2023: USC launches Frontiers of Computing, a $1B-plus initiative for advanced computation, quantum computing, AI and ethics as the largest, most comprehensive academic initiative in USC’s history. Learn more.

2023: USC names one of its landmark sports facilities in honor of Allyson Felix. The Allyson Felix Field honors an alumna and Olympian who has been a hero both on and off the track. Felix holds the most Olympic medals of any track athlete in U.S. history.

2022: USC and the Alfred E. Mann Foundation for Biomedical Engineering launches a major initiative to reimagine biomedical engineering and pharmaceutical sciences for the 21st century. USC received a gift of more than $230 million from Alfred E. Mann Foundation to support the expansion of USC’s academic and research activities at the intersection of health sciences and engineering.

2022: USC dedicates the landmark Center for International Public Affairs building in honor of author, historian and Trojan Joseph Medicine Crow.

2021: USC confers honorary degrees upon Nisei students, Japanese Americans who were forced to leave the university during World War II. The university also dedicates a quiet rock garden off Trousdale Parkway in their honor.

2021: To accommodate COVID-related restrictions, USC stages 14 commencement ceremonies over seven days to honor the classes of 2020 and 2021. The ceremonies are held at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, marking the first time the stadium had hosted commencement since 1950.

2020: In recognition of her examinations of race, citizenship and belonging among immigrant groups in the United States, USC Dornsife Professor Natalia Molina was named a 2020 MacArthur Fellow.

2020: Amid unprecedented circumstances, more than 19,000 graduates were recognized at USC’s first virtual conferring of degrees. USC students, faculty, staff, alumni and friends joined the celebration online to send off the Class of 2020.

2019: For the first time in the USC Viterbi School of Engineering’s history, more than 50% of its incoming undergraduate class are women.

2019: Charles F. Zukoski is installed as USC’s seventh provost.

2019: On September 20, 2019, the USC community celebrated Carol L. Folt’s inauguration as the university’s 12th president.

2018: USC alumna and trustee, Wanda M. Austin was appointed Interim President on August 7, 2018 by the USC Board of Trustees. Dr. Austin is the first woman and African-American to lead the university.

2017: The USC Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience opens. Officially the largest building on USC’s campus, the Michelson Center brings together engineers and scientists in shared spaces designed to encourage collaborative research.

2017: USC Village officially opens its doors to the community. The largest development project in the history of South Los Angeles will be home to 2,500 students, and several restaurants and retailers.

2017: The George Lucas Family Foundation has expanded its support of student diversity with a second $10 million endowment to the USC School of Cinematic Arts. The gift will provide scholarships for African-American and Hispanic students in undergraduate and graduate programs.

2016: The women’s soccer team wins its second NCAA title. They join rare company as one of only four women’s soccer programs nationally to win multiple national titles, and is the first Pac-12 school to accomplish this feat.

2016: The Jill and Frank Fertitta Hall opens. The five-story building will be the home for USC Marshall School of Business’ undergraduate business program.

2016: A gift from social work pioneer Suzanne Dworak-Peck names the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work. Her gift is one of the largest contributions from an individual to a school of its kind.

2016: USC sent 44 athletes to the 2016 Rio Olympics, more than any other American university, and they brought home 21 Olympic medals.

2016: World War II veteran Alfonso Gonzales became the oldest graduate in USC history at 96 years old when he received his Bachelor of Science degree in zoology.

2016: A gift from Larry Ellison establishes the Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine of USC, which will house an interdisciplinary center for cancer research.

2016: Associate Professor Viet Thanh Nguyen was awarded the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, one of America’s most prestigious literary honors.

2015: USC’s launches its new Sustainability 2020 plan that will provide the framework for the university’s ongoing efforts to integrate sustainability into all facets of the university, including academic research, curriculum development, energy and water conservation and procurement.

2015: A grant from the Annenberg Foundation to the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism launches a long-term initiative aimed at increasing access to journalism education and professional development for people from diverse ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds.

2015: Japanese Prime Minister and USC alumnus Shinzo Abe visits University Park Campus.

2015: A gift from Mark and Mary Stevens will endow and name the USC Mark and Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute. The gift promises to improve the lives of millions of people worldwide by speeding the translation of basic research into new therapies, preventions and cures for brain injury and disease, including Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia and traumatic brain injury.

2014: Construction opened on the USC Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience. The center is made possible by a $50 million gift from Gary and Alya Michelson and is slated to be the largest building on USC’s campus, focusing on biomedical research.

