Ferrera was at ease and knew the issues in her conversations with the wife of American labor leader César Chávez, who co-founded the United Farm Workers.

Playing the part of Helen Chávez in the upcoming film Chávez, Ferrera spent time with the wife of the late leader who organized 50,000 farmworkers in California. Ferrera said her education made her feel confident speaking on international matters with the woman, who along with Dolores Huerta, is among the biggest civil rights icons in the United States.

“I am using so much of what I learned in the School of International Relations in my life,” Ferrera said. “I’ve learned about the root causes of so many issues I’m passionate about and how to improve people’s lives. Sometimes the issues have taken me across the world, sometimes here in our own backyard.”

In 2010, Ferrera partnered with Save the Children, a nongovernmental organization dedicated to improving the lives of disadvantaged children in the United States and around the world. As an artist-ambassador, she traveled to the village of Diassadeni, Mali, to help the organization raise funds to build a school.

Ferrera arrived at USC Dornsife in spring 2003 at age 18, shortly after her breakout role in the hit independent film Real Women Have Curves. She became involved in the Joint Educational Project and other programs then starred in a number of movies, such as The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and its sequel.

By the time she took the lead role in Ugly Betty, the ABC series in which she earned an Emmy Award, her education became a minor character. A decade after she began, with the encouragement and help of her mentors at USC Dornsife, she earned her bachelor’s degree on May 17.

“I was so close to finishing,” Ferrera said. “It always felt like an unfinished chapter.”

She gave a special shout out to Steven Lamy, professor of international relations and vice dean for academic programs, and David Andrus, also a professor of international relations, who shared with Ferrera how her films had helped him.

Mentoring a young Latina from the inner city, Andrus was having difficulty understanding her family dynamics. The student told him: If you want to understand my life, you have to watch this movie.

The film was Real Women Have Curves in which Ferrera portrayed a young Mexican-Americanwhose family expects her to work and help support them though she wants to pursue higher education.

Watching the film prepared Andrus to meet with the Latina student and her family and discuss her dream to get an education. The story made Ferrera realize that her films could be used to enlighten people on issues dear to her.

“Professor Andrus inspired me to not only learn about the world but to stay true to my passion,” Ferrera said of Andrus, who died in 2004. “I wish he were alive today to see that I never forgot his message.”

Based on the long-standing Generally Accepted Practices (GAP) Study conducted every two years in the United States since 2002, the global survey analyzes current practice, trends and new developments in the profession, providing country data and comparative analysis of the practice between countries and continents.

“The public relations profession is growing and changing, and the Global Alliance believes that we must understand this evolution in order to promote high standards and be effective advocates for the value of PR to organizations and to society,” said GA Chair Daniel Tisch. “This ambitious survey will provide global benchmark data that can help us chart our profession’s development in the years to come.”

Professor Jerry Swerling, director of the Strategic Communication and PR Center, said: “With GAP VIII to be fielded in the fall of this year, the GAP study has established itself as a leading source of actionable U.S.-centric data of use to practitioners and scholars alike. Now, in keeping with the globalization of the discipline, the time has come to take a world-centric view of how it is evolving in different settings.

“We’ll gradually roll out the concept with the ultimate goal of establishing a truly global, cooperative research network,” Swerling added.

The GA and USC will announce the first participating countries in the next few weeks and expect to begin the research later this year.

“The GA-USC partnership is a perfect combination of expertise and resources,” said Professor Anne Gregory, Global Alliance chair-elect and chair of the GA’s Research and Education Committee, who led the initiative with USC colleagues. “GA members can provide access to the world’s largest pool of public relations practitioners, and USC has the expertise to conduct a study of this scale and sophistication. We expect this survey to develop into the most important reference point for the profession in the coming years and look forward to working with USC and our partners in countries across the globe.”

Established in 1946 and sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, the Fulbright is the largest international fellowship program in the country. Each year, about 2,000 grants are given to support independent study, research and teaching in more than 150 countries worldwide.

Since its establishment, Fulbright alumni have achieved distinction in government, science, the arts, business, philanthropy, education and athletics. Forty Fulbright alumni from 11 countries have been awarded the Nobel Prize, and 75 alumni have received Pulitzer Prizes.

Last year, USC was recognized as one of the top producers of Fulbright recipients among U.S. research institutions.

The 2013-14 USC Fulbright recipients include:

Women in power

Jasneet Aulakh was thrilled when one of her aunts in India won a seat on her village government board.

Jasneet Aulakh, a senior triple-major in history, English and philosophy at USC Dornsife (USC Photo/Laura Paisley)

That was until she learned that her aunt’s appointment was mainly intended to facilitate her uncle’s entry into local government — known as a proxy vote.

“It’s easier for women to get these positions, so sometimes a man will put his wife’s name on the ballot and basically run the show himself and attend all the meetings,” said Aulakh, a senior triple-major in history, English and philosophy at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

Aulakh is using her Fulbright to study the role of women in village governments in India. A speaker of Punjabi and Hindi whose parents migrated from India, Aulakh will travel throughout the country for a year, interviewing elected women from various socio-economic, religious, partisan and caste backgrounds.

She plans to study the effects of India’s 73rd Constitutional Amendment Act of 1993, which mandates that village governments reserve one-third of seats for women.

“I was motivated, in part, because I couldn’t find much literature or criticism on the topic of ‘proxy votes’ beyond a few paragraphs or very biased pieces in which the practice was discredited as a rumor,” she said. “I want to see if anyone has been combatting these issues in a constructive way, so that India isn’t just paying lip service to reforms for equality.”

She hopes to find examples of the system that do work.

“If so,” said Aulakh, who plans to pursue graduate school at Cambridge University, “I will see how they made it work and perhaps identify practical models that could be shared.”

