Biologist Michelle Arbeitman, seated, discusses an experiment with graduate students in her lab.
|
The Graduate Mission
Training the Scholars and Scientists of Tomorrow
What will tomorrow be like? See the future clearly through the graduate programs in USC College:
Graduate students must do it all — learn, teach, mentor and create new
knowledge. As USC College is the heart and soul of the university, so
graduate students can claim a similar role in the College.
A measure of their value is the fact that all great universities seek
to entice the best graduating seniors to their Ph.D. graduate programs.
USC College is in the thick of the scramble to get the crème de la
crème.
Competing toe-to-toe with peers such as Stanford, Harvard, NYU, UCLA,
UCSD and UC Berkeley means subsidizing the graduate education with
grants and stipends to cover such things as tuition, living costs,
research expenses and even health insurance.
“Because the overall goal is to be among the best colleges in a private
research university setting, we are using our endowment funds to
accomplish this,” according to College Dean Joseph Aoun.
One benchmark is where students go when they finish their graduate
education. A cross section of anthropologists, neurobiologists,
molecular biologists, chemists, historians, international relations
specialists, mathematicians and psychologists have gone on to serve
postdoctoral fellowships at Harvard, Yale, Georgetown, Dartmouth,
Stanford, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Smithsonian, UC Berkeley,
Brown and Oxford.
Some recent graduates of USC doctoral programs already have found
tenure-track professorships: anthropologist Caroline Rouse at
Princeton; geographer Andreas C.W. Baas at King’s College in London;
linguistics scholar Elena Herburger at Georgetown; mathematician Haiyan
Huang at UC Berkeley; mathematician Matei Stroila at the Univ. of
Virginia; and Slavic linguist Mikhail Gronas at Dartmouth, to mention a
few.
Graduate students such as molecular biologist Ronda Bransteitter work
at the cutting edge of knowledge. She was recently honored for helping
solve a problem that had stumped scientists for years: how one enzyme
vital to immunity works. The enzyme, called AID, is crucial to mounting
an immune response to disease. Children without the enzyme die at a
very young age of infections. Her work may lead to the ability to
counter this while opening an entire area of immune studies for
molecular biochemical analysis.
When Dean Aoun first announced his intention to transform the College
into one of the top ten-ranked schools in the nation, graduate programs
quickly emerged as one of his top priorities. They got an additional
boost this fall with the appointment of Jennifer Wolch as the first
dean to focus solely on graduate programs in the College.
“Excellence in graduate education and training is a core value in the
College,” said Wolch, a professor of geography and director of the USC
Center for Sustainable Cities. “We are committed to attracting
top-flight graduate students here and to give them the best possible
scholarly experience.”
Aoun concurred. “Strong graduate programs attract better graduate
students who, in turn, help bring top faculty to campus. These top
faculty then attract better graduate — and undergraduate — students,”
he said. “Attracting the most promising students is key to building
excellence, but the competition is intense.”
To stay competitive, USC College offers its most stellar students full scholarship support and research subsidies.
But doctoral candidate Tillman Nechtman, who received a number of good
offers from history Ph.D. programs in California, chose to attend USC
College only in part because of the generous support, he said. He also
liked the intimate feel of the history department, the quality of
faculty in his area of interest (18th century British Empire) and the
individualized attention he received from senior historians beginning
with his first visit to campus. “At USC, I have found a faculty adviser
who cares. That makes all the difference,” he said.
“We can already point to gains that show we are on the right course in
terms of graduate education,” Aoun said. “Our graduate students enjoy
richer educational experiences, with programs better tailored to their
professional aims. Applicants have told us they were attracted by our
initiative to hire more high-quality faculty. More than ever, our
faculty are committed to creating innovative training programs.”
The College has been the driving force behind university-wide,
interdisciplinary Ph.D. programs that cover the natural sciences,
humanities and social sciences. For instance, the long-standing
doctoral program in neuroscience draws upon the expertise of faculty
and students from many USC schools. Newer interdisciplinary Ph.D.
programs in history and economics pool the resources of the College
with those in the schools of law and business. Another combines
chemistry and pharmaceutical sciences to provide better training for
those pursuing careers in drug development.
Living proof that a USC College Ph.D. degree leads to success rests
with Ray R. Irani, who received his Ph.D. in chemistry in 1957. Over
the years, Irani has published more than 50 scientific papers and
secured more than 150 patents. Today, besides being a trustee of USC,
Irani is chairman and chief executive officer of Occidental Petroleum
Corporation.
|
|
|
