Capital Connections

USC faculty, staff and alumni in Washington, D.C., and Sacramento.

Compiled by USC Chronicle staff

Taplin Talks About Ads at D.C. Session

Jonathan Taplin of the USC Annenberg School for Communication was on a panel at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on April 17 titled “Can Privacy Education Help Consumers?”

The discussion was a joint venture between the Annenberg schools at USC and the University of Pennsylvania. Joe Turow of Penn was the moderator and Taplin was the respondent. It was the second event in the Annenberg Washington Series sponsored by the two schools.

Taplin, who teaches courses in the global entertainment marketplace and the communications revolution in entertainment and art, said the panel “dealt with the question of whether consumers were educated about the ability of new advertising technologies to track their behavior and deliver relevant ads to them.”

05/09/08

Pera Offers Insight on Stem Cells

Martin Pera, director of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center for Integrative Biology and Stem Cell Research at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, met April 9 with Rep. Michael Castle (R-Del.) and staff members from the offices of California Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer and representatives Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Calif.) and Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) to discuss USC’s stem cell research.

DeGette and Castle have led the effort to change federal policy on funding embryonic stem cell research.

Pera also attended a meeting of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Cellular, Tissue and Gene Therapies Advisory Committee concerning stem cell research management recommendations.

04/28/08

Flynn Talks Social Work, Military

Marilyn Flynn, dean of the USC School of Social Work, met March 10 with staff members from the offices of California Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard to discuss military social work.

The school is collaborating with the USC Institute for Creative Technologies on Army-sponsored research to incorporate virtual humans in the training of social workers, psychologists, chaplains, nurses and others who interact with active members of the armed forces.

“We’re trying to increase the resiliency of our service members to handle the impact of battlefield conditions and better prepare specialized professionals to anticipate their psychological and emotional needs upon returning to civilian life,” Flynn said.

She said America is ill-equipped to adequately meet the health and mental health needs of its returning soldiers, making the immediate training of professionals critical.

The school also plans to develop Web-based teaching programs that can accelerate the learning process and enable professionals to quickly transfer skills from the classroom to the front line.

04/18/08

Giuliano Chairs D.C. Talk on Transportation

Genevieve Giuliano, senior associate dean for research at USC’s School of Policy, Planning, and Development, chaired a panel discussion of the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies in Washington, D.C.

Financing Options for Freight Projects of National Significance, a Transportation Research Board committee chaired by Giuliano, is studying whether there is a government role in facilitating or financing major freight infrastructure projects.

A report is scheduled to be written by the end of this year. Typically, Giuliano said, policy study reports are presented to the U.S. Department of Transportation and relevant congressional committees. “This one is aimed at providing guidance for the upcoming authorization of the federal transportation bill,” she said.

While in Washington, Giuliano met with staff members from the offices of Reps. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), Grace Napolitano (D-Calif.), Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) and Vern Ehlers (R-Mich.) and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.).


04/11/08

SPPD Faculty Present Budget Policy Research

Professors Elizabeth Graddy and Juliet Musso of the USC School of Policy, Planning, and Development delivered new research on state budget practices during a March 13 presentation titled “Budgetary Arrangements in the 50 States: In Search of Model Practices” at the California Senate Office of Research in Sacramento.

The event was sponsored by SPPD.

Graddy and Musso examined the differences between California and other states regarding budget policies, including balanced budget requirements, tax and expenditure limits and bienniel budgeting. Their findings were published in the book Fiscal Challenges: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Budget Policy (2008, Cambridge University Press).

In addition, Graddy and Musso met with several budgetary experts, including Tim Gage, former director of the State Department of Finance and USC adjunct faculty member; Tom Sheehy, deputy director of legislation for the State Department of Finance; and Agnes Lee, director of the Senate Office of Research.

The professors also discussed the impact of budget reform with members of the State Legislative Analyst’s Office.

“We appreciated the opportunity to share our findings with state finance experts and policymakers,” Graddy said. “Their insights will inform our future research.”

04/04/08

Walsh Sheds Light on Visual Imaging

Alexander Walsh of the Keck School of Medicine of USC briefed members of Congress, staffers and others about “Visual Imaging: Revolutionizing the Diagnosis and Treatment of Eye Disease” on Feb. 26 in the Rayburn House Office Building.

