People Watch
Teacher’s Pet Project

A year into her term as education dean, Karen Gallagher dreams of a No. 1-ranked USC Rossier School where the sky’s the limit.

AS KAREN GALLAGHER GAZES down from her 11th-floor office in Waite Phillips Hall, she sounds more like a contractor than dean of the USC Rossier School of Education.
“In the past, too often we have succumbed to the temptation to try to be all things to all people.”
Words like “redesign, reconfigure and build up” pepper her sentences. The veteran education scholar, reformer and past public school teacher isn’t talking about bricks and mortar. She’s talking about mission, about goals – like her remarkably bold one of making USC’s Rossier School the nation’s No. 1 graduate school known for urban education. (The most recent U.S. News & World Report ranking put it at 38th.)
Toward that end, Gallagher, who came on as dean in August 2000, recently gave her 42-member faculty a pretty difficult homework assignment: create a clear vision that sets the USC Rossier School apart from the hundreds of other education schools across the country.
My goal is to involve everyone in this process. It’s an inefficient but inclusive process,” Gallagher says. “We all need to be involved in any changes we propose – even if we don’t all agree on the specific changes themselves. Involving everyone will make the changes that much stronger and more effective.”
The ultimate goal, she says, is to identify the USC Rossier School’s “signature” and how that relates to its mission. “We need to pick fewer academic areas and provide excellent programs within them, rather than offer many degrees at mediocre levels,” she says. This may be tricky given the school’s all-inclusive history. “In the past, too often we have succumbed to the temptation to try to be all things to all people,” Gallagher says. “We have practically ended up with a separate program for every faculty member. We lack a sharp focus.”
Her ongoing “redesign” meetings involving a range of USC Rossier School stakeholders are beginning to bear fruit. Faculty have already narrowed down what they feel should be the school’s four key academic emphases: leadership, accountability, diversity and learning in urban settings.
Myron Dembo, a professor of educational psychology, is optimistic about the next step. “If we have done a good job, the nature of graduate instruction in our classes should be radically different from our competitors,” he says. “And the nature of instruction can become a critical reason why students want to study at the USC Rossier School.”

GALLAGHER HAS KEY priorities of her own. She aims to quadruple the school’s level of funded research from its current $3 million a year to $12 million by 2003 (a feat she pulled off at the University of Kansas, where as dean she brought grants up from $4 million in 1995 to $18 million in 1999).

– Gilien Silsby

GLASS MENAGERIE
A Regular Vault-Air
Jim Merritt indisputably has the “hottest” job at USC. He directs the university’s glass shop, crafting the one-of-a-kind flasks, specialized devices and glass apparatus that researchers require to carry out their experiments. “Whatever they draw up, I try to do,” says the 38-year-veteran glassblower, squinting at a hand-drawn diagram. Common glass is made by heating a mixture of lime, soda and sand. Test tubes and other laboratory glassware, however, are made from a more temperature-resistant formula that incorporates some boron oxide. Pyrex begins to soften at 1508 degrees Fahrenheit, but Merritt works his magic at about 2260 degrees – blowing air through a long rubber tube attached to the molten glass he rolls over an oxygen and natural gas flame. When researchers need apparatus that can withstand even higher temperatures, they ask for quartz – a crystalline form of silica that starts to soften at 2150 degrees. Merritt heats the quartz to almost 3200 degrees to work it. “That gets miserably hot,” says the man with the hottest job at USC.

– Bob Calverley


UP, UP AND AWAY
Yes, She Is a Rocket Scientist
Amy Green ’00 won’t be donning a flight suit, but her invention may well orbit the Earth someday. Seizing on a hot trend in aerospace engineering, she has designed a tiny engine that can maneuver miniature spacecraft. Called MEMS (that’s micro-electro-mechanical systems), these gadgets are pivotal in the push to build smaller satellites. Green’s device began as an ambitious senior project for AE 441, a lab course taught by engineering professor Tony Maxworthy. Her paper and prototype won the USC School of Engineering’s Laufer Award for best student project. Next it snagged the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ western regional undergraduate prize; eventually she took home the gold medallion at the AIAA nationals. Now a graduate student in USC’s astronautics program, Green was selected to represent her country at the international Astronautical Congress in Rio de Janeiro, where she won the award for the best technical student paper. You go, rocket-girl.

– Bob Calverley

Abreast of Change

Mel Silverstein knew there was a better way to fight breast cancer, so he pioneered a think-tank approach to attacking the disease.

EACH TIME A WOMAN
gets a mammogram, she should say a little ‘thank you’ to Mel Silverstein. He was the first to design and build a freestanding breast center, a place where all the patient’s needs are met under a single roof. The concept was pivotal to the seamless experience that is today’s standard of care.
There are now more than 300 national centers fashioned after Silverstein’s model, including the USC/Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center’s Lee Breast Center, where he is medical director. Silverstein’s vision earned him the 2001 Impact Award for lifetime achievement, presented at the 11th Annual National Interdisciplinary Breast Center Conference.
Prior to such centers, women with breast cancer passed through many hands for diagnosis, image enhancement, genetic counseling, treatment, reconstruction and post-surgical follow-up. This scattershot approach often resulted in fragmented communication among radiologists, clinicians and surgeons. Open dialogue is one of the most important advantages of being treated at a breast center, says Silverstein. “The physicians are all thinking and talking about breast cancer, so the level of practice improves,” he says.
Silverstein’s crusade for better breast cancer patient-care continues. His current research on ductal carcinoma in situ, a prevalent and noninvasive form, shows that lumpectomy alone may often be sufficient treatment.That finding has translated into less invasive and less costly breast cancer treatment for women with DCIS.


Illustrations by John Cuneo / photo by Michele A.H. Smith / Silverstein photo by Michael Chiabudo