The 1964 NCAA Championship Swim Team. Jim Corfman (’64) is the co-captain on the left (in sweatshirt), in the middle row.
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Trojan Family Establishes Endowed Chair in Humanities
By Katherine Yungmee Kim
January 2005
Jim Corfman (B.A., History, 1964) is marveling over the Trojan swimmers
at the 2004 Summer Olympics.
“Those boys are incredible,” the founding
member of the College’s Board of Councilors says. And he should know.
Corfman was an All-American Trojan his senior year for the 200 and 500
meter freestyle—a co-captain of the swim team in 1964 and captain of
the water polo team in 1963.
He swam varsity for three years (he was not allowed on the team as a
freshman) and his junior and senior year the USC swim team was NCAA
champions.
Corfman admits he came to USC from his childhood town of Newport Beach
“for the swimming program.” But he left the school a great believer in
liberal arts education.
As proof, Corfman and his family established an endowed chair in USC College this winter.
“It is my belief that a majority of students need a well-rounded
education for their undergraduate degree,” Corfman says from his home
in Woodside, Calif. “The humanities offers that. It gives a person the
ability to look at different things, and in some cases, view other
cultures and religions. It helps build your thought process.”
This belief has clearly trickled down to his five children—four of whom
have graduated from the College. His eldest daughter, Samantha,
graduated magna cum laude with a double major in cinema and English.
His son Jeff majored in economics, his daughter Lindsey majored in
psychology and his third daughter, Cate, studied international
relations. His fourth daughter, Amanda (who he refers to as “the
Wildcat” for her unlikely choice of Arizona as her alma mater), is
currently majoring in psychology.
He says that he gave the children some opportunities, but he also let
them pick their own. As four of them chose USC, Corfman and his wife
Carol “couldn’t have been any happier.”
Corfman is the vice president of Corfman Capital, a management company
that runs or manages hedge funds. Prior to that, he was at Volpe,
Welty, & Company, a Bay Area investment banking firm that, in
addition to client portfolio management, has also taken biomedical and
high tech companies public.
In his capacity on the Board of Councilors since 1997, Corfman says he
has seen the College change “dramatically.” He attributes the positive
changes to previous Dean Morton Schapiro and current Dean Joseph Aoun,
who successfully expanded the quality of students and educational
facilities.
“It was something I could not believe could happen in that time frame,”
Corfman says. “I thought it was a pipe dream. This turnaround is
unheard of in academia and it doesn’t look like it’s going to slow
down. The College is on a roll, which is really nice to see.”
The Corfman family also supports the College’s new USC Molecular and
Computational Biology Building, and Jim is still an avid fan of the
swim and water polo teams. As for why they chose to support an endowed
chair?
“It’s a chicken and egg situation,” Corfman explains. “Buildings are
nice, but the better professors there are, the better students. The
quality of students needs a stable quality of professors and this
endowed chair in the humanities might be a small help.”
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