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Issue: Winter 2003 Alumni and Friends Getting Centered Q&A:
Ann Hill ’71, MA ’74 took the helm this fall as the 80th president of the USC Alumni Association Board of Governors, only the fifth woman president in the association’s 118-year history. As USC prepares to celebrate its 125th anniversary in 2005, Hill reflects on her good fortune to be serving USC’s alumni during a period of unprecedented excellence – not to mention her daughter Emily’s freshman year at the university. What are your goals for the USC Alumni Association this year? Internationalization, specifically around the Pacific Rim, is an important strategic initiative for USC and the Alumni Association. We will continue to strengthen our existing international alumni club networks and develop new contacts throughout Europe and the Pacific Rim. Already we have more than 20 active international alumni clubs, with several more currently forming. We’re also going to continue to expand our class reunion program. This year, we held 10-year, 25-year and 50-year reunions, along with our annual Half Century Trojans Day. It’s a magical experience for alumni to return to campus with their classmates, and we’d like to continue to build on this tradition. You talk about internationalization – how can stateside alumni take part in the internationalization of USC? The USCAA is helping USC prepare for the third “USC in Asia” conference to be held in Seoul, South Korea, next October. All alumni are invited to attend these international conferences, which showcase USC faculty and explore cultural, social, political and professional topics. I also strongly encourage traveling alumni to take advantage of the worldwide alumni network. I’ve heard so many terrific stories about travel tips received from alumni living overseas. What would you say to alumni who aren’t currently involved with USC? How can they get back in touch? To make it easy for all alumni to continue a lifelong association with the university, the USCAA has made membership in the Alumni Association free for all alumni. All you have to do is go to the USCAA Web site (http://alumni.usc.edu) to sign up. From there you can also join the e-mail list of a club in your area to hear about local events and activities. When something sparks your interest, make the effort to participate. For so many reasons, you’ll be glad you did! So, how does it feel to be a Trojan parent? It’s so great, because it makes me feel connected to the students, who of course are the future of our Alumni Association. When you come onto campus, you can just feel their energy. It’s exciting to think about what lies ahead for them, at USC and beyond. What piece of advice would you give your daughter, or any freshman, entering USC? I would encourage Emily, and all students, to take a semester abroad. When I was in college, times were different; I hadn’t traveled, and I really didn’t have the courage to explore the unknown. If I could do it over, I would definitely apply for a program overseas. College is a wonderful time to spread your wings and test your courage, and studying abroad can be a great adventure. Back to the Garden
Recounting his boyhood travels in the Iraqi marshlands, Alwash promised his new wife that, one day, they would kayak the reed forests of his homeland. “I fell in love with Azzam,” says Suzie Alwash, “and then I fell in love with the marshes, even though I had never been there.” Neither knew when they met, of course, that just over a decade later, they would be working to assemble leading scientists from around the world to undertake the most ambitious ecological restoration effort in human history. A more storied land would be difficult to imagine. Mesopotamia was the crucible of Western civilization, home to Babylon and Ur, and the Epic of Gilgamesh. Biblical scholars believe that the stories of Eden and the Great Flood are rooted in the vast, verdant marshlands of lower Mesopotamia – thousands of square miles of abundant reed stands interspersed with cottonwood, tamarisk and the world’s largest date palm groves. Before the 1990s, the marshlands of modern-day Iraq were the largest wetland ecosystem in the Middle East and western Asia. Set amid unforgiving, cauterized desert, the wet abundance of the marshlands provided safe harbor for hundreds of species of wildlife.
Two-thirds of western Asia’s migratory birds – some 130 species – stopped here on their winter journeys between Europe, Africa and Asia. The marshes were also critical breeding habitat for Persian Gulf shrimp and fish, which sheltered their eggs in its salty estuaries. Mammals such as the smooth-coated otter, the striped hyena and the gray wolf depended upon the marshes’ resources for their own survival. And the rich silts that spawned some of the first human civilizations have sustained rice, wheat, barley and fruit trees grown by the “Marsh Arabs” for thousands of years. All told, before they were destroyed, Iraq’s marshlands were worth more than $600 million a year to the regional economy. Since their desiccation, Kuwait’s fisheries have dwindled and fishing families in Iraq have lost their livelihood. Although wetlands like these only occupy a tiny and rapidly diminishing percentage of the planet’s surface (currently, about 1.5 percent), they are disproportionately valuable real estate. Half the ecosystem services on the planet are provided by wetlands; to emulate the water filtration, nutrient delivery and other services provided by wetlands worldwide would cost $30 trillion a year, economists estimate. In short, allowing functional wetland systems to perish is economic madness. But in the aftermath of the 1991 uprisings against Saddam Hussein, the Baathist regime punished the Marsh Arabs by transforming the Mesopotamian marshlands into arid saltpan. Massive diversion canals and dams were constructed to drain the marshes and re-route the Tigris and Euphrates around them, denying life-sustaining water and nutrients. A half-million Marsh Arabs were killed or displaced in one of the most under-reported genocides on record. In August 2001, NASA released satellite images of Saddam’s handiwork. In under a decade, 90 percent – nearly 8,000 square miles – of wetland had become wind-swept wasteland. “It was really an engineering tour-de-force,” Alwash says, grimacing.
