To all of today’s graduates, I can’t imagine what’s going through your minds right now. I never had the opportunity to go to a great university like this. I didn’t get here today like you did — by studying hard and excelling in school. Yet here I stand before you at this amazing crossroads in your life. So the question of the hour is what can I teach you? How can I help you even in the slightest way to be ready for whatever comes next?

So I asked myself, how did I get here? After a lot of thought, I realized there have been two life lessons that changed everything about me. These were moments that shook me, scared me and humbled me. In the end, these moments are two big reasons I am here today. And since my education came in the music business, you may recognize some of the names and think, how can this guy’s stories possibly apply to me? Yet I truly believe these two experiences apply to absolutely anyone and anything you want to do in this journey called life.

Let’s start with something I learned when I was 23 — not much older than most of you guys. It’s been the subtext to whatever success I’ve had. I have tried to instill this lesson in everyone who works for me, and the ones who have learned it, are still working for me.

I started my career as a second recording engineer, which sounds fancy but the reality is that I answered phones, I cleaned the floors and I made tea and coffee. That may not sound impressive, but it allowed me to learn my business from the ground up and it’s the kind of entry-level job that anybody starting a career should be happy to take. And it got me in the same building with John Lennon who — after the 50th cup of tea I served him — felt my enthusiasm and willingness to learn and allowed me to sit in on his sessions.

From there, I got the opportunity to work with Bruce Springsteen to help him record an album called Born To Run. Born To Run became a landmark album. If you don’t know it, ask your parents. But to my mother and father and their friends, Born To Run wasn’t Bruce Springsteen’s album — it was Jimmy Iovine’s album. They thought it was all about me. And before long, I began to believe that too.

So I was thrilled when Bruce and his manager and producer Jon Landau asked me to engineer the follow-up that eventually became Darkness on The Edge of Town. Back in those days, the first thing you did when making an album was record the drums. The job of getting the right drum sound fell to the recording engineer — and that was me. We spent six weeks working around the clock trying to get the sound that Bruce had in his head. And no matter what we did, it just wasn’t coming.

You cannot imagine everything we tried. We put the drums in the hallway. We put the drums in the elevator. We put the drums in the bathroom. We did everything but put the drums underwater. All I can remember is Bruce constantly saying to me, “Jimmy, I hear the stick hitting the drum.” At a certain point, I looked at him, and said, “Bruce, it is a stick hitting a drum!” But he was the Boss and that didn’t satisfy him. We were stuck. The sound I was getting was CLUNK-CLUNK-CLUNK and the sound Bruce wanted was BOOM-BOOM-BOOM.

So eventually, Bruce suggested bringing in some other guy from New Jersey of all places who could help me get this elusive drum sound. And I thought, “Why do I need help? What am I, half as good as I was two years ago?” To me, it sounded like a massive vote of no confidence. After six weeks of putting a microphone everywhere you could possibly imagine, I felt humiliated. I felt embarrassed. To use a word I hear way too often from 20-year-olds who work at my company, I felt disrespected. I felt so disrespected I wanted to suggest one more place Bruce could put that microphone.

I went back to the hotel where we were all staying, and I told Jon Landau, ‘I quit, I’ve done nothing but support this guy, and now he’s embarrassing me.” Looking back, I was just a beginner in the record-making process, but in the arrogance of my Brooklyn youth, I felt as if I had already arrived — that I knew everything. Boy, was I wrong.

Bruce’s manager looked me STRAIGHT in the eye, and said, “Hang on, Jimmy, I’m going to tell you something that will go against every instinct you have about how to react in a situation like this: “THIS IS NOT ABOUT YOU.”

Then Bruce’s manager said: “I want you to understand something called `The Big Picture.’ I’d never heard about this Big Picture. In my mother’s house, I was The Big Picture.”

Bruce’s manager continued, “And at a moment like this, it’s not about how you feel, Jimmy. It’s about Bruce Springsteen and his album. That’s the big picture — not your feelings, or anyone’s feelings.”

Inside, I had absolutely no idea what Jon meant. I wanted to scream. I wanted to argue. I wanted to walk. But for reasons I’m still thinking about three decades later, I did the opposite. I didn’t protect my ego. Instead, I paused for just a moment and listened to someone who might actually know better. So I told Jon, “You got it” because I did want to learn and this advice sounded like Aristotle to me. I had no idea who Aristotle was, but I liked the sound of his name. Jon told me, ‘I want you to walk in that room and tell Bruce Springsteen “I am here to support you. I will do whatever you need me to do.”’