Content is king

The Associated Press officially dropped the term “illegal immigrant” in its stylebook in early April, preferring the phrase “undocumented,” and the Los Angeles Times followed suit a month later.

Juan Espinoza, a senior double-major in international relations at USC Dornsife with a minor at USC Annenberg (USC Photo/Laura Paisley)

For Juan Espinoza, this is an important victory.

“The media absolutely shapes how we think and who we are,” he said, emphasizing that the Los Angeles-Long Beach metropolitan area has the nation’s largest Latino population. “So understanding communication, culture and the way content gets produced is something I’m really passionate about.”

Espinoza, a senior double-major in international relations at USC Dornsife and communications at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, is among three Americans selected for Fulbright-funded graduate study in Mexico.

He will spend the next two years earning a master’s degree at Mexico City’s Universidad Iberoamericana, considered the country’s top university for communication studies.

He will investigate how popular culture content for new media, newspapers, radio and television is produced in Mexico and the United States. He’s interested in how content affects communities and how Latino communities can be better and more accurately represented in the media.

Espinoza said he’s excited to be attending the same university where his role model in Spanish-language media, Jorge Ramos of Univision, studied. Former president of Mexico Vicente Fox, whom Espinoza recently met on campus at a USC Schwarzenegger Institute for State and Global Policy event, is also an alumnus.

“I’ve always wanted to be a student in Mexico — it has such significant growth potential for the 21st century,” said Espinoza, who speaks fluent Spanish. “I’d like to think of myself as being on the cusp of that growth — bridging the gap between Mexico and the U.S. in terms of media and communications.”

Diplomacy in India

Each day while studying in India, Travis Glynn passed the same man on the street vending grilled corn from a little stand. And each day, the man greeted him in Urdu. Near the end of Glynn’s 12-week stay, the vendor waved him over and asked him to try his corn.

Travis Glynn, a senior international relations major at USC Dornsife with a focus on securities studies (USC Photo/Laura Paisley)

“He started asking me all these questions about America — in Urdu,” Glynn recalled of the research trip he took in 2011 through the Critical Language Scholarship Program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State.

“First it was just the corn vender, then his whole family came over, asking all these questions,” he said. “To be able to actually understand them and then formulate responses was really exciting. I loved the familial, genuine nature of the exchange. I’m sure I made plenty of mistakes, but it was awesome.”

Glynn, a senior international relations major with a focus on securities studies at USC Dornsife, will spend his Fulbright year in India as an English teaching assistant and researcher. His focus will be diplomacy and how culture plays into policy — specifically, how Indian students learn about the United States through English-language instruction by Americans and how their perceptions of the U.S. change as their exposure to Americans increases. He also wants to investigate how diplomats in Indian government interact with U.S. diplomats.

“I want to truly understand Indian culture and how U.S. policy affects India’s people,” Glynn said. “I believe in working with countries rather than working for them.”

Upon his return to the United States, Glynn will attend graduate school on a prestigious Harry S. Truman Scholarship, awarded in 2012 in recognition of his public service, academics and leadership. Eventually, he wants to work for the foreign service in public diplomacy.

Fission and fusion

Senior Andrew Ju is a Southern Californian through and through. His demeanor is relaxed and friendly, he travels via long board and has never experienced a true “winter.”

Andrew Ju, a senior international relations major at USC Dornsife (USC Photo/Laura Paisley)

At least one of those things will forever change during his year studying the political economy of the nuclear energy industry in Seoul, South Korea.

The son of South Korean immigrants, Ju already speaks some Korean. Two years ago he spent a summer in Seoul studying the politics of North and South Korea, which included a visit to the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), the strip of land running across the Korean Peninsula that serves as the buffer between North and South.

“The DMZ is such a tangible representation of what I study in international relations: conflict between two countries. It became very real,” he said.

Through his coursework as a global business major at USC Dornsife, Ju has shifted his research interests toward nuclear energy, which he considers one of the great paradoxes of today’s world.

“On the one hand, with its enormous carbon-free energy output, it offers a solution to today’s major problems of pollution and unsustainable energy use,” he said. “But on the other hand, it carries equally enormous risks for the environment and human safety.”

While the use of nuclear energy has always been debated, countries such as the United States and Japan as well as western Europe in the past have been nuclear power’s most vociferous champions. Now, countries such as China and South Korea are emerging as the potential future leaders of this technology, Ju said.

“This is an incredible opportunity to study such an exciting technology in a country that might one day become one of the centers of nuclear energy importance,” he said. “I can’t imagine a better time to study this topic.”

Chinoiserie chic

A descendent of Chinese grandparents and Taiwanese parents, Ana Paulina Lee grew up between the climes of São Paulo, Brazil, and Queens, New York.

Ana Lee, a PhD student in comparative literature at USC Dornsife (USC Photo/Laura Paisley)

As a doctoral scholar of comparative literature, Lee in her research draws upon her upbringing living across East, West, North and South to challenge the dominant geographical paradigms that compose such boundaries.

As a Fulbright scholar, Lee will examine the rich trade partnership that flourished between China and the Portuguese empire during the latter’s 16th-century seaborne expansion into the 19th century. The trading extended to chinoiserie — art such as export porcelain or paintings reflecting Chinese influences and characterized by the use of fanciful Chinese imagery, designs and locations.

“Starting in the 16th century, the Portuguese empire began to embrace Asian art and chinoiserie as a way of portraying itself around the world,” Lee explained. “In Portuguese colonies like Goa, Macau and Brazil, a hybrid Luso-Asian art developed to depict the Portuguese maritime expansion.”

A fluent speaker of Portuguese, Spanish and Mandarin, Lee will use her Fulbright award to study chinoiserie in Lisbon, Portugal, at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa. The university has a unique master’s program focused on the role of art during the Portuguese seaborne expansion from the 16th through 19th centuries.