Undoing the damage will require a similar display of determined ingenuity. Alwash’s childhood experiences coupled with his USC doctorate in engineering leave him unusually well suited to meet that challenge and help Iraq’s Marsh Arabs reclaim their homeland. His wife, now a professor of earth science at El Camino College in Torrance, Calif., brings additional expertise. “When we saw the satellite images of marshlands turned into desert,” she recalls, “we said: ‘We’re scientists; we can do something about this.’” Securing a $190,000 grant from the Iraq Foundation, where Azzam Alwash is a board member, the couple initiated the Eden Again project. They hired a wetlands restoration expert and started contacting leading restoration ecologists, soils experts, hydrologists, botanists and zoologists from around the world. In February 2003, more than a dozen Eden Again scientists – all leaders in their fields – met with the Alwashes and Marsh Arab refugees in Irvine to examine scientific data, satellite images and maps. The last day of the meeting, the assembled scientists announced their conclusion: most of the Iraqi marshlands can be restored, if the political will could be marshaled to the cause. It wasn’t going to be easy. Soon after Saddam was deposed, impatient Marsh Arabs had tried to take matters into their own hands, destroying the dictator’s earthworks here and there. Their hasty, localized efforts probably have done more harm than good. “I have to celebrate their human spirit and the sheer joy of water,” Suzie Alwash says. “But these efforts won’t amount to much unless the restoration is properly designed. The water will basically just pond and evaporate, leaving even more salts.” What’s needed is flowing water, to flush the evaporitic salts and toxins away. “These soils have a memory,” says Eden Again team member Thomas Crisman, director of the University of Florida’s Center for Wetlands. That memory is retained in seed banks and soil chemistry, awaiting the careful, strategic reintroduction of slowly flowing water. A blueprint of the restoration effort to come was released in April. It received media attention from Newsweek, National Geographic, CNN and NPR, as well as major newspapers. The Eden Again project dwarfs the one undertaken in the Florida Everglades, though it will cost significantly less. Alas, delivering the required water will be no simple matter of undoing Saddam’s dams and canals. Upriver, Turkey is completing massive dams that will hoard most of the annual flow of the Euphrates. But Azzam Alwash remains optimistic; he believes Iraq can obtain the water it needs by purchasing electricity from Turkey. After meeting with officials in the United Nations Environment Program and U.S. international aid agencies all summer, he is securing the funds and political will needed to restore the marshes to ecological health. Reclaiming the marshlands from oblivion will give not just Marsh Arabs but all Iraqis hope for the future, he argues. “Restoration of the marshes is a great symbol,” Alwash says. “Bringing back to life – from the dust and salt of the current destruction – the [cradle] of Western civilization: I can hardly think of anything more symbolic of the rebirth of Iraq.”
– Bryant Furlow Now & Then:
Move-in day has always proved a taxing affair for USC students, fraught with heavy lifting and the social impropriety of teary parental goodbyes. And then there’s the change in environment: Settling into the cramped, bare quarters of a dorm room, suddenly the familiar four walls of a native bedroom hold renewed appeal. It takes some doing to recreate the comforts of home. Back in 1907, a men’s residence (above left) sported plain amenities but ample wall space for a student’s personal effects, such as fraternity flags, drawings and photos. Today the rooms have gotten smaller, but the decorating possibilities remain endless. Below right, student Rob Robol sprawls out on a faux-leather bedspread, surveying his USC Fluor Tower dorm-turned-bachelor pad, replete with black molded chairs and a white shag rug. Credit should go where credit is due, however: Rob received help from an interior designer as part of a Los Angeles Times piece on USC dorm makeovers. The Boy of Autumn
After being named 2001 College Baseball Player of the Year as a Trojan, Prior signed a record $14.5 million contract with the Cubs, the largest such deal ever for an amateur player. He is only as old as the number on his jersey, 22, and already his autograph on one fetches hundreds in the collectibles market. So the question begs to be asked: Financially set for life, luxuriating in the opulent lifestyle of a professional baseball player, why is Prior walking down Trousdale Parkway with a backpack slung over his shoulders? The answer: Prior is finishing his bachelor’s degree in business administration. He returned to USC last October and is back in class again this fall. At the same time, he is challenging cynics who say the term “student-athlete” is an oxymoron. “We work three, four hours a day devoted to our sport,” says Prior. “Athletes get a bad rep on campus.” It’s a reputation based on scant substance. “Grades [among athletes] have shifted more upward than downward,” says USC’s Magdi El Shahawy, director of student athlete academic services. With education a high priority for Prior, returning to school was not a question of “if,” but of “when.” His family had set high standards. Both parents graduated from Vanderbilt University, his brother from Villanova University and his sister from the University of San Diego. In August 2002, three months after his debut with the Cubs, Prior broached with his parents the idea of finishing USC. It wouldn’t be easy. But waiting until his baseball career cooled a bit had its own drawbacks. “If I put it off, by that time, I could be 