So that’s what I did.

Turned out, the other guy from Jersey couldn’t get the drums right either. Somehow we got closer to the sound Bruce wanted and we moved on together. Six weeks later, not only was I still on Bruce’s team, but he also gave me one of the greatest songs he ever wrote called “Because The Night” that I produced for Patti Smith. That was my first hit record as a producer and launched my career. Listening to Jon’s five words — “This Is Not About You” — became the tipping point for every gift that’s followed in my life.

At that moment, I began to learn how to push aside my own personal issues and my desperate need to be right so I could focus on what was truly important — the greater good. Don’t worry, I wasn’t cured — I still battle with these issues of insecurity, ego, pride, and especially fear every day. Too often those issues get in the way of me seeing The Big Picture. But what I have learned is some of these powerful insecurities can be harnessed into life’s greatest motivator, the strongest 5-hour energy drink ever. It’s called a little old fashioned fear.

I know about fear. I was once fired from two jobs within 90 days. I felt as if the sidewalk was collapsing behind me, but that insecure feeling always kept me moving forward. Rather than stop me in my tracks like a headwind, I began to learn how to make those same insecurities the tailwinds to propel me forward.

Okay, now let’s fast-forward a little bit . . . maybe 30 years.

My second pivotal life lesson came in 1999, and now I was feeling like the King Of The World. I had built the hottest record company in the world, Interscope Records, the home of great artists like Dr. Dre, No Doubt, Eminem, The Black Eyed Peas and we had just signed U2. We were on a roll. We felt invincible. Nothing could touch us.

Except . . . Napster.

As a founder of Interscope Records, a company built on people paying for music, I was instantly scared to death. My God-given insecurities kicked in again. See I grew up in Brooklyn, so I knew the difference between going to a store and paying for something, and the opportunity to get it for free. I felt this stealing thing could really catch on.

So I went to see one of founding guys at Intel named Les Valdez. Somehow I thought I could reason with the industry that was about to destroy mine.

Fear, at times, makes us protect and defend what we think we already know. But sometimes in life, you need to learn a new lesson. And between you and me, in my experience, the most intelligent people that I meet are the ones who can best articulate what they don’t know. That’s not what I did with Les that day. I just kept trying to tell him how I thought things should be.

After listening to me for 20 minutes, Les finally spoke. He looked me in the eye, and said, “Wow, Jimmy, what a nice story. But you know what? Not every industry was made to last forever.” That statement was so profound and so true and so insightful and — to me — so devastating, I nearly retired right there and then. I walked into Les’ office thinking I was Elvis, and I was gently reminded Elvis was dead.

The lesson Les taught me is one I believe is increasingly important to learn in the fast-changing world we live in today. Think about this: EVERYTHING YOU KNOW COULD ALREADY BE WRONG.

When I got outside Les’s office and stopped sweating, I called my buddy Doug Morris, the Chairman of Universal Music and my boss at the time. I said, “Doug, we’re screwed.” Okay, I might not have used that exact word — but hey, I was upset. I said, “Doug, these guys don’t want our land. They want our water to take back to their land.”

At that moment, I was scared to death. In fact, at this moment, I am scared to death speaking in front of all you people. But I want you all to get comfortable with your fears because fear is a fact of life that you can use to your advantage. Because when you learn to harness the power of your fears, it can take you places beyond your wildest dreams. Because here’s the good news; fear has a lot of firepower.

I’ve spent my life working with many of my heroes and maybe some of yours too. From John Lennon and Bruce to Bono, Eminem. And let me tell you, I never met a great artist who wasn’t afraid of not living up to people’s expectations. But all of the greats used their fear to inspire them. I think today of the way John Lennon broke ground by speaking of his fears and his belief in change in a song called “Working Class Hero.”

As John sang,

When they’ve tortured and scared you for twenty-odd years
Then they expect you to pick a career
When you can’t really function you’re so full of fear
A working class hero is something to be

John was a guy who could really express his fears and conquer them.

In the music business back in 2003, we were standing at a crossroads. We could desperately defend the past and keep digging the same hole, or we could open our eyes to the future. Trust me, it’s a lot harder to change directions at 55 than at 25 — and I think your parents will vouch for me.   Les inspired me that day to go find my way in a music business that was evolving. The old model was changing. So I began to think that maybe there was some way to harness the culture of the old music industry in a whole new way.