In addition to taking classes, Lee will conduct research in churches, archives, private collections and museums. She plans to study porcelain objects made by Chinese artists, commissioned by Portuguese merchants, and chinoiserie used in religion, such as on church altars.

Global health advocate

Seattle native Molly Levine vividly remembers the ninth-grade reading assignment that changed her life. It was Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder, a book chronicling the life of Paul Farmer and his international nongovernmental organization Partners in Health.

Molly Levine, a global health major at the Keck School with a minor in psychology at USC Dornsife

When Farmer came to speak at her school, Levine knew that her future path was in global health.

For the past four years, Levine has continued to pursue her passion for the field at USC. And through the Fulbright grant, the Keck School of Medicine of USC senior, who is minoring in psychology at USC Dornsife, will be taking her interests globally as an English teaching assistant in Thailand.

Levine said she applied to Thailand because of the interesting dichotomy the country faces in the health realm.

“As a country with an emerging economy, Thailand has a growing middle class and faces many health problems that developed countries face, such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer,” she said. “It also has a large population living under the poverty line [who are] facing issues of malnutrition and maternal and infant mortality.”

Levine, who is captain of the USC Women’s Lacrosse Club, previously taught English at a secondary school for girls in the Nyganga township of Cape Town, South Africa.

“Working with the girls was one of my favorite things that I did during my semester,” Levine recalled, “and it made me want to continue teaching and working with kids.”

An active member of the university’s student-run philanthropic organization Troy Camp, Levine also tutored elementary-school students in math and literary through USC Dornsife’s Joint Education Project (JEP).

“I could not be more excited to have the opportunity to teach English in Thailand next year,” she said. “I hope to use my global health background to teach a health education course to my students as well and cannot wait to fully immerse myself in the Thai culture.”

Development in real time

Megan Rilkoff was eager to travel abroad following graduation, somewhere in Southeast Asia and “completely different.”

After three years of working as a program assistant for the JEP, she wanted to continue her involvement with education, particularly to examine its role in economic and cultural development.

Megan Rilkoff, a comparative literature and French double-major at USC Dornsife (USC Photo/Laura Paisley)

A comparative literature and French double major at USC Dornsife, Rilkoff recalled how one of her favorite professors, Panivong Norindr, talked to her about Laos, the professor’s native country.

“He said it was very beautiful, safe and welcoming. I thought it sounded perfect,” she said.

Admittedly, she had to double check the map to pinpoint its exact location. But now that she’ll be spending a year there as a Fulbright fellow teaching English at a local university, Rilkoff knows the country with a population of 6.5 million is bordered by Burma and China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the south and Thailand to the west.

The only landlocked country in Southeast Asia, Laos is the poorest country in the region. However, foreign investment in hydro, mining and construction has spurred Laos’ growth and reduction of poverty over the past two decades. The country currently has among the fastest-growing economies in Southeast Asia.

Rilkoff is interested in the field of international development, so she’s excited about experiencing a developing nation firsthand. In addition to teaching, she plans to take Lao language classes and volunteer with a local — and ideally French-speaking — nongovernmental organization.

“Teaching at the university in Laos, it will be really interesting to see where the country is trying to go and how they’re training their future scholars and leaders,” she said.

A poet’s painter

While completing his Master of Fine Arts degree in poetry at the University of Houston, Joshua Rivkin worked as a teacher/writer-in-residence with the Writers in the Schools program. One of his jobs included leadings students through the Menil Collection, including the art museum’s Cy Twombly Gallery.

Joshua Rivkin, a PhD student in creative writing and literature at USC Dornsife (Photo/Erin Beeghly)

Repeatedly visiting the gallery, Rivkin grew fascinated with the work of Twombly, a mid-century American artist who moved to Italy in the ’50s and developed a distinctive style, drawing inspiration from ancient Mediterranean mythology and epic poetry. Twombly died in 2011 at the age of 83.

Intrigued by Twombly’s use of color and line, Rivkin was also drawn to the way in which the artist integrated text into his paintings. Poetry by Stéphane Mallarmé, Rainer Maria Rilke and Ovid are often quoted or referenced in his artwork.

“Twombly is a complicated artist. He’s in some ways a ‘poet’s painter’ — writing was clearly a huge inspiration for him,” Rivkin said. “As a writer myself, I’m interested in the relationship between the visual and written image in Twombly’s painting and sculpture.”

A doctoral student in creative writing and literature at USC Dornsife, Rivkin studies with poets Mark Irwin, associate professor of English, and David St. John, professor of English.

As a Fulbright scholar, Rivkin will spend nine months in Italy working on a nonfiction book about Twombly’s life and art. He plans to interview artists and other individuals who knew Twombly. Rivkin’s book combines biography, oral history, art criticism, personal memoir and mediations on artistic making.

“The influence of Italy on his work is essential,” he said. “Seeing the places where Twombly lived and the landscapes that inspired him will allow me to better understand and capture Twombly’s life and work.”

Community organizer

Jonathan Truong ’12, his grandparents, parents and older sister sloshed through a muddy paddy field where the rice was just sprouting green blades. Carrying aloeswood incense, mango, papaya and a traditional Vietnamese meat dish, they set up an altar at the gravesite of Truong’s great-grandparents.

Truong’s great-grandparents, who had migrated to southern Vietnam from China, were buried atop a small, circular island in the middle of the rice paddy.

Jonathan Truong graduated with a bachelor’s in political science from USC Dornsife last year. (USC Photo/Pamela J. Johnson)

“We prayed and gave a food offering,” recounted the Pasadena, Calif., native, who said the experience last summer connected him to his ancestry.

