The University of Southern California (USC or SC) is a private research university located in Los Angeles, California. Founded in 1880, it is the oldest private research university in California.[9] USC has historically educated a large number of the region’s business leaders and professionals. 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 US$8 billion annually to the economy of the Los Angeles metropolitan area and California.
For the 2014–15 academic year, there were 18,740 students enrolled in four-year undergraduate programs. USC also has 23,729 graduate and professional students in a number of different programs, including business, law, engineering, social work, and medicine. The university is one of the top fundraising institutions in the world, consistently ranking among the top three in external contributions and alumni giving rates.
USC maintains a strong tradition of innovation and entrepreneurship, with alumni having founded companies such as Lucasfilm, Myspace, Salesforce.com, Intuit, Qualcomm, Box, Tinder, and Riot Games.[ As of 2014, the university has produced the fourth largest number of billionaire alumni out of all undergraduate institutions in the world.
The University of Southern California was founded following the efforts of Judge Robert M. Widney, who helped secure donations from several key 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.
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 letterman’s awards were the first to make the change.
The University Park campus is in the University Park district of Los Angeles, 2 miles (3.2 km) southwest of Downtown Los Angeles. The campus’s boundaries are Jefferson Boulevard on the north and northeast, Figueroa Street on the southeast, Exposition Boulevard on the south, and Vermont Avenue on the west. Since the 1960s, through campus vehicle traffic has been either severely restricted or entirely prohibited on some thoroughfares. The University Park campus is within walking distance to Los Angeles landmarks such as the Shrine Auditorium, and Los Angeles Coliseum. Most buildings are in the Romanesque Revival style, although some dormitories, engineering buildings, and physical sciences labs are of various Moderniststyles (especially two large Brutalist dormitories at the campus’s northern edge) that sharply contrast with the predominantly red-brick campus. Widney Alumni House, built in 1880, is the oldest university building in Southern California. In recent years the campus has been renovated to remove the vestiges of old roads and replace them with traditional university quads and gardens. The historic portion of the main campus was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2015.
The second and largest master plan was prepared in 1961 under the supervision of President Norman Topping, campus development director Anthony Lazzaro, and architect William Pereira. This plan annexed a great deal of the surrounding city and many of the older non-university structures within the new boundaries were leveled. Most of the Pereira buildings were constructed in the 1970s. Pereira maintained a predominantly red-brick architecture for the new buildings, but infused them with his trademark techno-modernism stylings. More recently under President C. L. Max Nikias, the architectural orientation of the campus has moved towards a Gothic Revival style, taking cues from the inculative and scholastic styles of Oxford University and Harvard University, while underpinning USC’s own historic identity that is present in the red-brick construction.
In September 2014, the University began construction on USC Village, a 1.25 million square foot residential and retail center directly adjacent to USC’s University Park Campus on 15 acres of land owned by the university. The USC Village has over 130,000 square feet of retail space on the ground floor, with student housing located on the four floors above. The $700 million project is the biggest development in the history of USC and is also one of the largest in the history of South Los Angeles. With a grand opening held on August 17, 2017, the USC Village includes a Trader Joe’s, a Target, a fitness center, a Trojan Town USC store, restaurants and outdoor dining, 400 retail parking spots, a community room, and housing for 2,700 students.
Chaffey College was founded in 1883 in the city of Ontario, California, as an agricultural college branch campus of USC under the name of Chaffey College of Agriculture of the University of Southern California. USC ran the Chaffey College of Agriculture until financial troubles closed the school in 1901. In 1906, the school was reopened by municipal and regional government and officially separated from USC. Renamed as Chaffey College, it now exists as a community college as part of the California Community College System.
USC is a private public-benefit nonprofit corporation controlled by a Board of Trustees composed of 50 voting members and several life trustees, honorary trustees, and trustees emeriti who do not vote. Voting members of the Board of Trustees are elected for five-year terms. One fifth of the Trustees stand for re-election each year, and votes are cast only by the trustees not standing for election. Trustees tend to be high-ranking executives of large corporations (both domestic and international), successful alumni, members of the upper echelons of university administration, or some combination of the three.
The Undergraduate Student Government (USG) makes decisions representing the undergraduate students of the university. It consists of an appointed executive leadership board, popularly elected legislative branch, and judicial oversight, along with a programming board (commonly referred to as “Program Board”). All USG activities are funded by the student activity fee, which the Treasurer has control over setting and that the Senate approves. In addition to USG, residents within university housing are represented and governed by the Residential Student Government (RSG), which is divided by residence hall. The Graduate Student Government (GSG) consists of senators elected by the students of each school proportional to its enrollment and its activities are funded by a graduate and professional student activity fee.
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