Around that time, I was lucky enough to get to know Steve Jobs from Apple. I was representing Universal Music dealing with iTunes. After three years of hanging around Steve and the team at Apple, I thought I could learn a lot from these guys. They were breaking new ground. They were changing the game. And they were winning.

I noticed how Steve took all the music and videos from the world and built a beautiful shiny white thing called the iPod to play them on. We loved this shiny little white thing. The only part my friend Dr. Dre and I didn’t like were the shiny white ear buds that came with the shiny white iPod because they sounded terrible, sound wasn’t Apple’s focus. So we thought what if we make a beautiful shiny black thing so you can properly hear what’s in Steve’s shiny little white thing? So with my friend, Dr. Dre, there we had the beginning of Beats. It wasn’t that simple, but you get the idea.

I learned even at 50, I had to be a beginner again — and that’s as Zen-like a statement as you’ll ever hear from me. So who believed that Dr. Dre and I could sell hardware? No one. But we believed in ourselves. We harnessed our fear into power and turned it into action.

Today each one of you have an excellent reason to believe in yourselves. You’ve earned a degree from USC. You are graduating from one of the greatest universities in the world. Remember when you grew up hearing about people that are privileged? Congratulations you are now officially privileged. Because you know what privileged means — it means you have an edge. And whatever your background, wherever you come from, you now have the undeniable edge of a first-class education.

But please remember this — your diploma does not represent the end of your education, but the beginning of your continuing education. Continue to listen and learn, with humility not hubris. Because that diploma you hold in your hands today is really just your learner’s permit for the rest of the drive through life. Remember, you don’t have to be smarter than the next person, all you have to do is be willing to work harder than the next person.

So now, that you’ve heard the stories that changed my life, it’s time for an announcement we hope will change some lives for the better in the future here at USC. Walking around USC today, it seems everyone’s a doctor. Which is funny because I brought my partner today who also happens to be a doctor. So in the words of Slim Shady, will the real Dr. Dre please stand up and join me onstage?

DRE
USC! Great to be back in my hood — up to some good. Congratulations to the graduating class of 2013!

JIMMY
At Beats, Dre and I have found it really difficult to find kids with an education that encompasses technology, the arts and innovation. So with USC, we’re creating a brand new program right here. It’s called the Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy of Art, Technology & the Business of Innovation.

The Class of 2013 is among the first in history to have grown up in our new world where the distinctions between the arts and technology are disappearing So Dre and I are teaming with this great institution to create a new kind of Academy to address this reality. We want to do our part to prepare more brilliant students to do great and unexpected things.

What we need are schools — dream factories — that are broad enough to inspire, challenge and satisfy the curiosity of the next wave of game-changers that have a feel for technology and the liberal arts. That’s what we plan to do right here at USC.

In closing, because I believe in people doing the unexpected and being innovative, I would like to try something that’s never been done at a major graduation ceremony. Rather than quote William Shakespeare or Robert Frost, I close with the words of my favorite poet, R. Kelly, who penned my personal Karaoke anthem. So let tonight be the reward for all of your hard work, and the “Ignition” to a continuing education of the rest of your lives:

Today is your remix to ignition
You’re hot and fresh out the kitchen
You got the entire student body here
You got every graduate here wishin
Parents they might be sippin on coke and rum
And they might even get a little drunk
So what, it’s their USC graduation baby
And tonight they’re gonna have some fun!

JIMMY

So have a fun weekend and a great life and especially a great night!

DR. DRE
Peace! We out.

“Today, each one of you has an excellent reason to believe in yourselves,” said Iovine, chairman of Interscope-Geffen-A&M Records. “You have earned a degree from USC. You are graduating from one of the greatest universities in the world.

“Remember when you grew up, hearing about people that are privileged?” he continued. “Congratulations, you are now privileged. Because you know what privilege means? It means you have an edge. And whatever your background, wherever you come from, you now have the undeniable edge of a first-class education.” (Read full text of Iovine’s commencement address.)

Iovine reminded students that their diploma was not an end to their education, but rather a “learner’s permit” to continue a life of learning.

He surprised the audience by welcoming on to the stage longtime collaborator and fellow music industry icon Dr. Dre (Andre Young). On May 15, Iovine and Dre demonstrated their commitment to education by announcing a $70 million gift to USC to establish the USC Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy for Arts, Technology and the Business of Innovation.

