USC and its faculty were prominent in the Feb. 7 Los Angeles Times Magazine special issue on higher education.

Morton Owen Schapiro, an expert on the economics of higher education, was quoted about the state money battle pitting prisons against higher education: “If we don’t invest in community colleges and technical training, corrections could be filling its beds.”

A pictorial feature on 100 years of college life in Southern California led with an 1889 portrait of top-hatted USC juniors posing for a class picture.

And in “Three for the 21st Century,” a package of stories about outstanding faculty, jazz pianist Shelly Berg, head of the School of Music’s jazz studies department, was profiled. Berg spoke apprehensively about jazz studies in the 21st century, when it will be music schools that train the next jazz musicians rather than apprenticeships in small clubs. Like other educators, Berg said that colleges and music schools have to bring a greater emphasis on listening. “It’s time to drop the bomb and start over,” he said. “I think music education in the next 20 years will totally re-evaluate itself in terms of, is it experiential enough, are we throwing too many facts into people’s brains so that they’re not getting to play enough and replicate enough?”

Taking Action on Modifications

An interactive exhibit in Pasadena created by the Pasadena Home Modification Action Coalition was the subject of a Feb. 1 KCBS-TV story. The coalition was organized last year as part of the Home Modification Action Project at Andrus Gerontology Center. Project Manager Julie Overton was interviewed for the television story. On Feb. 12, the exhibit was the subject of a long feature with several photos in the Pasadena Star-News.

The Business School Building Boom

A combination of factors is causing universities across the nation to build larger and more up-to-date facilities to house business school classrooms, said John Crowe, senior associate dean of external relations for the USC Marshall School of Business, in a Jan. 19 Los Angeles Times article. “I’m not sure there’s a competition to have the biggest and best building, but there is at least a competition about not being left behind,” Crowe said of a national business school building boom that includes USC’s $25-million Popovich Hall. “You don’t want to be seen as an institution with nothing but 1965 facilities.” In the article, USC alumni Kris and Jane Popovich said they contributed $5 million toward Popovich Hall because of their belief that USC must maintain top facilities to remain among top business schools. “USC was simply running out of space, and the university wanted a building for the graduate students that was separate from the building for the undergraduate students,” Kris Popovich said. “I think the new facilities will enable us to continue attracting outstanding faculty and high-caliber students.”

Twins Times 2 in the O.R. Make News

Identical twin surgeons Rafael G. Mendez and Robert Mendez performed a kidney transplant on another set of identical twins who were released from USC University Hospital Jan. 25. Both of the patients had suffered the effects of a congenital kidney disease since birth, with one sister more severely affected than the other. The kidney that was transplanted was already partially damaged. But after transplant, “it started functioning beautifully,” said Rafael Mendez. The story was covered Jan. 25 by KABC-TV, KCAL-TV, KMEX-TV, KNBC-TV, KTLA-TV, KNX-AM, City News Service, Associated Press and the Jan. 26 Los Angeles Times. The story also aired in Cleveland, Orlando, Milwaukee and other cities.

Impressive Opening Notes at the Newman

The dedication of the new Alfred Newman Recital Hall was reported by the Los Angeles Times and the Los Angeles Downtown News. The Times critic, writing about the dedicatory concert in the Feb. 12 Times, said, “The hall has a wonderful presence for the right performer of the right music.” The critic was particularly impressed by mezzo-soprano and USC alumna Cynthia Jansen Theo’s rendering of “Myriad’s Song,” from the 1959 film The Robe, which “resonated fluidly,” and by an “enchanting” piece by composer Morten Lauridsen that was performed by the USC Chamber Choir.

More USC in the News

1. “I think of myself as an Easterner, but there’s no reason why a program like ‘Market-place’ should have to come out of New York or Boston. That’s tired, old-fashioned thinking ... that L.A. doesn’t count,” said Marketplace Productions head Jim Russell in a Jan. 13 San Diego Union-Tribune profile of the executive who entered journalism as a 22-year-old UPI correspondent covering Vietnam.
   
   
2. Civil rights lawyers would have a field day should an exclusive Orange County gated community proceed with plans to build a public school behind those gates, urban planning expert Edward Blakely warned in a Dec. 26 Boston Globe article that reported on the Coto de Caza community’s plans. “A public school has to be public,” said Blakely, who co-wrote a book on gated communities. “So when I roll up to that gate, you have to open it.” Blakely was also quoted in the Jan. 25 Los Angeles Times Orange County edition.
   
   
3. In the December issue of the Manual Arts Cluster News, Weemes Elementary School officials report that a USC Navy ROTC cadet’s friendship with a student teacher at Weemes led to a literacy partnership that brings a fresh class of ROTC midshipmen to the school each year. Last year the midshipmen read 20,000 book reports written by Weemes students. “The effect has been dramatic,” the Cluster News said. “The midshipmen also act as tutors and mentors in the classroom on a regular basis.”
   