Shortly after the fall of Saigon in 1975, Truong’s parents moved to Los Angeles, where they met and eventually married. When Truong’s mother first arrived in LA, she worked in a garment factory.

“She was paid per garment,” Truong said. “Some days, she spent all her earnings on bus fare to get to and from work.”

Truong, who is interested in immigrant and workers’ rights, earned his bachelor’s in political science from USC Dornsife in 2012. After graduation, he received an AmeriCorps Teaching Fellowship to conduct leadership training to high school students in Chinatown, where many youths are immigrants.

Truong’s goal is to expand his work on immigrant and low-income tenant rights, a cause he pursued while an undergraduate. In 2011 and 2012, he worked on a student campaign with advocacy groups such as UNIDAD Coalition in South LA to secure an agreement from USC to provide $20 million in affordable housing. The funding offsets USC’s plan for expansion.

Through his Fulbright fellowship, Truong will travel to Vietnam to teach English and cross-cultural education to university students. During his 10-month stay, he plans to become fluent in Vietnamese and learn more about the culture.

“Learning the language is critical,” he said. “When I return to the U.S., I’d like to get more involved in immigrant rights’ groups. Making sure immigrants have rights as tenants and access to services.”

“Because everything in China is government-owned or government-controlled, having a background in public policy really helps to distinguish them professionally,” said Carol Rush, USC Price associate dean for student affairs.

Xin Chen MPA ’10 competed against 25,000 candidates to secure one of 60 trainee positions at the Agricultural Bank of China (ABC).

The daughter of two teachers, Chen grew up in Quanzhou, a historical city on China’s southeast coast. She earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Renmin University of China and interned in Beijing for the national government, HSBC Bank and Citibank. She then headed to Los Angeles to earn her Master of Public Administration (MPA) degree from USC Price.

She chose USC Price because of its excellent reputation, location in an international and multicultural city, and impressive alumni network.

“Like sunshine in California, every member of the Trojan Family shares passion for life and tries their best to achieve their goals,” she said. “The alumni are nice, responsible, enthusiastic and hard-working. During my two years at USC, I was completely moved by this specific spirit and culture of our Trojan Family.”

While pursuing her MPA, she interned for the Department of Public Works in the city of Los Angeles, gained experience as a teaching assistant for USC Price faculty member Ali Farahani and served as an economics tutor for undergraduates through USC Student-Athlete Academic Services. She also did an externship project for Deloitte Consulting and participated in the USC Graduate Policy Administration Community student group, and the PricewaterhouseCoopers and Deloitte case competitions.

After graduation, she successfully completed an online application — financial, English and IQ tests — and two group interviews to earn herself a spot as an ABC trainee. She currently serves as a public relations manager at ABC, where she organizes PR campaigns, advertisement promotion and crisis management.

“Definitely, my USC degree helped a lot in my job application,” she said. “This degree provided me with a competitive educational background, self-confidence, the ability to learn quickly, and communication, networking and other necessary social skills. USC also taught me to be a kind person, always being helpful to others. And helping others brings my life happiness.”

Corina Huang MPA ’12 beat out 13,000 applicants to land one of 30 General Management Trainee positions at Mars, the international candy, food and pet care company.

She grew up in Zhuzhou in Hunan Province and pursued her bachelor’s degree in economics at Beijing Language and Culture University.

As an undergraduate, she attended the Harvard Model United Nations conference, volunteered at the Beijing Olympics and took a leadership role in the educational nonprofit Junior Achievement. She also interned at the China Central Television news channel, where she did English-Chinese translation during interviews with former U.S. Secretary of the State Henry Kissinger and the presidents of Austria, Afghanistan and the Maldives.

She pursued a USC Price MPA degree because it’s one of the oldest and highest-ranked programs in the field.

“No matter what I do in the future, knowing the rules of government is very essential, especially in a developing country like China,” she said.

While at USC Price, she secured an externship at the California Energy Commission as well as internships at the top management consulting firm Bain & Company and at local nonprofits.

“My favorite thing about USC is the spirit of our students,” she said. “Belonging to the Trojan Family, we are inspired to ‘Fight On’ to chase our dream. But our students enjoy life, too. Most USC students I know are happy and easygoing. So we can say that ‘people like to work with us’ when we are interviewing for a job position.”

After graduating in May 2012, she went to work in Beijing as a full-time intern at a British boutique investment bank specializing in cross-border mergers and acquisitions.

This month she began work as a General Management Trainee in Mars’ Department of Finance. The three-year trainee program offers one-year rotations to different departments, followed by a potential opportunity to become a department manager.

To secure this coveted position, she passed an online resume screening; took English and logic tests; sailed through rounds of interviews; and performed case analysis. She also formed a team of three people — which included her USC Price classmate Tina Westlife — to write a proposal about campus promotion of Mars brands. Westlife also secured a trainee position at Mars.

“First, they recognize that USC is a top university with a good reputation,” Huang said. “As a food company, when making decisions, not only do they consider their business profit but also their social responsibility. They care about the quality of their products and our environment. As a student with a finance and public administration educational background, they appreciate my specific view of analyzing issues and making decisions. For me, my MPA education completed my way of critical thinking.”

USC Price Master of Public Policy (MPP) alumnus Will Yao MPP ’12 is now an account executive of international business at Sifang Leo Livestock Science and Technology Co., a dairy equipment company in Beijing. Although Yao didn’t need to top thousands of applicants for his position, it doesn’t mean he values his job any less.

“The most important thing in finding a job is what Steve Jobs said, ‘You’ve got to find what you love.’ If you haven’t, don’t settle, keep looking, because most of your life consists of work,” Yao said.

A native of Shanghai, Yao earned a Bachelor of Arts in public administration from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and interned in the public relations department at Roche. Yao then headed to USC Price and earned his MPP degree in December 2012.