The new academy will seek out undergraduate students whose talents and interests span fields ranging from business to engineering to design and the arts, and will prepare them to become the next generation of innovators.

Congratulating the new graduates, Dre thanked “all of the amazing people at USC that made it possible for us to build an academy at this incredible university.”

He added: “I’m excited and I am proud to now be a member of the Trojan Family.”

Relating anecdotes from his storied career, Iovine imparted two major lessons from his own life to the new Trojans. The first came from his early days in the music industry, when he had threatened to quit working on a Bruce Springsteen album during a particularly frustrating period.

“Bruce’s manager looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘Hang on, Jimmy. I’m going to tell you something that will go against every instinct you have about how to react in a situation like this: This is not about you,’ ” Iovine recalled. “At that moment, I began to learn how to push aside my own personal issues and my desperate need to be right so I could focus on what was truly important: the greater good.”

The second lesson came from his struggle to adapt to the changing world that music-streaming service Napster inaugurated. The experience shook him, Iovine said, but he realized that fear didn’t have to be a weakness — it could be a strength.

“I want you to all get comfortable with your fears because fear is a fact of life that you can use to your advantage. Because when you learn to harness the power of your fears, it can take you places beyond your wildest dreams. Because here’s the good news: Fear has a lot of firepower,” he said.

The commencement ceremony drew a crowd of more than 60,000 to the University Park Campus. The Trojan Family minted 13,284 new graduates, more than half of whom were students earning master’s or doctorate degrees. They represented all 50 states and more than 100 countries around the world.

USC President C. L. Max Nikias told the graduating students that it was a pleasure and a privilege to unleash their talents and energies upon the world.

“Yes, you are graduating into times of uncertainty. But what is uncertainty? It is the beginning of adventure,” Nikias said. “Always remember: To the bold, uncertainty is a fountain of infinite creative possibilities. As the Roman poet Virgil observed more than 2,000 years ago, to be a Trojan is to be an adventurer.”

Nikias also recognized National Medal of Science winner Solomon Golomb, University Professor and Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering and Mathematics who has taught at USC for more than 50 years, and graduating USC quarterback Matt Barkley.

Months of planning and weeks of labor went into preparing the campus for the main ceremony. Bright flowers were planted across campus, fountains were drained and repainted, and lampposts and signs received touch-ups.

About 44,000 white folding chairs were arranged in rows for the main ceremony and individual schools’ satellite ceremonies around campus, while a new cardinal and gold awning shaded the deans, trustees, honorary degree recipients and other dignitaries on the main stage in front of Doheny Memorial Library.

Toward the end of the ceremony, 200 doves — twice as many as in previous years — were released.

Six global leaders, including Iovine, also received honorary degrees for contributions to the civic, academic and arts worlds. The honorees included John Gurdon, a Nobel Prize-winning biologist whose experiments in the field of cloning laid the foundation for modern stem cell research; David Henry Hwang, renowned playwright, screenwriter and librettist best known as the author of M. Butterfly; Glorya Kaufman, arts benefactor whose 2012 gift to establish the USC Kaufman School of Dance was one of the largest gifts in the history of American dance; Edward P. Roski ’62, businessman, USC alumnus and chairman of the USC Board of Trustees, whose contributions to the region include a co-ownership of the Los Angeles Kings, the Lakers and Staples Center; and Gayle Garner Roski, longtime USC supporter and namesake for the USC Roski School of Fine Arts, whose watercolors have been exhibited at museums and galleries throughout the world.

In addition, Nikias recognized valedictorian Katherine Fu and salutatorians Alexander Fullman and Julia Mangione. Fu, Fullman and Mangione earned bachelor’s degrees in neuroscience and biological sciences, political science and international relations, respectively.

University Professor Solomon Golomb and Valedictorian Katherine Fu (USC Photo/Dietmar Quistorf)

Fu spent four years working at USC’s Brain and Creativity Institute, housed at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, and also earned a minor in Popular Music studies (“Did you hear that, Jimmy?” Nikias said to Iovine when he came to that item on her list of degrees and accolades.)

Recalling advice given to her by a friend, Fu told her fellow graduates to remember to stay grounded, and expressed gratitude to her professors, mentors and classmates who helped her to do just that.

