University of Southern California - El Rodeo Yearbook (Los Angeles, CA)

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us, our every step will be a stride — our every stride will be sure — and our ascent toward academic excellence will end in triumph. This guide is our Master Plan for a new era of enterprise and excellence in education. Response to the announcement of the Master Plan was immediate. President John F. Kennedy and United States Senators cabled congratulations, and other telegrams were received from as far afield as the Embassy of the Philippines, Tokyo, the Minister of Planning in Beirut and the University of Heidelberg. The Univer- sity also received the first joint proclamation ever issued by the cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco, commending the educa- tional program of the University of Southern California to all citi- zens. Every major communication medium responded with inter- est and encouragement, and the Los Angeles City Council un- animously approved the campus physical and development Plan. ■ On that evening — May 17, 1961 — USC had promise. But it also had problems. As the very fact of having to launch an all-out drive for excellence might indicate, there was much about USC that was far from exemplary at the time of the Master Plan an- nouncement. The university still suffered from a dual public image as a school for the less-than-brilliant children of wealthy parents and as an institution where football was more important than physics. The average USC student, most people thought, was either a frater- nity man with a lavish allowance, a gentleman ' s C average, or a burly and brainless football player with a car from the alumni, advance copies of tests and a tendency to forget his own name. Both images were, of course, myths, but they also held a small grain of truth. USC also suffered from a notoriously under- paid faculty and a campus that was almost as much wooden shacks as it was Renaissance brick. The great facilities of the West ' s biggest city — the museums, the Coliseum and the Sports Arena, freeways and downtown — were close at hand, but the immediate campus area was buried in substandard housing, high crime rates and one of the busiest police and fire divisions in the city. In addition, though USC ' s alumni were numerous, many were disinterested. The university did not establish an organized full-time alumni annual giving program until 1949; its $8 million endowment was one of the smallest among private American colleges and universities. (In comparison, Harvard had a $322 million endowment; Yale, $204 million,- Chicago, $133 million,- California, $98 million; Stanford, $90 million; and Caltech, $45 million). In face of this, however, observers were quick to recognize the assets that would stand USC in good stead in its $107 million climb to the pinnacle of excellence. In its 81 years as one of the country ' s few major, independent, privately controlled and financed metropolitan universities, nearly 225,000 persons had been its students. It had granted more than 83,000 degrees and its graduates had assumed places of im- portance in the community and in the nation. Seventeen college and university presidents held degrees from USC, and in the 10

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USC: A Bid for Excellence A hush settled over the International Ballroom of the Beverly Hilton Hotel that night of May 17, 1961, as President Norman Topping slowly walked to the podium. Almost 1,000 black-tie guests were supremely aware of the significance of the moment — rumors had been circulating for weeks that the future of the University of Southern California would be unveiled that evening. Alumni and friends of the university had flown in from as far as San Francisco, Phoenix, Fresno and San Diego to be present, and the program at the USC Associates- sponsored dinner seemed to drag on interminably as the assembly waited for Dr. Topping to speak. At tables scattered across the room, members of a blue rib- bon committee headed by H. Leslie Hoffman waited ex- pectantly to hear the results of the in-depth study of the university they had taken two and a half years to complete. At other tables, members of a committee that had spent two months planning the minutest detail of this dinner watched their plans materialize without a flaw. Leonard K. Firestone, chairman of the Board of Trustees, who had just presented the USC Associates $1,000 Awards to eight faculty members for teaching excellence, sat back to watch the President; Dr. Frank C. Baxter, then professor of English, had just concluded his address to the assem- bly and turned the podium over to Dr. Topping. Each of us tonight, Dr. Topping said, is acutely aware of how profound is the nation ' s concern for education in the years ahead — indeed, for the entire future of edu- cation in this country. This concern is based partly upon the burgeoning enrollments and the shortage of pro- fessors which we face at this very moment. But the na- tion ' s concern is also an expression of deep human needs. The human needs for understanding, justice, for freedom and for survival have been made critical by the status symbol of an atomic age: the power to destroy the life upon the only planet known to support human life. We, as a nation, justifiably hope to be assured that our great institutions of higher learning will provide the leaders we need, now and throughout the future, who will reassert the supremacy of the traditional symbols of civilized human status: government with wisdom, the perpetual maintenance of free institutions, research for a better life, and life in peace with all our fellow men. Where then, but from the nation ' s colleges and uni- versities will come the fully-educated men who are free from ignorance, intolerance and secularism — the men who are the leaders we seek? And how, but by con- centrating on quality in scholarship, can any university assure leaders of quality to the community, to the nations and to all mankind? The University of Southern California ' s answer to these questions is the only proper answer. All our faculty, all our trustees, all our administration have agreed that our mission must be, exclusively, to assure excellence in ed- ucation — to pursue excellence only with those scholars who show definite promise of attaining it — to pursue excellence, with vigor and without compromise, as long as we can lead bright young minds along the path to truth. The President detailed the long months of extensive study that had gone into the formulation of the university ' s future plans. Together we have reviewed the substance of all great universities; together we have studied a multitude of re- ports and recommendations. Together we have formu- lated precisely the plan we need. With this plan to guide

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rly 225,000 pe Los Angeles area alone its contribution was even more evident. If every USC graduate living in the county were to stay at home one day, two-thirds of the county ' s courtrooms would be dark because the judges weren ' t there; one-third of the people who had legal business to transact wouldn ' t be able to talk to their lawyers; one-half of the city ' s pharmacists would be off duty; two-thirds of the dentists wouldn ' t be at their chairs; one-half of the county ' s social workers would be absent and two-thirds of the county ' s school administrators would be gone. The county would also miss vast numbers of doctors, journalists, business- men, motion picture technicians and citizens in every walk of life; there would be few, if any, people in the county who would be entirely unaffected by the strike. It was estimated that more than 72 per cent of USC ' s alumni lived within the radius of 100 miles of Tommy Trojan. USC also had a proud record of trailblazing in many areas of education. Its specialist-teacher program stood as the only one of its kind in the nation ; its aerospace safety division offered the world ' s only course in the safe handling of ballistic missiles (among its graduates, astronaut Walter Schirra). USC ' s School of Pharmacy was the first in the nation to require six years of train- ing and a doctoral degree for graduation. USC surgeons, using the Kay-Anderson heart-lung machine, performed the world ' s first successful operation for the removal of a tumor from the lower chamber of the heart. KUSC-FAA was one of the earliest FAA sta- tions, and USC s cinema department was both the first established on a university campus and the first to win an Oscar (for the movie short Face of Lincoln ). For almost half a century the university was the only institution — whether private or tax-supported — of- fering training in medicine, dentistry and pharmacy to the people of Southern California. Eight years after the inception of the USC Law School, its graduates were considered so well trained that they were admitted to the bar without examination; in 1885 the Medical School was the first in the country to require a three-year curriculum. There was one faculty member for each 1 1 regular daytime students, a better than average ratio. But if the university was to become an outpost of educational excellence, the key had to be planning. Where was the money going to cpme from, and how would it be spent? Which ranked hiahest on the list of urgent necessities — higher faculty salarip buried in substandard housing 1 1