Because his family is in the dairy business, he decided to attend the World Dairy Expo in Wisconsin, where he secured his current job with the China-based company.

“My USC degree certainly helped me to get this position,” he said. “It helped me to find my job strategically because I have a better way to think and organize my thoughts. My English also improved, both writing and speaking. It turns out that this is a very useful skill for my job.”

In his current position, he performs English-Chinese translation for the company’s clients and partners, imports dairy equipment, manages product information and more.

“The best part about my job is that I can learn a lot of things,” he said. “Our company is a young company, and my boss is a very capable man. I treat this job as a PhD program — only the name of this university is ‘society,’ and the projects it has are real ones.”

Yao credits USC Price with teaching him a new and different way of thinking.

“It’s more than knowledge that I learned,” he said. “It’s the attitude that some scholars show when they are pursuing truth. My long-term career goal is to become an entrepreneur. I would like to contribute to society and change the world, whether in ways big or small.”

“Cities like Tokyo do not have an easily decipherable urban form like European and American ones, leading many to read them superficially as being chaotic and disorganized,” said Vinayak Bharne, faculty member at USC Price and the USC School of Architecture, who led the studio. “The fact is they have their own sophisticated orders and workings that we do not understand. My intention was to encourage students to look at cities beyond form, as events in time, as phenomena in flux.”

Bharne, a former Asia-Pacific Development Commission Traveling Scholar to Japan, is currently writing a book on the Japanese built environment titled Zen Spaces in Neon Places. Last year, he released two books — The Emerging Asian City: Concomitant Urbanities & Urbanisms and Rediscovering the Hindu Temple: The Sacred Architecture and Urbanism of India — and this studio continued his ongoing examination of urbanism in the Asian world.

During the planning studio, students viewed Tokyo through three lenses: theoretical, experiential and interventional. This instigated “multiple ways of getting to the breadth of the city, through multiple methods, with multiple intentions, toward multiple consequences,” Bharne said.

Before the trip to Japan, each student chose a book or paper on Tokyo to articulate positions and theories on the city. Once in Tokyo, they captured the city via different media, from analytical mapping and digital modeling to interviews and video documentation, while also identifying opportunities for strategic interventions in Tokyo’s Shibuya district. They also gained a broader sense of the country by visiting other destinations, including the Ise Grand Shrine and the historic capital of Kyoto.

Master of Planning (MPL) student Michael McDermott took a look at the Japanese rail system as well as the flamboyant signage near transit hubs.

“Anyone in the world can learn from their rail system,” he said. “From the minute detail to the sheer magnitude, it’s just a fantastic system. For instance, the railcar operators will bow as they enter and exit each car as a sign of respect for the system itself and their job and the passengers. It was a wonderful experience to be part of that.”

MPL student Winnie Fong studied Tokyo’s “love hotels,” which offer short-stay rooms for the purpose of sexual activity.

“Usually, these hotels are very gaudy in nature,” she said. “At first, I thought, is it kind of seedy? But really, married people go there; young people who are dating go there; everyone uses it. My findings were that it’s part of their culture so it just blends in with the city landscape.”

Having reached this conclusion, Fong proposed a very different intervention: improving the local bike share program.

Master of Public Policy/MPL student Jeffrey Khau delved deeper into the shadows with an exploration of nightlife, the sex trade, graffiti culture and the yakuza.

“Gangs there are very well-organized — they wear suits and have shareholder meetings, and it’s actually like a corporation because they own stocks and stuff,” he said. “And so organized crime in Japan is a big part of their economy. One of my big questions was: Should planning consider organized crime or should it marginalize people who are in organized crime?”

His intervention suggested celebrating the Shibuya district’s graffiti art by displaying it on a high-definition TV screen under a freeway underpass.

Other student projects addressed a wide array of topics, including festivals, fashion, youth rebellion and the improvement of Shibuya’s canals. The students’ work will be posted on a website currently under construction, which also will feature findings from Bharne’s fall 2012 planning studio in Banaras, India.

“Both these studios were conceived to teach students that urbanism is a plural discipline, that there is no one-shoe-fits-all approach to understanding and transforming cities,” Bharne said. “Cities are different not only because of their histories but also their extant administrative and social structures as well as their expectations and aspirations. The process of negotiating one’s biases on what a good city ought to be, versus engaging with a specific city on its own terms, is what urbanism is ultimately all about.”

The first exchange program is planned for August, with mayors from Karnataka visiting California for a weeklong program based in Los Angeles. California mayors will make a return visit to Bangalore in Karnataka in the fall. Other programs are being designed for state legislators and government officials.

The new initiative will build the working capacity of state and local government officials, promote best practices of good governance, and highlight innovative solutions and effective structural approaches to public policy challenges at the state and local level.

“India and the United States have a long history of partnership and collaboration, and this new program represents an important next step in strengthening our relationship,” said Shekar Narasimhan, co-founder of the Emergent Institute. The newly constituted State Government of Karnataka will be engaged to endorse the programs which have been put together following high-level interaction in December in Bangalore and site visits to Mysore and Chikkaballapur districts.”

The exchange will help participants hone and strengthen their leadership and team-building skills and provide insights on how to solve persistent urban challenges, including economic development, transportation and waste management. It will also help to facilitate stronger relationships that advance mutual interests.

“This program will capitalize on the strengths of both institutions. The USC Price School has a long history of cutting-edge leadership and policy training, and Emergent has fast become an important player in promoting sustainable innovations that provide answers for needs and problems,” said Jack H. Knott, dean of USC Price.

The program has generated significant enthusiasm from key U.S. leaders.

“Programs that advance the strength of our state-level leadership are an innovative approach to building U.S.-India people-to-people ties,” said Robert Blake Jr., assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian Affairs in the U.S. Department of State.