“As we leave today to disperse across the globe, I hope that you will have learned the value of community just as I did,” she said. “I hope that we will share the spirit of the Trojan Family with each of those we encounter.”

Fu said that the class of 2013 was ready to embark on epic journeys, just like the legendary Trojans of the past.

“But instead of conquering the world with swords and spears, we wield our talent, our experiences, and above all our unrelenting fighting spirit to weave our efforts into the fabric of society and to write our stories in permanent ink,” she said.

“You do not go forward alone,” she continued. “You go forward as a lifelong member of the Trojan Family.”

Iovine closed his commencement address to a standing ovation by quoting not William Shakespeare or Robert Frost, but his favorite poet — singer R. Kelly.

“Today is the remix to ignition. You’re hot and fresh out the kitchen. You’ve got the entire student body here. You’ve got every graduate wishin’,” Iovine yelled as the cheers began. “It’s their graduation baby, and tonight they’re going to have some fun.”

Read stories about the 2013 graduates here.

As Dean Ernest J. Wilson III welcomed graduates to the ranks of USC Annenberg alumni, he thanked them for the hard work they’ve done as students, interns and collaborators while also completing successful studies.

“We live in an extraordinary and dynamic era where media and communication is at the center of everything we do. The information age is upon us, and much of the established order is completely up for grabs,” Wilson told the graduates and their families at the School of Journalism ceremony.

“Journalism graduates, public relations graduates, this is not only your day today — this is your time,” he added. “This is your era to seize this world and reinvent it.”

Acknowledging the work USC Annenberg students are doing to contribute to the news and communication economy, Wilson said, “Many of you are already working day and night to make this truly the golden age of your fields, both in terms of content and in terms of commerce.”

Wilson cited the “Annenberg advantage” as the path that will help graduates be productive in the work force. USC Annenberg tears down “the old, rigid silos of the past,” builds cooperation and “ensures that our sharp, flexible and inventive graduates can walk into any environment, any enterprise, and know that they could do any job in the place,” he said.

Wilson also thanked Geneva Overholser, director of the School of Journalism, for her leadership over the past five years. Overholser will step down from her role next month.

Calling Overholser “universally respected” and “extraordinarily effective,” Wilson said the administrator has “gone beyond our sky-high expectations.”

“Professor Overholser has been an indefatigable advocate for the Fourth Estate as the backbone of democracy,” said Wilson, adding that she remains committed to digital technology, diversity and information in the public interest.

“She has joined me in my own favorite slogan: ‘Innovate, Innovate, Innovate.’ ”

School of Journalism ceremony

As one of her last acts as director, Overholser delivered the commencement speech to the School of Journalism, taking the chance to tell graduates how well their time at USC Annenberg will prepare them for “a lifetime of productive work.”

Geneva Overholser, David Westphal, editor-in-chief of the Center for Health Reporting, and University Professor Geoffrey Cowan (USC Photo/Gus Ruelas)

“You now have all the tools you need, all the academic grounding, all the theory and practice, to go into your respective fields at this moment of enormous change — this moment of enormous potential,” she said. “You are fully equipped to use that preparation to shape these fields — journalism and public relations — for the better. And I expect you to do just that.”

Acknowledging the complex job market that awaits graduates, she added: “There has never been a more interesting time to enter these fields than at this moment. You get to reinvent them. You get to write new rules, shape new economic underpinnings and create new connections with the people formerly known as the audience. You get to find new ways to enrich the civic conversation in this country, help people live fuller lives and create a stronger citizenry.”

Overholser also took the opportunity to address the journalism naysayers — those who say “journalism is over.”

“The journalism that you are helping reinvent is just coming into its own. More people want to be part of it than ever. And the potential for a better, fairer, more inclusive form of information in the public interest is boundless,” she said.

And that new inclusiveness makes journalism a more exciting field than ever before.

“What was a top-down, too often arrogant craft, one that left lots of people out, is now a wide-open experiment in progress,” Overholser said.

In fact, she noted, thanks to the disruption of the old-school models, journalism and public relations graduates have a shot at jobs that wouldn’t have been open to them years ago.

“The fact that the old, rigid system — in which you had to work your way up over a period of decades — has collapsed means that you fresh graduates can go directly into jobs you could never have dreamed of entering before — and this applies to journalism and PR grads equally,” she said.

“You can hit the ground running, putting to work your open minds and your digital skills, your understanding of social media and your excitement about the future.”

