaning on the kids to help them “make appropriate choices,” as he puts it. “They’re not being bad,” he says. “The only thing wrong with them ever is that they behave like teenagers, which is not surprising because that’s what they are.”
Last summer’s infractions were harmless enough: two girls going AWOL at University Village; a couple of boys trespassing on a girls-only floor past curfew. But mostly the kids are too busy to make serious mischief.
“I find it amazing that she goes to class at 9 in the morning, and finishes at 10 at night, and is enthusiastic,” says Steve Tumbas, father of Alexandra Tumbas, a student in the “Introduction to Film” seminar. The Walnut Creek, Calif. businessman caught up with his daughter on the way home from a trip, and was impressed with what he found. “From what she’s telling me, I know she’s reading a lot. She’s probably screening three films a day, plus whatever she’s doing in the library to support that. It’s a good program.”
Even so, Foral and his crack team of counselors have their work cut out. Their job description includes everything from mothering flu victims to giving laundry lessons to kids who’ve never before had to separate whites from colors. They also field calls from parents miffed because their child is too busy to phone home. On the weekends, they arrange karoake nights and orchestrate mass outings to Disneyland, Santa Monica beach and Dodger Stadium.
“It’s crazy detail organization. There’s an incredible level of complexity,” says Foral, reflecting on what goes on behind the scenes. “It looks easy from the outside. Most people would say, ‘What a cake job Steve has during the summer!’ And that’s fine. That’s how we want it to look.”
Two weeks into their “Aspects of Biomedical Science” class, 16-year-old Lauren Gillery and 17-year-old Paul Garrettson are standing before 11 classmates, giving a densely researched PowerPoint presentation on apoptosis (“the controlled process by which cells commit suicide,” they obligingly define) and its link to cancer. Animated slides, diagrams and a two-page single-spaced handout accompany the 10-minute presentation.
Afterward, instructor Homayoun Zadeh poses a hypothetical question: “Based on your research, if you were a scientist in charge of coming up with some novel therapy for cancer, which protein would you target?”
Lauren, a tall, slender African-American girl from Northridge, says she’d focus on the P53 tumor suppressor gene. Had you seen her presentation, you’d know why. The P53 protein, you’d understand, regulates the body’s normal response to DNA damage. When triggered, it can induce cell suicide. But cancer mutates P53, leaving damaged cells to proliferate and grow tumors.
Zadeh, an assistant professor of periodontology in the USC School of Dentistry, beams: “Your presentation was right on. Great!”
Next up are 17-year-old Wendy Cheng, from South Pasadena, and 16-year-old Aranesia Sells from Compton. In 15 minutes, this team covers the basic definition of cancer, identifying the two common characteristics of the 150 diseases that fall under the rubric. They arrange the cancers into five types, describing the causes of each kind, and then outline a dozen ways that cancer cells and tumors defeat the immune system. The girls sometimes stumble over the arcane vocabulary of cell biology – terms like “cytoxicity,” “caspase” and “mitochondria.” Their tongues tangle on acronyms like Bcl-2 and Fas-L. But their mastery of the material is plain to see.
Zadeh presents the same hypothetical as before: “If you were a cancer scientist, what one aspect of all these antigens would you target in your research?”
This time it’s a trick question, and the kids know it.
“Actually all of them,” says Wendy, explaining that no single approach will cover the full spectrum of cancers.
“Excellent. Thank you,” Zadeh says as Wendy and Aranesia take their seats amid polite applause. The underlying message is clear: There’s a great deal of scientific work to be done. The kids appear undaunted.
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ot surprisingly, Summer Seminars attracts the kinds of students that make admissions officers drool. “Just absolutely amazing and kind of intimidating,” is how counselor and USC senior Melody Robusto describes them. “They have 4.0 GPAs and take classes I’ve never even heard of,” says Robusto, who is a creative writing major from Oceanside, Calif.
In her second year as a Summer Seminars counselor, Robusto had the pleasure of running into some of her “amazing” 1999 advisees at freshman orientation. “I’ve seen six kids who are former summer seminar kids!” she says happily. Robusto has no trouble remembering them all, since many keep in touch by email. She typically receives a dozen or more messages a month filled with personal news and peppered with questions about college life.