   
4. Schmoozing, rather than a track record of winning results, has often guided the movie industry, management expert Warren Bennis said in Jan. 17 New York Times Magazine article. “It’s a dream-making business where if you fail at one, you simply go and spin a new dream at another,” said Bennis. Bennis was also quoted in a Jan. 24 Los Angeles Times article on the relevance of The Organization Man, a book written by William H. Whyte Jr. in 1956. “I remember the book well and felt at the time and now that it was chillingly accurate,” Bennis said of the book, which portrayed corporate America as being “monotonously homogenous.”
   
   
5. Reproductive endocrinologist Richard Paulson’s book Rewinding Your Biological Clock: Motherhood Late in Life was reviewed in the Jan. 18 Los Angeles Times. The review praises the book as “a good consumer guide” that “will advance the debate about the appropriateness of infertility treatments in older couples.”
   
   
6. Family businesses expand job advancement opportunities for daughters, business administration expert James G. Ellis said in a Jan. 20 Los Angeles Times article about the challenges women face in family-owned businesses. “Today it’s incumbent on the patriarch of the family to find the brightest child, as opposed to the brightest son,” Ellis said.
   
   
7. W. French Anderson’s pre- proposal to the National Institutes of Health for the first in utero gene therapy was the topic of a meeting held in January to stimulate public discussion. The issue and meeting were covered by the Jan. 22 Chronicle of Higher Education which featured a photo of Anderson, director of USC’s Gene Therapy Laboratories.
   
   
8. Naj Meshkati, engineer and native Iranian, was interviewed Jan. 24 on National Public Radio for a story about an offer made late last year by Iran to purchase half a billion dollars’ worth of American grain. The U.S. government, which has imposed sanctions against Iran that would have to be partially lifted, is weighing its response to the deal. “I think this is going to be perceived within Iran as basically a first concrete and positive gesture. ... In the long run it will strengthen that side that you’re after, the normalization of relations with the U.S.,” Meshkati said.
   
   
9. Companies that are concerned about their reputation may hold off from giving to the Olympic Committee for fear that an ongoing bribery scandal may brand them guilty by association, marketing expert David Stewart said Jan. 26 on National Public Radio.
   
   
10. Neurologist Cheryl Waters was interviewed Jan. 29 on NPR’s “All Things Considered” regarding a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association showing that genetic factors do not play a role in most cases of Parkinson’s disease. “There’s very little chance of your offspring developing Parkinson’s disease. This is not a highly genetic disease,” said Waters.
    
    
11. Historian Lois Banner’s new book, Finding Fran, received rave reviews in the Jan. 29 L.A Weekly books column. “One emerges from Finding Fran with the Chekhovian insight that only by taking risks with people, by pushing at the boundaries of what we know, can we truly come alive,” the reviewer wrote. “One is seduced by Banner’s down-to-earth, commonsense approach.”
    
    
12. “What’s unusual here is the seemingly blatant influence of a religious figure in a purely secular decision,” constitutional law scholar Erwin Chemerinsky commented in a Jan. 29 Los Angeles Times article about Missouri Gov. Mel Carnaham granting clemency to a triple murderer after a plea for mercy from Pope John Paul II. “We might criticize it from a political standpoint, but that doesn’t make it illegal.” In the last week of January, Chemerinsky also commented about the impeachment proceedings for USA Today.
    
    
13. USC’s community-oriented programs are contributing to a decrease in crime and an increase in community spirit and involvement, the Los Angeles Business Journal reported in a Feb. 1 article. Transformation of the University Park neighborhood is due, in part, to such programs as Kid Watch, a face-lift at Exposition Park and a program that helps USC employees buy homes near campus, according to quotes by President Steven B. Sample, Department of Public Safety Deputy Chief Robert Taylor and School of Education Dean Guilbert Hentschke.
    
    
14. Cardiologist Uri Elkayam was quoted in the Feb. 1 Los Angeles Times, Health section on heart failure treatment programs. “Almost every university or large medical center ... has found out that an organized heart failure program can improve the health of patients … and, at the same time ... reduce the cost of treatment.” The article also featured one of Elkayam’s patients. “It seems like I have been given my life back again. I can do all the things I want to do and thought I would never be able to do again. I only have Dr. Elkayam and God to thank.”
    