2014: Initiated by a lead gift of $50 million from the Annenberg Foundation, the Wallis Annenberg Hall opened on October 1, 2014. The 88,000-square-foot, future-focused facility was designed with the input of students, faculty and staff.

2014: USC Village, a 1.25-million-square-foot residential and retail center that will reshape the university and its residential life breaks ground.

2014: The six-level, 98,000-square-foot Dr. Verna and Peter Dauterive Hall building opens to house several multidisciplinary centers focused on developing solutions to pressing social challenges.

2014: The USC Shoah Foundation celebrated its 20th anniversary on May 7, 2014. Institute founder and USC trustee Steven Spielberg recognized President Barack Obama with the Institute’s highest honor, the Ambassador for Humanity Award.

2014: The USC Men’s Water Polo team makes history, winning an unprecedented sixth consecutive national championship.

2013: USC Professor Arieh Warshel is awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems.

2012: USC marks the 100th anniversary of the Trojans nickname—one of the most iconic monikers in sports history—for its athletic teams.

2011: Provost Elizabeth Garrett poses with USC president C. L. Max Nikias during her installation ceremony.

2010: President C. L. Max Nikias and his wife, USC first lady Niki C. Nikias, walk past thousands gathered in Alumni Park during his inauguration ceremony on October 15, 2010. Read his biography

2010: The Ronald Tutor Campus Center, opened August 26, 2010, provides a gathering place for all members of the Trojan Family.

2006: A member of the breakdance troupe SickStep performs at Spark!, a multimedia showcase on August 18, 2006, marking the inaugural year of Visions and Voices: The USC Arts and Humanities Initiative.

2005: Trojan victory signs held high, members of the Trojan Family fill Hahn Central Plaza on October 6, 2005, kicking off Festival 125, a four-day all-university open house celebrating USC’s 125th anniversary.

2004: Alumnus Joseph Medicine Crow, historian and the last war chief of the Crow Tribe of Montana, was awarded an honorary doctorate degree during the 2003 Commencement ceremony.

2001: Hollywood turns out big-time in March 2001, as USC’s Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts marks a new era in the making of motion pictures. At the head table are Avid Technology CEO David Krall, filmmakers George Lucas ’66, Robert Zemeckis ’73, Steven Spielberg and Dean Elizabeth Daley.

1999: Time magazine names USC College of the Year 2000.

1999: The agreement naming the Keck School of Medicine of USC is signed on July 28, 1999. Participating in the occasion are (from left) USC general counsel Todd Dickey, USC president Steven B. Sample, W. M. Keck Foundation attorney James P. Lower and foundation chairman and president Robert A. Day.

1995: USC Friends and Neighbors Service Day is inaugurated in 1995, teaming students with community residents to paint, sweep, shovel, weed and provide general clean-up at schools, shelters and nonprofit organizations in the vicinity of the University Park Campus. The one-day “volunteer blitz” later expands to include the Health Sciences campus in 2000.

1994: Back on campus after attending the Nobel Prize ceremony in Sweden, 1994 Nobel laureate George A. Olah and benefactor Katherine B. Loker ’40 get together for a photo-op.

1991: Musician, outdoorsman and electrical engineer Steven B. Sample takes office as USC’s tenth president on March 31, 1991. Read his profile.

1984: When the Olympics arrive in summer 1984, the University Park Campus is transformed into Los Angeles’ largest Olympic Village, as evident in this view down Trousdale Parkway.

1983: USC’s 1983 Homecoming, themed “A Salute to USC Olympians,” brings 120 of the university’s living Olympic medalists to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

1982: Instituted in 1982, USC’s Academic Honors Convocation has its origins in a special centennial faculty convocation held in October 1980 as “a symbol of the debt we owe to those who have contributed to the first 100 years of academic achievement at USC,” according to President Zumberge. Among the honorees at that event were (pictured, from left) Anton Burg, J. Paul Guilford, Harold von Hofe, Morris M. Mautner, Robert Vivian, Hugh Edmondson, Halsey Stevens and Arlien Johnson.

A noted glaciologist, James H. Zumberge becomes USC’s ninth president in 1980. Read his profile.

1976: Gerald R. Ford, 38th president of the United States, brings his campaign against Jimmy Carter to USC on October 7, 1976. Following his defeat at the polls, he returns to USC twice in 1977 to lecture to a variety of classes. Here, he visits with USC President John R. Hubbard.

1972: Founded in 1972, the USC Joint Educational Project (JEP) has been headquartered in the former residence of USC’s fourth president, George F. Bovard, since 1976.

1970: News of the appointment of John R. Hubbard as USC’s eighth president is announced at a press conference on August 3, 1970. Read his profile.