If recruiting is a major goal of Summer Seminars (and it is!), then it’s clearly working. At a special workshop on the college application process that Foral hosted in July, 90 percent of the kids attending listed USC among their top two choices.
Hard admissions figures confirm this trend. Last year, 66 percent of senior Summer Seminars students applied to USC, about 60 percent were admitted, and 44 percent are now Trojans. In some seminars, the “yield” is even higher. Counselor Jamie Johnson takes mental inventory of the 12 kids from a 1999 film seminar. Six, she reckons, are now cinema school majors; three others are still a year away from graduation.
Johnson – a fifth-year senior in electrical engineering from Lancaster, Calif. – gets a kick out of seeing her advisees return as full-fledged Trojans. “I saw a bunch of them on move-in day,” she recounts. “I was selling linens [an annual fund-raiser for residential government]. When they saw me, they were like: ‘Oh, my god, Jamie!’ ”
Another counselor, she relates, took it upon himself to initiate past advisees into the Trojan Family with a reunion bash marking the season’s first away football game.
This was Johnson’s third year as a Summer Seminars counselor, and there are others like her who can’t seem to get enough of the job. It can be hard work. Some nights, counselors get just four hours sleep between wee-hours hall monitoring and supervising early-bird ablutions.
“Obviously, we don’t do it for the dorm atmosphere,” Johnson quips, reflecting on the job’s appeal. “The kids are really great, and that keeps us coming back, along with the good salary, which includes room and board.”
Another three-peater is counselor Caitlin Goddard ’00, a Trustee Scholar and honors student from Boston who graduated last spring with a triple major in English, philosophy and critical studies. Goddard, who first came to USC as a high school senior in the prestigious Resident Honors Program, stayed on this summer for a last hurrah with Johnson and fellow Trustee Scholar and Summer Seminars counselor Justin Lovero ’00, a philosophy major from New Jersey.
Choosing bright, friendly, mature, energetic and academically diverse counselors is critical to the program’s success, Goodnight realizes.
“We try to hire counselors across the disciplines, so if a student is struggling in a course, we have someone in-house who can help them out,” she says.
It doesn’t hurt if they happen to be shameless institutional boosters.
“I’m a huge Trojan fan – USC has been an amazing, amazing chance for me in my lifetime,” gushes Robusto, without any prompting. “I want to be able to share that with other people.”
On a sultry Friday afternoon, 17-year-olds Kathryn D’Evelyn and Quanisha Hayes share a bench, locked in stilted conversation as they watch their young children scale the jungle gym.
These aren’t teenage unwed moms, but perhaps someday they’ll play ones on TV. The girls are students in Lora Zane’s “Acting Workshop: Comedy.” And they’re not really at the playground but inside a classroom in the Physical Education Building.
Zane, a USC School of Theatre instructor and 20-year veteran actor and director, watches as Hayes, of Los Angeles, and D’Evelyn, of Niskayuna, N.Y., go through a skit they’ve memorized. The girls deliver their lines rather mechanically, as if reciting parallel monologues. When it’s over, Zane invites them to assess their own performances. Both are their own harshest critics, taking apart their use of “human desire” and “energy” – theatrical concepts Zane had introduced earlier.
When the instructor asks the girls to try it again, the difference is striking. The illusion suddenly gels: two mothers, polar opposites in temperament, making fitful stabs at friendship. Their awkwardness now has a different quality: it is intentional, the author’s idea made transparent by the young actors.
Between exercises, the students gain insights into other pragmatic aspects of the craft. Today Zane offers up pointers on audition anxiety: “Sometimes the hardest acting you do is before the audition begins – just to walk in the room and ‘act’ like everything is great,” she says. The smiling students soak it all in.
Zane admires some of the attributes these kids bring to her class – their willingness to play, to investigate. In some ways they’re more motivated, more enthusiastic than her undergraduates, though less disciplined. “I spend more time being ‘teacher,’ ” she says. “But the college students I work with want to be actors, and these kids are just deciding. And that’s fine too.”
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