    
15. David Marsh commented on a Feb. 4 NBC “Today Show” report about mounting opposition to social promotion: the advancing of schoolchildren with their age group even when they’re not academically prepared. “You’re hoping that the kid sort of catches up later on, but what often happens is the kids keep falling further and further behind,” Marsh said. Later that night on KCET’s “Life and Times,” Marsh discussed at length Gov. Gray Davis’ proposal to mandate competency tests or exit tests for students hoping to graduate from high school. “We need some pressure that works on kids and schools to do a lot better,” Marsh said. “[However], I wouldn’t do it with high school competency tests. I would do it with exams that are linked to courses that are linked to statewide standards like the Golden State Exam.”
    
    
16. Gerontology expert Edward Schneider penned an article for the prestigious journal Science and received immediate attention from radio stations in Southern California. “We can live into our 80s and 90s and have a good quality of life,” Schneider told KNX-AM in a live interview Feb. 4. “We have to invest now. I’d spend the money on prevention of diseases and in research.” In a Southern California story carried by City News Service, Schneider warned that unless substantial amounts of money were spent today on research about aging, millions of 21st-century seniors will face a life of poverty. Other outlets interviewing Schneider included KPCC-FM and all-news KFWB-AM.
    
    
17. “People who are considered attractive get more help,” race and identity expert Dorinne Kondo said in a Feb. 5 ABC “20/20” segment about ethnic minorities who get plastic surgery to look more Anglo. “It’s easier to ... rent an apartment, earn more money. There is a certain kind of payoff to adhering to that standard.”
    
    
18. On Feb. 5, KNBC-TV ran a special report on the computerized thermal breast imaging tests performed at USC/Norris by radiologist Yuri Parisky. The technique, “using the same heat-seeking technology used on the battlefield,” was heralded as a breakthrough that will enable women to avoid the pain, stress and expense of biopsy.
    
    
19. It’s not surprising that an Orange County minister who reaches out to his flock by admitting his own human fallibility is attracting followers, religion expert Grace Dyrness said in a Feb. 6 article in the Los Angeles Times Orange County edition. “He sends the message that you don’t have to be super-human to be OK in the presence of God,” Dyrness said of Raul Ries, pastor of Calvary Chapel Golden Springs in Diamond Bar.
    
    
20. The University of California must continue to have a role in educating teachers, State Librarian and USC University Professor Kevin Starr said in a Feb. 7 Los Angeles Times opinion piece. “Should the University of California remain aloof from teacher training, it would do grave damage to itself as one of the leading universities in the world,” Starr wrote. “Without teacher training, the cycle of learning so essential to true university life – the cycle of teaching to learning, of ... learning to research and from research back again to teaching – would remain incomplete, to the detriment of society at large.”
    
    
21. In a Feb. 7 Los Angeles Times op-ed, Susan Estrich argued that a recent decision by an Oregon jury to award $107 million in damages against an anti-abortion Website that had advocated violence is symptomatic of a political system in trouble. “Prevention of violence at abortion clinics should surely be the responsibility of lawmakers, not left to eight people in a jury room, or to a judge appointed for life,” Estrich wrote. “Courts, particularly federal courts, are antimajoritarian, undemocratic institutions, which is both their strength and their weakness.”
    
    
22. Race and ethnicity expert Philip J. Ethington said the Los Angeles Human Relations Commission “has a fair way to go” in a front-page Feb. 9 Los Angeles Times , Metro section article about his 18-month study of the commission. Conducted with graduate student Christopher West, the study criticizes the 32-year-old commission as too reactive, with little follow through or research. “It’s not possible for a little commission to make it so that everyone gets along in the city,” Ethington said. “But it should be a forceful body that does concrete things, and it could be a touchstone.” The report was followed by the Los Angeles Daily News, Associated Press, KFWB-AM, KPFK-FM, KCRW’s “Which Way, LA” and KPCC-FM’s Feb. 11 “Talk of the City.”
    
    
23. City News Service reported Feb. 11 on the School of Social Work-sponsored conference, the “Many Faces of Hate Crime.” Los Angeles was not in the midst of a hate crime epidemic, said the executive director of the Los Angeles Human Relations Commission, who was one of five panelists to address 400 students, faculty and community members gathered at USC’s Davidson Conference Center.
    
    
24. A Feb. 12 Los Angeles Times story on the annual conference of the College Art Association led its coverage of award-winners at the meeting with Ruth Weisberg, dean of the School of Fine Arts, who won the association’s Distinguished Teaching of Art Award (see Chronicle story, page 12).
    
    
25. An article in Good Housekeeping magazine’s February issue cited occupational therapist Diane Parham and examined “the healing power of housework,” suggesting that household chores can have a therapeutic effect. A laundry enthusiast herself, Parham said, “Studies have shown that tasks featuring rhythmical, repetitive movements, such as ironing, vacuuming, sweeping, and scrubbing, have a calming effect.”