On Change & Continuity

Dear Friends,

Six months ago, USC President Steven B. Sample and Provost C.L. Max Nikias asked me to take on the interim deanship of USC College. I was honored to accept this opportunity, and delighted to appoint one of the College’s finest professors, Hilary Schor, to replace me as the College’s dean of undergraduate programs.

Transitions in leadership can be challenging. My predecessor Joseph Aoun’s great success in increasing the quality, stature and visibility of USC College has made this transition an especially critical one. Now more than ever, we need to push on to ensure that USC College continues its rapid ascent into the very top tier of American research and teaching colleges. To stand still, or even to slow down, would be to compromise our ambitious vision for the future of the College.

This fall, among other accomplishments, we came tantalizingly close to attaining the goal of our Senior Hiring Initiative — to hire 100 world-class faculty in a few short years. We also marked the halfway point in our Tradition & Innovation fund-raising initiative, with nearly $200 million raised thus far.

In this issue of the USC College Magazine, you will see that the balance implied in the title of our initiative, “Tradition & Innovation,” very much applies to the College’s response to the increasing importance of technology in the world of higher education.

Living in the age of digital technologies requires a whole new literacy: an ability to manipulate and to analyze audio and visual texts, to supplement competencies in the traditional forms of writing and textual analysis. In recognition of this, the College and the USC School of Cinematic Arts recently launched Multimedia in the Core, a pilot program that integrates the authorship and critical analysis of multimedia texts into the university’s general education curriculum.

At USC, the multimedia age has arrived. All USC classrooms are now wired for the Internet. The campus has gone wireless. More than a dozen rooms have been transformed into sophisticated studio classrooms for technology-enhanced learning. More and more, College professors are using podcasts, videos, simulations and even wikis to enrich their courses.

But this sea change has not diminished the importance of the human interactions that are at the very core of the college experience — a student visiting her professor’s office hours and finding a mentor; students working together on a project of original research; students going out into the world to put their knowledge to work. Technology is at its most powerful when it serves as a supplement to the rich human interactions that make learning at a premier academic institution meaningful and lasting.

Sincerely,

Peter Starr

Dean of USC College