University of Southern California

University of Southern California

California (USC or SC) is a private not-for-profit and nonsectarian research university founded in 1880 with its main campus in the city area of Los Angeles, California. As California's oldest private research university, USC has historically educated a large number of the region's business leaders and professionals. In recent decades, the university has also leveraged its location in Los Angeles to establish relationships with research and cultural institutions throughout Asia and the Pacific Rim. An engine for economic activity, USC contributes approximately $5 billion annually to the economy of the Los Angeles county area. As of 2014, the university has produced the fourth largest number of billionaire alumni out of all undergraduate institutions in the world. In 2011, USC was named among the Top 10 Dream Colleges in the nation. It holds a vast array of trademarks and word marks to the term "USC."

For the 2014-2015 academic year, there were 19,000 students enrolled in four-year undergraduate programs. USC is also home to 23,000 graduate and professional students in a number of different programs, including business, law, social work, and medicine.The university has a "very high" level of research activity and received $646 million in sponsored research from 2014 to 2015.

USC counts six Nobel Laureates, eight Rhodes Scholars, three MacArthur Fellows,181 Fulbright Scholars, one Turing Award winner, 78 Academy Award winners, 119 Emmy Award winners, three winners of the National Medal of Arts, one winner of the National Humanities Medal, three winners of the National Medal of Science, and two winners of the National Medal of Technology and Innovation among its alumni and faculty. Additionally, of its current faculty, 15 are members of the National Academy of Sciences, 17 are members of the Institute of Medicine, 34 are members of the National Academy of Engineering, 92 are members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and 32 are members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1969, it joined the Association of American Universities.

USC sponsors a variety of intercollegiate sports and competes in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) as a member of the Pacific-12 Conference. Members of the sports teams, the Trojans, have won 100 NCAA team championships, ranking them third in the nation, and 378 NCAA individual championships, ranking them second in the nation. Trojan athletes have won 287 medals at the Olympic games (135 golds, 87 silvers and 65 bronzes), more than any other university in the United States. If USC were a country, it would rank 12th in most Olympic gold medals.

Doheny Library

The University of Southern California was founded following the efforts of Judge Robert M. Widney, who helped secure donations from several figures in early Los Angeles history: a Protestant nurseryman, Ozro Childs, an Irish Catholic former-Governor, John Gately Downey, and a German Jewish banker, Isaias W. Hellman. The three donated 308 lots of land to establish the campus and provided the necessary seed money for the construction of the first buildings. Originally operated in affiliation with the Methodist Church, the school mandated from the start that "no student would be denied admission because of race." The university is no longer affiliated with any church, having severed formal ties in 1952.

When USC opened in 1880, tuition was $15.00 per term and students were not allowed to leave town without the knowledge and consent of the university president. The school had an enrollment of 53 students and a faculty of 10. The city lacked paved streets, electric lights, telephones, and a reliable fire alarm system. Its first graduating class in 1884 was a class of three—two males and female valedictorian Minnie C. Miltimore.

The colors of USC are cardinal and gold, which were approved by USC's third president, the Reverend George W. White, in 1896. In 1958 the shade of gold, which was originally more of an orange color, was changed to a more yellow shade. The letter man's awards were the first to make the change.

During World War II, USC was one of 131 colleges and universities nationally that took part in the V-12 Navy College Training Program which offered students a path to a Navy commission.USC students and athletes are known as Trojans, epitomized by the Trojan Shrine, nicknamed "Tommy Trojan", near the center of campus. Until 1912, USC students (especially athletes) were known as Fighting Methodists or Wesleyan  though neither name was approved by the university. During a fateful track and field meet with Stanford University, the USC team was beaten early and seemingly conclusively. After only the first few events, it seemed implausible that USC would ever win; however, the team fought back, winning many of the later events, to lose only by a slight margin. After this contest, Los Angeles Times sportswriter Owen Bird reported that the USC athletes "fought on like the Trojans of antiquity", and the president of the university at the time, George F. Bovard, approved the name officially.

USC is responsible for $4 billion in economic output in Los Angeles County; USC students spend $406 million yearly in the local economy and visitors to the campus add another $12.3 million.

On May 1, 2014, USC was named as one of many higher education institutions under investigation by the Office of Civil Rights for potential Title IX violations by Barack Obama's White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault.

USC employs approximately 3,249 full-time faculty, 1,486 part-time faculty, and about 10,744 staff members. 350 postdoctoral fellows are supported along with over 800 medical residents. Among the USC faculty, 12 have been elected to the National Academy of Science, 35 to the National Academy of Engineering, 13 to the Institute of Medicine, 21 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 75 to the American Association for the Advancement of Science,6 to the American Philosophical Society, and 9 to the National Academy of Public Administration. 29 USC faculty are listed as among the "Highly Cited" in the Institute for Scientific Information database.George Olah won the 1994 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and was the founding director of the Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute. Leonard Adleman won the Turing Award in 2003. Arieh Warshel won the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry 

In fiscal year 2007 USC expended $415.2 million on research, and major funding came from federal agencies: the Department of Health and Human Services granted $182.4 million, Department of Defense $45.7 million, and National Science Foundation $41.8 million.Total foundation and association sponsorship totaled $43.1 million, corporate research $30.6 million, and local government funding totaled $28.1 million.

The university also supports the Pacific Council on International Policy through joint programming, leadership collaboration, and facilitated connections among students, faculty, and Pacific Council members.

The university has two National Science Foundation–funded Engineering Research Centers: the Integrated Media Systems Center and the Center for Biomimetic Microelectronic Systems.  The Department of Homeland Security selected USC as its first Homeland Security Center of Excellence. Since 1991, USC has been the headquarters of the NSF and USGS funded Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC). The University of Southern California is a founding and charter member of CENIC, the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California, the nonprofit organization, which provides extremely high-performance Internet-based networking to California's K-20 research and education community. USC researcher Jonathan Postel was an editor of communications-protocol for the fledgling internet, also known as ARPANET.

Notable USC faculty include or have included the following: Leonard Adleman, Richard Bellman, Aimee Bender, Barry Boehm, Warren Bennis, Todd Boyd, T.C. Boyle, Leo Buscaglia, Drew Casper, Manuel Castells, Erwin Chemerinsky, Thomas Crow, António Damásio, Francis De Erdely, Percival Everett, Murray Gell-Mann, Seymour Ginsburg, G. Thomas Goodnight, Jane Goodall, Solomon Golomb, Midori Goto, Susan Estrich, Janet Fitch, Tomlinson Holman, Henry Jenkins, Thomas H. Jordan, Mark Kac, Pierre Koenig, Neil Leach, Leonard Maltin, Daniel L. McFadden, George Olah, George V. Chilingar, Simon Ramo, Irving Reed, Michael Waterman, Frank Gehry, Arieh Warshel, Lloyd Welch,Jonathan Taplin and Diane Winston.