“The U.S. and India are important economic and strategic partners. These kinds of collaborations between the two countries should be developed and nurtured,” said Rep. Ami Bera (D-Calif.), the lone Indian-American representative in the Congress. “I’m excited about this partnership, and my office will work to help ensure its success.”

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), co-chair of the Senate India Caucus, expressed his support as well.

“I am pleased that USC and Emergent have come together to establish this partnership for state-to-state exchanges,” Warner said. “This effort will help deepen the mutual ties between the U.S. and India at the state level, which will advance the relationship and identify new areas for cooperation.”

Joint outreach by USC and Emergent has garnered support from other national and state-level leaders in the United States.

“America shares with India something much deeper than just mutual economic empowerment. We share a strong exchange of entrepreneurs, executives, students, professors and scientists that is a model to the rest of the world,” said Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.). “This effort by the USC Price School of Public Policy, the Bedrosian Center on Governance and India’s Emergent Institute is a continuation of this critical exchange and an important part of strengthening the United States-India relationship.”

State Sen. Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) and California Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi (D-Torrance) have also expressed support for the initiative.

Researchers Jonathan Samet and Sonny Patel of the Keck School of Medicine of USC published their second report on Chernobyl’s long-term health consequences on April 26, the event’s 27th anniversary. Their research, supported by the nonprofit Green Cross Switzerland, revealed that, to this day, up to 10 million people may be affected by the catastrophe and its aftermath.

Seeking to go beyond the well-documented health risks of radiation exposure, Samet, chair of the Department of Preventive Medicine and director of the USC Institute for Global Health, set out to research the overlooked psychological stress that impacted residents living near Chernobyl in Belarus, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine.

In 2011, Samet and Patel, an Institute for Global Health research associate, authored a report titled “The Psychological and Welfare Consequences of the Chernobyl Disaster: A Systematic Literature Review, Focus Group Findings and Future Directions.” The document revealed evidence of significant neuropsychological consequences ranging from diminished quality of life and anxiety to depression and specific clinical syndromes, such as post-traumatic stress disorder.

With new evidence collected from focus groups in the affected areas, Samet and Patel’s latest report, “Selected Health Consequences of the Chernobyl Disaster,” painted a bigger picture, looking at research on different groups of people — including children and cleanup workers —affected by both radiation exposure and resettlement stressors.

The report found that both displaced and nondisplaced people show signs of negative psychological impact resulting from factors including job loss and mistrust in health care providers.

In addition, focus groups revealed ongoing stigma for people who were exposed to the disaster. For example, children who were relocated from the areas surrounding the Chernobyl power plant to the city of Bila Tserkva reported being bullied in school.

Even decades later, more work still needs to be done to support the affected communities, Samet said.

“There are many indirect consequences that urgently need to be addressed through governmental and nongovernmental programs,” he said.

Over the course of their research, Samet and Patel traveled to Belarus, Russia and Ukraine with partners from Green Cross International, a nonprofit organization that provides various social programs for families in the affected areas.

In the next few years, the project will continue in Belarus, Russia, Ukraine and Japan, where Samet, Patel and Green Cross will work alongside local institutions to support communities impacted by the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident.

“Remarkably, there is still much to be learned about the consequences of Chernobyl,” Samet said. “However, what we have learned will undoubtedly apply to Fukushima as well.”

Housed in the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, the institute’s newly renovated headquarters is located at 2714 South Hoover St., a few blocks from the University Park Campus.

“I’m absolutely delighted that an institute with such great tradition has once again opened its doors to the USC community and to our friends throughout Los Angeles,” said Paul Lerner, the institute’s director and associate professor of history at USC Dornsife.

Home to USC Dornsife’s German and European Studies Program, the institute’s areas of emphases include exile studies, Cold War studies, German history, film and aesthetics, contemporary German and European affairs, and the built environment: ecology and technology.

“Slowly but surely, we have been rising like a phoenix from the ashes,” Britta Bothe, associate professor of German, said during the event.

After the Department of German was closed in 2008, and with it two of its three study abroad programs, Bothe and others began to rebuild German studies on campus.

The rebuilding phase included deepening ties to the German studies community on and off campus; building a Web presence, including social media; proposing new curriculum and a new study abroad program; starting a teaching internship program for German studies minors, as well as yearly scholarship information sessions; and expanding extracurricular activities for students.

“We aim to build something meaningful for the student body on campus, entice more students to study German and open up more opportunities for scholarships and study abroad,” Bothe said, noting that the German studies program, now housed in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, has offered an interdisciplinary minor since fall of 2011.

Britta Bothe, Cornelius Schanuber and Paul Lerner (Photo/Erica Christianson)

The institute’s founder, Associate Professor Emeritus of German Cornelius Schnauber, a playwright and novelist, spoke of his long experience as its former director and his joy at its reopening.

“I am convinced Dr. Lerner will be an excellent director for the future of the institute,” he said.

Lerner said he aims to create a mix of public community programs and academic, research-oriented events and lectures at the institute. He is currently planning a conference in Los Angeles as a site of German American encounters in collaboration with the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West, and the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C.

He is also working with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to host a panel discussion on June 23 to complement the museum’s upcoming exhibition Hans Richter: Encounters. And he’s planning further collaboration with The Wende Museum in Culver City, Calif. On May 21, a staged reading of Schnauber’s play, Richard and Felix: Twilight in Venice will be held at the Goethe-Institut Los Angeles.

Schnauber founded a German cultural house in the Department of German in 1975 with the backing of the Max Kade Foundation, headquartered in New York. This evolved into the Max Kade Institute in 1981. Kade, a German-born philanthropist who made his fortune in pharmaceuticals, was committed to advancing German-American relations. He created the Max Kade Foundation in 1944 to promote scientific and technical progress and a peaceful coexistence of nations.

