Steering Committees for USC’s Commitment to Confronting 21st Century Challenges

A Message to the USC Community

As one of the world’s leading research universities, it is incumbent upon USC to bring to bear its breadth and depth of scholarship, its history of innovation, and its collaborative spirit on the most complex problems and challenges of the 21st Century. To that end, I am pleased to announce USC’s commitment to confronting such issues head-on. The first four of these university-wide efforts will be directed toward:

• Eliminating Homelessness
• Ensuring Lifespan Health
• Enhancing Security and Sustainability
• Engaging Arts for Social Change

These topics leverage our strengths: our ability to converge across disciplines, to blend scholarship with education, and to engage stakeholders both on and off our campuses. And they dovetail nicely with the major tenets of the USC Strategic Vision: undertaking scholarship with real-world consequence, transforming how we educate future generations of engaged leaders, and serving our city, our region, and our world.

To move these initiatives forward, I have asked our academic deans to participate on steering committees that will work closely with faculty, staff, students, and stakeholders. The goals of the steering committees will be, in part, to define the scope of the issue, create a plan for implementation, suggest where to direct university resources to support faculty recruitment and help seed research efforts, create novel undergraduate and graduate academic programs, provide robust community outreach and stakeholder partnerships, and recommend how to measure our impact. Please join me in thanking the deans for their willingness to lead these efforts. The roster for each steering committee is shown below.

I look forward to working with our entire university community on these initiatives. I will keep everyone updated on our progress as we come together to create tangible and long-lasting impact.

Michael W. Quick
Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs

Committee Roster

Eliminating Homelessness

Marilyn Flynn – lead
Karen Gallagher
Jack Knott
Qingyun Ma
Erica Muhl
Catherine Quinlan
Avishai Sadan

Ensuring Lifespan Health (including aging and dementia)

Pinchas Cohen – lead
David Bridel
Robert Cutietta
Elizabeth Daley
Jack Knott
Vassilios Papadopoulos
Rohit Varma

Enhancing Security and Sustainability

Yannis Yortsos – lead
Jim Ellis
Andrew Guzman
William Holder
Jack Knott
Amber Miller
Ernest Wilson

Engaging Arts for Social Change

Robert Cutietta – lead
David Bridel
Elizabeth Daley
Qingyun Ma
Erica Muhl