Dear Colleagues,
For those of our faculty who are new, welcome! To our returning faculty, welcome back! It is invigorating to see how lively campus is at the start of each new semester, but it is especially exciting to feel the energy of a new academic year in my new role as Provost.
Last week, we celebrated the arrival of more than 13,000 new undergraduate, graduate, and professional students at New Student Convocation and welcomed over 250 new faculty at New Faculty Orientation.
These students and our new colleagues join us because of the quality of what you do every day: the superb teaching, the pathbreaking research, the accomplished clinical service, the beautiful artistic expression. The education you provide to our next generation of students will forever impact our future leaders, policy makers, thinkers, and creators. And I could not be prouder of what they will learn in your classrooms this year.
Over the last few weeks and in the weeks ahead, you have or will receive a variety of updates. I wanted to highlight some of those updates here so that you are aware of them as the academic year begins anew:
- USC Student Affairs is now USC Student Life to better reflect the department’s dedication to students.
- Digital Accessibility continues to be a significant form of academic accommodation; please see the memo I sent last week on this topic and the expanded OSAS Testing Center.
- Soon, you’ll be receiving reminders about conflicts of interest as well as privacy and security. Please be on the lookout for these important reminders.
- We also recently announced our next USC Libraries Dean, Dr. Melissa Just, who will join us on campus later this fall.
I hope you all are looking forward to the new academic year as much as I am, and I wish you all the best for a successful and productive semester. Thank you for all the work you do to help USC advance its mission of academic excellence, and thank you for the many ways you go above and beyond to serve our university.
Sincerely,
Andrew Guzman
Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs
cc: Office of the President
Academic Deans
President’s Senior Leadership Team
Provost’s Leadership Team
Academic Senate
Staff Assembly
GSG President
USG President