A personal friend of many famous German-speaking émigrés in Los Angeles — including the late filmmakers Fritz Lang and Billy Wilder and many actors, writers and musicians — Schnauber’s goal was to bring together newcomers from Germany with authors and composers from German-speaking countries. Another aim was to foster German-Jewish dialogue.

“This is a great opportunity to honor Dr. Schnauber, who founded the institute,” Bothe said. “And to move on into the future with the new director Dr. Paul Lerner, and the collaboration that the German studies program and the Max Kade Institute hope to deepen in the future.”

Bothe told guests that the new internship program for German minor students in cooperation with the Goethe International Charter School in Los Angeles successfully completed its second semester since its fall 2012 launch.

German Consul General Bernd Fischer stressed the importance of the Max Kade Institute: “It teaches not only the German language but also German culture,” he said.

Other speakers at the April 12 event included Andreas Lins, Austria’s deputy consul general; Berlin-born Andreas Kratky, a media artist and assistant professor at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, and Michael Meyer, professor emeritus of history at California State University, Northridge, and a founding member of the German American Cultural Society.

Representatives from organizations involved in German studies and programs both on and off campus — many of whom manned information booths at the event — chatted with students.

Guests learned about opportunities to study or work in German-speaking Europe, found out about internships and scholarships around Los Angeles and heard about life and current affairs in contemporary Austria and Germany.

They also enjoyed entertainment provided by students from the USC Thornton School of Music and USC School of Social Work alumna Hee-Seung Lee ’08. USC Thornton’s Eva Siegel sang the music of Brahms, accompanied by Lee on piano. Violinist James McFadden-Talbot performed selections by Bach, while soprano Sevana Salmasi, accompanied by pianist Jessica Hall, performed works by Emmerich Kálmán and Robert Stolz.

The ubiquitous German flavor continued outside where the popular Currywurst Truck served national delicacies such as bratwurst and sauerkraut.

USC German Club Vice President Ko Ricker welcomes visitors to the open house. (USC Photo/Susan Bell)

USC German Club Vice President Ko Ricker, a double major in linguistics and narrative studies with a minor in German at USC Dornsife, welcomed visitors to her stand with a smile. She will spend her junior year studying in Dresden, Germany. She is hopeful that her efforts to rebuild a German presence on campus will be aided by the reopening of the Max Kade Institute.

“This is really good news for students who are looking to learn more about German study, travel and opportunities in Germany,” she said. “Hopefully it will encourage more students to get involved in German studies.”

Scattered among them were more signs bearing the names of major nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) — Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Doctors Without Borders and International Crisis Group. The placards were held aloft enthusiastically by 200 local high school students who participated in the annual High School Leadership Conference.

Steven Lamy, professor of international relations and vice dean for academic programs at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, led the event organized by the Center for Active Learning in International Studies (CALIS), housed in USC Dornsife’s School of International Relations.

“It’s all about teaching high school students to think about and analyze global issues and global problems,” Lamy said. “This initiative is not just about recruiting high school students to USC, it’s about recruiting them to think about universities and about international relations as a field of study.”

Each year, CALIS chooses a different theme. This year’s conference was designed to introduce high school students to critical and creative thinking skills within the framework of a policy analysis forum as they pondered the vital question of how to prevent crisis situations escalating into future tragedies comparable to those in Darfur, Somalia or Rwanda.

“We want high school students to acquire analytical tools as they learn how to unpack a complex, controversial issue with many competing perspectives and priorities,” said Teresa Hudock, director of CALIS.

A month prior to the conference, the juniors and seniors — who were drawn from 16 high schools within a 25-mile radius of USC — were divided into groups and assigned different roles, with each group representing either a country or an NGO.

At the conference, Lamy and 45 international relations students serving as mentors coached the high school students on basic foreign policy theory, asking them key questions such as, what is known? What is unknown? What do we presume to be true?

Steven Lamy explains the basic concepts of international relations at the High School Leadership Conference. (USC Photo/Susan Bell)

The day kicked off as the USC Dornsife mentors helped students examine the position of their assigned country or NGO on human security and the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine — the United Nations international initiative adopted in 2005 to protect civilians from mass atrocity crimes, including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Though ethnic cleansing is not an officially accepted definition under atrocity crimes, it is also included in the R2P initiative.

In one case study, students considered the wider effects of a French military operation to oust Islamic militants in the north of Mali. Students were asked to consider ramifications of this human security crisis, such as an al-Qaida-led terrorist attack on a BP oil refinery in Algeria (intended as a reprisal for Algeria allowing France to use its airspace), and the hostile reception given to the tide of Malian refugees by the Nigerian and Algerian authorities.

To determine and understand the worldview of their country or NGO, with its own distinct priorities and interests, USC mentors encouraged students to consider its history of policy statements and actions in response to intervention. Participants were then asked to identify their group’s interests and near and long-term objectives with respect to the crisis.

For example, teams representing Norway and the Netherlands considered their countries’ long history of providing aid.

“They belong to the groups of states, usually the smaller European countries, that see themselves as problem-solving states because if they don’t solve the problems, the whole world falls apart,” Lamy said. “They don’t see the big powers as solving problems, they are perceived as creating problems. This kind of role playing gets the students to try to respond to these problems in a very sophisticated and thoughtful way.”

The role-playing exercise served as a forum for deliberation and negotiation, obliging students to articulate their views and reach a decision on their country or NGO’s response, with the overall goal of better understanding opposing views and searching for common ground.

Mentor Madison Hunter, a senior with a double major in international relations at USC Dornsife and at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, found the experience personally and academically enriching.