Walsh, an assistant professor of ophthalmology and director of the Doheny Eye Institute’s Imaging Exploration and Software Engineering Laboratory, talked about the next generation of optical coherence tomography (OCT), a non-invasive, high-speed, high-resolution diagnostic technology that can display a 3-D cross-sectional view of the retina.

“The briefing was to demonstrate to Congress how revolutionary OCT is, especially in light of the growing epidemics of blinding eye diseases domestically and around the world,” Walsh said.

U.S. Reps. Gene Green (D-Texas) and Dave Hobson (R-Ohio) attended, as did the head of the Blinded Veterans Association, staffers from other congressional offices and representatives from the National Institutes of Health, National Eye Institute and National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and BioEngineering.

03/28/08

Newland Explores Ethics in Sacramento

Professor Chester Newland of the USC School of Policy, Planning, and Development explored the issue of ethics in public agencies during a Feb. 20 workshop titled “Ethical Conduct: Values and Behaviors Underlying Shared Ethics,” at the California Department of Managed Health Care in Sacramento.

Using anecdotes from his experience at the Federal Executive Institute, Newland emphasized the importance of searching for human dignity and sensibility in developing standards of ethical behavior in public administration.

Organizations need to identify ethical principles – such as justice, prudence, truthfulness, loyalty and individual integrity – that will result in a “shared humanity,” Newland said.

The dynamic environment of public administration often poses challenges to ethical conduct due to changes in policy, people and perceptions, but organizations must move beyond these difficulties to create and share improved futures, he added.

“Dr. Newland embodies the ethics and integrity that the Department of Managed Health Care seeks to model in policy development,” said Warren Barnes, assistant deputy director at the Department of Managed Health Care and organizer of the event.


02/29/08

Astor Offers Research on School Violence

Ron Avi Astor of the USC School of Social Work and the USC Rossier School of Education attended the annual conference of the Society of Social Work Research, held in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 17-18.

He and visiting professor Rami Benbenishty also met with the staff of Rep. Linda T. Sanchez (D-Calif.) and the House Education and Labor Committee to talk about their research on school violence and the implications for the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act.

Astor spoke about how the act is supposed to provide extra support for dangerous schools, but that schools are allowed to self-designate and not one of California’s nearly 10,000 schools has adopted the required “persistently dangerous” designation.

He also pointed out that accurate information from students themselves about dangerous schools is available in the biannual Healthy Kids surveys, but this information is not widely used to improve school safety.

02/22/08

Historical Association Meets in D.C.

USC had a strong presence at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association in Washington, D.C., during the first week of January.

Attendees from the campus included historians Peter Mancall, Lisa Bitel, Deborah Harkness, Karen Halttunen, Douglas Greenberg, Steven J. Ross, Vanessa Schwartz and George Sanchez.

Halttunen, who is serving a three-year term as vice president of the teaching division of the association, attended one and a half days of meetings of the organization’s central governing body and chaired a panel on teaching students to think historically. The panel involved a mix of K-12 teachers and college and university professors.

Halttunen also served on a panel titled “Sites of Encounter and Cultural Production,” which focused on new ideas for teaching world history in elementary and secondary schools.

“When I ran for this office, my candidate’s statement emphasized my commitment to K-16 collaboration in the teaching of history – an area where I’ve worked for the past 15 years,” she said.

02/15/08

British, Trojans Diplomacy at Work in D.C.

Nicholas Cull of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Lisa Larsen from the USC Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School hosted a reception on Jan. 22 with the British Embassy and the British Council at the USC Washington, D.C., Center.

The more than 100 guests included personnel from the British Embassy and its consulates around the United States as well as representatives from the U.S. State Department and Washington think tanks.

Cull spoke about the USC master’s programs in public diplomacy and about the annual Summer Institute in Advanced Public Diplomacy, a two-week certificate course for professionals. He also talked about the “new public diplomacy,” an idea that diplomacy has changed fundamentally since the end of the Cold War, with new technologies, new techniques and new players – including more non-governmental organizations – in the mix.

“The most important and least-charted dimension of this new public diplomacy is the new direction of communication,” Cull said. Cold War communication was vertical, but “today we are all interconnected in an increasingly horizontal direction.”

02/08/08