1970: On September 12, 1970, USC’s football team becomes the first fully integrated team to play in the state of Alabama, beating the Crimson Tide, 42-21.

1968: Brochures for USC’s Urban Semester, founded in 1968, outline opportunities for students to use the city as a laboratory for study in fields ranging from urban and regional planning to architecture and music.

1966: Designed in 1908 by renowned architects Charles and Henry Greene as a retirement home for the heirs to the Procter & Gamble legacy, the Gamble House in Pasadena is an outstanding example of American Arts and Crafts architecture. Learn more.

1965: The USC mobile dental clinic.

1961: President Topping (center), USC Board of Trustees chairman Leonard K. Firestone (left) and Master Plan Committee national chairman H. Leslie Hoffman announce USC’s blueprint for action, the “Master Plan for Enterprise and Excellence in Education,” on May 17, 1961.

1960: John F. Kennedy, who is later to become the 35th president of the United States, speaks from the steps of USC’s Doheny Memorial Library to a first-time voter convocation in 1960.

1958: At his inauguration as USC’s seventh president in October 1958, Norman H. Topping (left) receives the university’s new silver mace, representing the authority of the president’s office, from USC Board of Trustees chairman Asa V. Call, while renowned Shakespeare scholar Frank Baxter, who designed the mace, looks on. Read Topping’s profile.

1947: George Tirebiter I serves as USC’s student body mascot from 1947 to 1949.

1947: Fred D. Fagg Jr., takes office as USC’s sixth president in 1947. Read his profile.

1946: The KUSC studio broadcasts a live performance.

1939: USC’s Elizabeth Holmes Fisher Gallery opens in 1939, the first museum established in Los Angeles devoted exclusively to the exhibition and collection of fine art.

1932: Doheny Memorial Library’s doors open for the first time on September 12, 1932.

1923: In 1923, before Greta Garbo wanted to be alone, she was willing to pose at USC in a track uniform while coach Dean Cromwell held the starter’s gun.

1922: The first attempt at a sequential card stunt for a football crowd is made under the direction of Lindley Bothwell in the stands on USC’s Bovard Field.

Rufus B. von KleinSmid, formerly president of the University of Arizona, accepts the post as USC’s fifth president in 1921. Read his profile.

1912: USC Theta Psi fraternity.

1911: On October 11, 1911, United States President Taft visits Hollywood. In this photograph, he stands in the back of a train car, looking out the open window toward a group of onlookers in the foreground.

1904: Emil Breitkreutz, USC’s first Olympic athlete, is the first of hundreds of athletes who will attend USC before, during or after their Olympic appearance — making USC the school that has sent more athletes to the Olympic Games than any other university.

1903: George Finley Bovard is unanimously elected USC’s fourth president on April 8, 1903. Read his profile.

1892: USC’s second president, physician Joseph P. Widney, takes the university’s  helm in 1892. Read his profile.

1888: The first USC football squad is formed in 1888. Before being nicknamed the Trojans in 1912, they are known variously as the USC Cardinals and as the Methodists.

1885: USC’s original medical school building at 445 Aliso Street, whose previous occupant had been the Vache Fréres Winery, eventually is expanded to equip the growing school with laboratories, an outpatient clinic and a free dispensary.

1884: This 1884 view of “downtown” Los Angeles, showing Main Street north of Temple, would have been a familiar sight to the members of USC’s first graduating class.

1880: History was made September 4, 1880, when nearly one-tenth of the population of Los Angeles turned out to witness the laying of the cornerstone for USC’s first structure—today’s Widney Alumni House. As building namesake and USC founder R.M. Widney reflected some six years after: “The unfinished building in the midst of an unoccupied, uncultivated plain was a lonely looking object to those who only saw the present. For some the curtains rolled aside and the coming centuries were in view, with the possibilities of the great work standing out in strong outlines for the encouragement of the workers.”

1880: Marion McKinley Bovard becomes the first president of USC in 1880. Read his profile.

1879: The three men who made the original gift of land to establish USC are as diverse as 19th-century Los Angeles (left to right): Isaias W. Hellman, a German-Jewish banker and philanthropist; former California governor John G. Downey, an Irish-Catholic pharmacist and businessman; and Ozro W. Childs, a Protestant horticulturist.

1871: Judge Robert Maclay Widney not only is responsible for setting in motion the events that lead to USC’s founding, but also helps bring the Southern Pacific Railroad to Los Angeles, establish the city’s first horse-drawn trolley and organize the first chamber of commerce.

1870: City of Los Angeles 1870 (mural by Jim Doolin)