“While I can attest to the growth that I witnessed my incredibly bright team achieve over the course of the day, I think I learned as much from the conference as they did,” Hunter said.

By the end of the conference, students from the El Monte High School group, who were representing Norway, were using terminology like colonial legacy and balance of power “with ease and without any prompting,” she said.

“We want high school students to think of themselves as problem solvers,” Lamy said. “What we are doing here is about critical thinking and understanding.”

Lamy paid tribute to the 21 high school educators who attended the event with their students.

“The teachers here are amazing,” he said. “Some use their own cars and money to bring these kids here. They’re all on spring break and yet they are still coming to this.

Billy Joe Wright and Christine Sardo, who teach at William Workman High School in the City of Industry, accompanied eight of their students to the conference.

Both teachers emphasized their students’ enthusiasm and excitement at being offered the opportunity to participate in the workshop.

“Last Tuesday, our students gave up a whole afternoon to go over the preparation materials with us,” Wright said. “And this Saturday morning they were all there on time to meet us at 6:45 a.m. so we could drive to USC.

“Whatever the kids commit to, we commit to,” he added.

Michelle Escobar, a junior at Workman High, said attending the conference opened her mind to the possibility of studying international relations.

“I learned how to problem solve with a group of people on a certain crisis, and I felt that I acquired new tools to better understand the world and my way of thinking.”

Jonathan Islas, another junior from Workman, also said he had a great experience.

“I felt I got a lot of important information that could help me in the future,” he said. “This changed my thoughts about going to a university like USC.”

Wright and Sardo, who attended a teacher preparation workshop at USC Dornsife in February, also appreciated the higher-level communication skills being taught at the conference.

“It’s great for us, too; we can take those skills back to the classroom,” Wright said.

Sardo said many students at her school will be first-generation college students. “So any chance they get to interact with college students and visit the college campus is wonderful.”

Getting a taste of what university and higher learning are all about while still at high school is another important goal of CALIS.

“Being able to spend the day at a university and have a wonderful experience with a college student who is taking an interest in you and showing their interest in the world is an eye-opening experience for many of these kids,” Hudock said. “For many of them, a big part of the battle is just envisioning that this is even possible.”

USC Dornsife sophomore Michael Lim, a political science major minoring in international relations who served as a mentor, was impressed with the effort.

“When Professor Lamy concluded the conference by inviting the students to transcend what is presumed, I realized that was the most important thing we could have taught them,” he said. “The problems of the world exist because no one has found a way to fix them. To find real solutions, we will need to consider new ways of viewing the world. Most importantly, we will need to convince others that these ideas are important.”

Fresh from her mentoring experience at the conference, Hunter shared some of her experiences.

“At lunch my team asked me how I got into USC and what college life was like. One of them confided that she didn’t think she was going to be admitted to a school like USC because she wasn’t smart enough.

“She seemed so certain, but I tried to convince her that just by being at the conference, she was taking a huge step in the right direction toward attending a great university like USC,” Hunter said. “For the remainder of the conference, her outlook was noticeably brighter and more engaged with the material. This program provided her with her first taste of university academia, and I truly believe it will resonate with her long into the future.”

The conference was funded by the Arsalyn Program of Ludwick Family Foundation, the University Gateway and the USG Philanthropy Funding Board. Christian Lindke, program director of Arsalyn, attended the conference with his twin daughters.

“USC’s High School Leadership Conference provided a wonderful opportunity for students from across the Southland to be taken seriously as they engaged with complex political ideas,” he said. “Efficacy is one of the foundations of good citizenship, and this event helped to provide all the participants with a sense that their voice mattered.”

Published by the Royal Society of Chemistry, the largest European organization dedicated to the advancement of the chemical sciences, Traditional Chinese Medicine: Scientific Basis for Its Use aims to make it easier for physicians, pharmacists and scientists to talk to traditional Chinese medicine practitioners in a language common to both groups.

“Before this book, people have typically written about Chinese medicine either with a purely traditional view — no science — or with a strong antidrug perspective,” Adams said.

The book, co-edited by Eric Lien, professor emeritus at the School of Pharmacy, considered various bridges whereby Western practitioners and scientists could connect to traditional Chinese medicine, such as through systems biology, medicinal chemistry and treatments for specific diseases.

Traditional Chinese medicine is built on the yin, yang and chi theories. Adams explained the basis for these theories in scientific terms: Yin is an agonist, yang is an antagonist and chi is from signaling processes in the body that regulate body functions.

Explaining the traditional Chinese tenets in terms familiar to Western practitioners opens a door for understanding and dialogue.

“Once you understand yin, yang and chi, you understand why it’s important to live in balance,” Adams said.

According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), “traditional Chinese medicine practitioners use herbs, acupuncture and other methods to treat a wide range of conditions. In the U.S., traditional Chinese medicine is considered part of complementary and alternative medicine.”

The NIH website cites a 1997 estimate that there are 10,000 practitioners serving more than 1 million patients each year in the United States. In a 2007 national health survey, approximately 3.1 million Americans used acupuncture in the previous year, while 17 percent of all U.S. adults used natural products, such as herbs. Acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicines are the most common Chinese medicine therapies used nationwide.

Contributors to the book include a variety of academics and practitioners based in the United States and Asia with perspectives that bridge therapeutic and scientific queries. Kuo-Hsiung Lee and others from his lab at the University of North Carolina’s Eshelman School of Pharmacy explored modern drug discovery using traditional Chinese medicines. William C.S. Cho of Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Hong Kong looked at the scientific evidence for the use of the Chinese herb, astragalus, against a variety of human diseases.

“The book shows how both Western and Eastern thought really is bridged by science because, like Western medicine, traditional Chinese medicine also has a basis in science,” Adams said. “I’m hoping that thinking opens up more dialogues among practitioners.”