Best of Both Worlds

Gregory Alan Bolcer (gbolcer@endTECH.com)
Tue, 07 Dec 1999 16:39:41 -0800


One of the precursors to being "The Next Silicon Valley"(tm) is of course
having a world class university. Luckily around here we have a ton
of them. USC ranks over Irvine and Caltech for donations. USC is the
only university in history to have 3 different alumni donate over
$100 million. The Keck $110M establishment of the Keck Foundation in the school
of medicine, the $120M donation from Walter Annenberg to establish the Annenberg
Center for Communication, and the $100M Alfred Mann gift to establish
the Mann Institute for Biomedical Engineering.

They were picked by Time Magazine and Princeton Review to be the
College of the Year - 2000 for their "remarkable bonds" they've
forged with local business, cities, etc. The only bond that UCI has
with the city of Irvine is that you have to post one when they tow
your car away for parking with a UCI parking permit on non-UCI
streets.

Greg

http://www.fansonly.com/schools//usc/genrel/083099aaa.html
Time/Princeton Review Selects USC As
College Of The Year

Undergraduate applications have nearly doubled in
recent years.

Aug. 30, 1999

LOS ANGELES - The University of Southern California has been
chosen as "College of the Year" by the 2000 edition of the Time/Princeton
Review College Guide.

Editors of the annual guide, a co-publication of Time magazine and the
Princeton Review, said they chose USC because of the remarkable bonds
the university has forged with local schools, community residents, police,
businesses and community organizations. The guide, published Aug. 23, is
available on newsstands and in bookstores now.

"More institutions might do well to emulate USC's enlightened
self-interest," according to the guidebook editors. "For not only has the
'hood dramatically improved, but so has the university."

USC has seen its undergraduate applications nearly double over the last
few years, according to a six-page article penned by Time national
correspondent Margot Hornblower and included in the Time/Princeton
guide.

"We are enrolling the most academically accomplished freshman class in
our history," said Joseph Allen, USC dean of admissions and financial aid.
"We are now in that rarefied group of universities known in admissions
circles as 'highly selective.'"

Time/Princeton editors cited the university's model of service learning
the practice of applying academic theory to real-life situations through
public service as their main reason for choosing USC as college of the
year.

The guide's recognition validates the great work done by residents living
near the university, as well as thousands of neighborhood institutions, USC
students, faculty and staff members, said USC President Steven B.
Sample.

"At the heart of USC's community outreach is a respectful partnership
between the university and the people, organizations and institutions
around us," Sample said. "All have been working hard to achieve common
goals great public schools, a safe and attractive environment, and
economic and academic opportunity.

"USC's employees and students have taken up the challenge to give of
both their time and money to causes in the community," Sample added.
"Together they have volunteered hundreds of thousands of hours in the
neighborhoods closest to USC's University Park Campus near downtown
Los Angeles and its Health Sciences Campus in East Los Angeles. Since
1994, faculty and staff have given more than $1.5 million to the Good
Neighbors Campaign, our annual fund-raising drive for the university's
outreach programs."

USC has one of the most ambitious social-outreach programs of any
university in the nation, according to Hornblower's article. "The intense
focus, with one program layering on another, has woven a safety net
around the children, their families and their teachers," she wrote.

Hornblower investigated about a dozen of the more than 200 community
programs with which USC is affiliated. Her article singled out USC's
Neighborhood Academic Initiative for special praise, profiling 17-year-old
Marlena Chambers as one of the 350 South Central Los Angeles
youngsters enrolled in the college preparatory program. The
African-American teenager said she is working hard in hope of qualifying
for a $120,000 USC scholarship when she graduates from high school.

"As the backlash against affirmative action gathers force, universities
promote 'outreach' to continue attracting black and Hispanic students,"
Hornblower wrote. "But USC's effort goes far beyond mailing brochures
to inner-city high school counselors and hoping that qualified applicants
will materialize."

USC's commitment to work with its neighbors is both broad and deep, the
Rev. Cecil Murray, senior minister of the nearby First African Methodist
Episcopal Church, is quoted as saying. "USC goes out and puts their
hands in yours and brings you to them," he said.

USC's emphasis on combining academics and service has helped the
university recruit some of the world's best and brightest students, said Jane
G. Pisano, USC's senior vice president for external relations.

"We began marketing the university as a place for students to live in an
urban environment and make change," Dr. Pisano said in Hornblower's
article. "It proved to be an enormously effective recruiting strategy: you
can do good and do well at the same time."

USC is the only university in history to have received three individual gifts
of $100 million or more. The most recent was the Keck Foundation's gift
of $110 million to the School of Medicine. It followed a donation of $120
million by Ambassador Walter H. Annenberg to establish the USC
Annenberg Center for Communication and a $100 million gift from Alfred
E. Mann to establish the Alfred E. Mann Institute for Biomedical
Engineering.

USC Trojan General Releases

-- 
Greg Bolcer
email: gbolcer@endtech.com
web: http://www.endtech.com
work: 714.505.4970
cell: 714.928.5476
fax: 603.994.0516