28 or 29 and coming back to school,” he says. Because the regular baseball season overlaps with the first five weeks of the fall semester, Prior (a business major) had to make special arrangements with the USC Marshall School of Business. When he suffered a hamstring injury late in the 2002 season, the Cubs allowed him to travel to Los Angeles to meet with his advisor, Mark Kennedy, who teaches managerial decision-making and planning. Prior and Kennedy came up with a plan. The Cubs pitcher would return after the end of the regular season and complete assignments equivalent to what he had missed in the first few weeks, essentially condensing a semester’s workload into under two months. The assignments were “fairly tough,” says Kennedy, “but Mark did a good job and handed them in on time.” Prior also had to write an extra term paper on marketing. Kennedy had suggested he tackle a topic he knew well: baseball. “He came up with a paper about accounting for teams with lower payrolls and how they can be financially successful. It was pretty cool,” says Kennedy. With riches beyond any college student’s comprehension, why would Prior go through all this trouble for a piece of parchment? “You wouldn’t think I would have needed it, but getting a degree makes me feel more complete as a person,” he says. There’s more to it that personal growth, however. Prior realizes that with the riches comes fame, and with the fame comes responsibility. “It sounds funny when I say it, but I’m in a situation now where I’m looked up to by kids,” Prior says. “I think professional athletes are role models, so how am I going to tell kids to stay in school if I don’t have a degree?” Prior transferred to USC from Vanderbilt in 1999. His pitching stats as a Trojan were a prelude to his major league success. In 2001, he went 15-1, with six complete games and a 1.69 ERA. His strikeout-to-walk ratio was an astounding 11-to-1, with 202 strikeouts and 18 walks in 138.2 innings. “He’s a guy with very unusual determination and work ethic,” says USC baseball coach Mike Gillespie, who took his team to back-to-back College World Series in the two seasons Prior played. These days, Prior makes San Diego his winter home. He works out in the weight room Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays during the off-season and does his studying Sundays and Monday nights. Every Tuesday and Thursday during the fall, he makes the two-hour drive to campus. With two courses under his belt from last year, Prior returned this fall for his three last classes. He’ll graduate in December. “I want to have options when I’m done,” he says. “I hope I play baseball for 20 years, but I know I might not be there for 20 years.”
– Kevin Pang ’03 Culture Watch Bound for Success
Cinema-TV graduate Jeff Blitz may not have set out to film the American Dream, but he found it in his documentary Spellbound. “Congradulations, Nupur” is the enthusiastic, if ironically misspelled, marquee tribute from a Hooters Restaurant in Florida to the hometown middle-schooler who has just advanced to the prestigious National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C. Jeff Blitz MFA ‘97 directed the motion picture Spellbound, which tells the inspiring – and occasionally heartbreaking – stories of Nupur and seven other gifted young spellers who are preparing for the bee. One of several documentaries that have taken the country by storm over the last year, Spellbound was an Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary Feature in 2002 and has won more than 15 top prizes at film festivals throughout North America. Blitz decided to make Spellbound after watching the final rounds of the National Spelling Bee on ESPN in May 1997. “I knew that instant that it was the project I wanted to do,” says Blitz, who at the time was a graduate student in the USC School of Cinema-Television’s producing program. In the beginning, however, warmly humorous touches like the Hooters marquee moment were far from his mind. “When we started making Spellbound, we anticipated that it was going to be a much darker film,” he recalls. “But we had to respect the reality of what we found, which was that it wasn’t so.” Although they study to the brink of exhaustion, the spellers followed by Blitz and producer Sean Welch are not pressured or pushed into competing by demanding families. “We expected to find a lot of ‘stage parents,’ parents who had ushered their kids toward this because of some insidious motive on their part,” says Blitz. “What we really discovered was that the kids dragged their parents into it more often than not.” The courageous competitors of Spellbound represent a mosaic of ethnicities and socio-economic backgrounds, and many are children of first-generation families. For them, the bee represents an opportunity to create a better life through hard work and perseverance, and their optimism and resilience make them hopeful symbols of the enduring relevance of the American Dream. “These kids are usually self-starters whose energy and devotion are rewarded with participation in the bee, with meeting like-minded kids, and with being treated like champions, win or lose,” reflects Blitz. The spellers may be highly trained intellectual athletes, but, as Blitz emphasizes, the real competition in the bee is not “kid versus kid,” but “kid versus word.” The same holds true for the filmmaker, who made Spellbound with help from several USC pals, including editor Yana Gorskaya MFA ’02 and recording mixer Peter Brown MFA ’95. Says Blitz, “It’s such a great thing to feel like you have a group of friends who are sharing the experience with you.”
– Jacqueline Angiuli Producer
Skriabin, Prokofiew, Rachmaninow by Wojciech Kocyan DMA ’00 DUX, $15
A Season in Photos Spring Foward, Fall Forward
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