At the same time, while “everything seems up for grabs,” graduates need to keep in mind the tenets that have not changed. Integrity and good judgment are paramount qualities that “remain absolutely critical,” Overholser said.

“Along with your smarts and your skills, you must be sure to bring integrity, to bring good judgment, to your work. Now when things are changing, these two [along with courage] are needed more than ever. Your skills, however dazzling, cannot compare in importance to your moral leadership.”

The jobs held by recent graduates should inspire anyone with lingering doubts, said Overholser, who listed a few of the jobs that USC alumni are holding, including such posts as the Sacramento bureau chief for Reuters, an investigative TV reporter in Albuquerque, Texas, a multimedia writer for The Seattle Times and a production assistant for ESPN. USC Annenberg graduates, she said, have found opportunities at The Texas Tribune, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, ABCNEWS.com, the Huffington Post and People.

USC Annenberg students celebrate at the School of Journalism ceremony. (USC Photo/Gus Ruelas)

As for public relations, the list goes on. Recent graduates are managers of community affairs, directors of media and communications, risk analysts, publicity coordinators and senior account executives. They work for Ogilvy, Weber Shandwick, Porter Novelli, Burson-Marsteller, MLB.com, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, The California Endowment, Disneyland, General Motors, City of Hope and World Wrestling Entertainment.

“We have a publicist for Kobe Bryant and a manager of public information for the Tournament of Roses,” she said.

“And, by the way, there is a whole lot of Trojan Family help behind that wonderful list of jobs and a whole lot of Trojan Family help in front of each of you,” she added.

On a personal note, Overholser left the new USC Annenberg graduates with a thought on the notion of trying to “have it all” as they pursue career and family.

“Life is full of twists and turns, and you won’t always be in charge of them,” she said. “What you’ll be in charge of is how you respond to them. Keep love in your heart and hold fast to your passion for good work, and you’ll be fine.”

School of Communication ceremony

Speaking to the School of Communication graduates and their families, Los Angeles County Supervisor and former LA City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky drew on the experiences of two successful leaders he has worked with — USC President Emeritus Steven B. Sample and John Wooden, the legendary head basketball coach of the University of California, Los Angeles.

He called Wooden a “life coach and a philosopher” and Sample “the man who led USC into the 21st century with soaring academic achievements and a commitment to the community.”

Yaroslavsky, who quoted Wooden, said everyone is ultimately informed by their character: “Character is more important than reputation because reputation is merely what other people think of you; character is what you really are, and only you know what that is.”

He added: “Politics is my line of work, and I can tell you that in my profession, we spend far too much time worrying about what other people think of us and far too little pondering who we really are and communicating who we really are.

“What people think of us is important,” he continued. “But what’s far more important are our core values — the values that we are willing to defend regardless of what others think.”

Yaroslavsky cited The Contrarian’s Guide to Leadership, Sample’s book in which he urges leaders not to form an opinion before gathering relevant facts and arguments.

“A leader who jumps to a conclusion before hearing all the facts will, more often than not, regret it,” he said. “Leaders command a stronger and more loyal organization when their team members know that their opinions will be heard and valued, even if they are contrarian points of view. Avoid the temptation to jump to conclusions before you have all the facts.”

Again quoting Sample, Yaroslavsky said, “Leaders aren’t the only ones with good ideas. Good leaders get their best ideas by keeping an open mind and open ears wherever they go.”

Sample wrote that artful listening “is not just an asset — it’s a necessity,” Yaroslavsky said.

And Sample and Wooden both agreed that great leaders give credit elsewhere but accept blame themselves.

“Any leader who fails to grasp this basic principle will not long endure in that leadership role,” he said. “In any organization, nothing builds confidence in a team, and success in an enterprise, more than the knowledge that the leader will have your back when the going gets tough. People who feel this way about their leader will go to the ends of the earth for him; those who don’t will do the bare minimum, if that.”

Yaroslavsky also touched on the shift in communication since he first took office in 1975 and how important communication is in politics, where “perception is reality.” His own website features interactive pages, stories, links to social media and a video channel dubbed ZevTV.

“Back in the day, traditional print and broadcast outlets were the only way to get your message out,” he said, recalling that he used to be known as the master of the 30-second soundbite. “Today, if you can’t say it in six seconds, you’re out of the story.”

