When you are crowned “Mr. USC” by the exclusive undergraduate organization Order of the Torch, have been a Division 1 basketball player for four years, earned a GPA in the stratosphere from two schools, USC Viterbi and USC Marshall, and are – oh yes – only the ninth Trojan in history to be named a Rhodes Scholar for graduate study at the University of Oxford, that’s a lot of accolades to carry around.

But Reed Doucette, a cheerful and even-keeled fifth-year senior from Acampo, Calif., wears his many honors lightly, including being one of USC’s salutatorians for 2008.

In other words, he’s a genuinely nice guy. He’s focused, but not humorless. (His frequent megawatt smile is one tipoff.) He’s busy, but gives no hint of grimly slogging on an overachiever’s treadmill.

This is a guy who uses time-management skills to the max. Take the week before finals. This was his toughest semester at USC, Doucette confided, and he had three finals to prepare for and a project or two, including a big group project for the legendary leadership class taught by USC President Steven B. Sample and management guru Warren Bennis.

He still found time to take part in USC’s “fountain run,” the end-of-the-year, late-night mass romp from campus fountain to fountain. Finishing at midnight, he parked himself in the computer lab at King Hall until 3:30 a.m., knocking out a control systems report for an engineering class.

“That was brutal,” he said with a grin, looking happy and reinvigorated the next day.

It’s difficult to get him to comment on his unusual success. When pressed, he is modest. “I’m pretty good at seeing where I want to go and working toward it,” he finally said. “I want to put myself into position to take advantage of opportunities. As they say, luck is where preparation meets opportunity.”

He’d rather talk about his friends, family, coaches and professors who helped him along the way. For the Rhodes scholarship, he needed six USC nominators. He ticks them off easily: men’s basketball coach Tim Floyd, mechanical engineering professor Geoff Spedding, physics professor Doug Burke, former USC statistics professor Catherine Sugar, mechanical engineering professor Andrea Hodge (who was his mentor at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory) and mechanical engineering professor Marijan Dravinski. He also mentions USC Annenberg professor Bryce Nelson, himself a former Rhodes Scholar, who heads USC’s international fellowship committee.

“I’ve asked for their advice all along, on academics and for life advice as well. After my parents, they were the first ones I called when I heard about the Rhodes,” he said.

His parents, Tom and Barbara, and sister Lauren, who just finished her junior year at the USC Marshall School of Business, should have plenty of time to visit during the three years he will be earning a doctor of philosophy degree in Oxford’s Electrical Power Group, where he will learn about renewable energy, energy conservation and solar cells.

Cecil Rhodes, the namesake of the scholarship, was keen on athletics, and the 6’5” Doucette plans to pack his basketball and tennis racquet and would love to find room for his golf clubs so he and his dad can play the Old Course at St. Andrews. He’d like to learn to play cricket, go punting (boating) and generally “soak up” all the experiences the United Kingdom has to offer.

This summer he’d like to sign on with an energy start-up company or expand his work with Los Angeles Community Impact, where USC students consult with nonprofits on business plans and marketing.

“There are a lot of options for making the world a better place,” he said.

He has one other goal this summer. By the time he goes to England, Doucette wants to be able to play the Earl Scruggs’ finger-flying classic, “Foggy Mountain Breakdown,” on his banjo. He’s packing his banjo in his suitcase, too.

Allison Engel

Andrew Horning

For Andrew Horning, the sky’s the limit. There’s seemingly nothing that daunts this chemistry major and comparative literature minor who will graduate with a 4.0 grade point average and the rank of salutatorian at the 2008 Commencement.

“I’m thinking about skydiving in my cap and gown,” said Horning, with a gleam in his eye.

It wouldn’t be the first time. Horning is a licensed pro, with 85 jumps to his credit. He owns a parachute and folds it himself before each jump. The lean and wiry Trojan is also a long-distance runner, pounding out an average of 40 miles a week.

Growing up on bucolic Whidbey Island in Washington State, Horning always has succeeded at whatever he set his mind to do. So after treating himself to a skydiving lesson for his 19th birthday, he didn’t hesitate to turn the exhilarating experience into a serious pursuit.

He jumps every other weekend now. In March, he cajoled physics professor Gene Bickers – known for walking on hot coals and lying on a bed of nails to make a scientific point – to jump with him, though the fearless professor had vowed “this is the one thing I said I would never do.”

Horning is not your typical science geek. He excels in both science and the humanities. An alumnus of USC’s prestigious two-year Thematic Option honors curriculum as well as its Freshman Science Honors Program, he is proficient in Spanish with a good reading knowledge of Italian, a smidgeon of Latin and ancient Greek.

This year, he won a $1,000 first prize in the Undergraduate Writers Conference for his analytical essay comparing a popular linear equation, the 1934 Lineweaver-Burk plot, with the linearity of “Il Pleut” (“Rain”), an almost-vertical poem by French symbolist Guillaume Apollinaire. The year before, Horning won top honors in the comparative literature department’s upper-division essay contest for his paper on the figure of the “selva oscura” (obscure forest) in Dante’s Commedia.

“I’ve become very interested in the interplay between science and the humanities – how you can look at a scientific problem from the humanities perspective and vice versa,” he said.

Horning has won more than his fair share of science awards. He nabbed first prize in the science, math and engineering category of the 2007 Provost’s Undergraduate Research Symposium. His project: recreating the natural process of photosynthesis using artificial molecules fabricated from carbon-based polymers and using these to study the relationship between molecular geometry and energy transfer.

Active in the research lab of chemistry professor Stephen Bradforth for three years, Horning has made important contributions to Bradforth’s Ultrafast Laser Spectroscopy group. For example, he single-handedly rebuilt, realigned and recalibrated a $200,000 fluorimeter. And he designed and optimized a novel apparatus for measuring chemical reaction dynamics at liquid/vapor interfaces using second harmonic generation.

His community efforts include reviving the neglected Trojan Chemistry Club, serving as its president for the past three years and working as an undergraduate teaching assistant in the honors general chemistry course.

The son of a career Navy officer-turned-commercial pilot and a pediatric emergency physician, Horning leaves USC with a number of other kudos to his credit: a prestigious Phi Kappa Phi National Graduate Fellowship; one of 10 coveted USC Renaissance Scholars Prize (worth $10,000 each); and the University Trustees Award recognizing the graduating senior male student with the highest cumulative GPA.

Horning will enter the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the fall as a doctoral student in chemistry, focusing on biophysics. He’s already checked out the skydiving club there – which, he is happy to report, gets airborne regularly.

Diane Krieger

For all the stories on this year's Commencement, click here.