But no matter how news consumers access their information, whether via smart phones or tablets, “the bottom line remains that communication is transmitted through the voice of the communicator’s character,” Yaroslavsky said.

“Today, your schooling is formally completed, and I warmly congratulate you on that outstanding accomplishment. But your real education begins now, as you embark on the next chapter of your lives. As you do so, I wish you an abundance of character and wisdom. Good luck to each and every one of you.”

It was only fitting that he finish his time at USC the same way he completed the Summer Olympics in London last year, hoisting the U.S. flag at the closing ceremony.

Overcoming a crippling act of violence to reach Olympic glory and today earning a Bachelor of Science in policy, planning and development, Nellum is the ultimate embodiment of the Trojan spirit, according to USC Track and Field Coach Ron Allice.

“He exemplifies everything you would want in a Trojan athlete and a Trojan student,” Allice said. “Whoever coined the phrase ‘Fight On’ had him in mind.”

USC Price Dean Jack H. Knott noted during his commencement address that “[Nellum’s] Trojan resilience and determination is a true inspiration about what can be possible for each of us.”

Nellum entered USC in 2007 as the best prep sprinter in the nation, but when leaving a Halloween party in 2008, a single gunshot left three pellets in his legs.

Two gang members were sentenced to 15 years each for the crime. Prosecutors said the men mistook Nellum for a rival gang member.

Doctors performed two surgeries to repair his legs but warned that he was never likely to reach his previous elite level in sprinting.

“First hearing that comment that I wasn’t going to be able to run again was devastating, but in the same breath, I told myself I’m going to do whatever I have to do to continue to run,” Nellum said. “It took baby steps — I had to learn to crawl, then walk and then start running again.”

Bryshon Nellum entered USC in 2007 as the best prep sprinter in the nation. (USC Photo/Tom Queally)

When he returned to the track after 18 months, his 400-meter time was one second slower than what he ran in high school. At that time, he was running with one pellet still remaining in his left leg. Doctors advised him that the pellet’s location near a nerve made it too risky to remove.

But a year later, after collapsing during the middle of a race, he opted to get surgery to remove the final pellet, despite the risks.

“I gave it my all. Now I have no choice but to get this surgery,” Nellum said at the time.

The surgery was successful, and he returned to the track healthy in 2012. He finally began running faster than he had in high school, and the 2012 Olympics once again were within his sights.

“I’ve been doing track and field since I was 7 years old, and my goal was always to compete in the Olympic Games,” Nellum said. “Being so close to that goal, that’s when the determination kicked in. I couldn’t let this take it away from me.”

Nellum went to London happy just to have the opportunity to experience the Olympics, no matter the results. Following a frustrating finish in the individual 400, in which he missed qualifying for the final by three one-hundredths of a second, he helped the U.S. 4×400 relay team to a silver medal.

Other members of the U.S. Olympic squad recognized the magnitude of Nellum’s comeback by selecting him as flag bearer at the closing ceremony.

The athlete’s story received tremendous international attention. In a speech, President Barack Obama called him an inspiration and later shook his hand at the White House. When Nellum returned to USC for fall classes, students stopped him to take pictures, get autographs and offer congratulations as he walked on campus.

Nellum said one of his favorite classes at USC Price involved the history of planning and development with Professor David Sloane in spring 2012.

“There’s one assignment where everyone has to write a paper in which they interview someone they care about who is at least 25 years older, and he did a great paper on his grandmother,” Sloane said. “He was quiet but a really fascinating guy.”

Nellum admitted that he was reserved for a long while after the shooting, trying to make sense of such senseless violence. It really wasn’t until after the Olympics that he began to feel like himself again.

“As I started to get interviewed about my story and I was able to talk about it, it helped free me from my isolation, and I started to come out of my shell,” Nellum said.

Though he will be focusing his attention on the World Championships in Moscow in August and the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, Nellum said he plans to go to graduate school at USC.

Nellum credits his mother, LeShon Hughes, and his grandmother, Brenda Jones, with helping him maintain his faith following the tragedy. He gave them an appropriate tribute by breaking USC’s Loker Stadium records on Mother’s Day, the weekend before graduation, posting personal bests in the 200 (20.23) and 400 (44.76).

Hughes said her only son’s experience at USC has felt like a long dream, haunted by unimaginable lows and blessed with amazing highs, but one from which she expects to awake with a big smile.

“To see him graduate college means more to me than his athletic accomplishments,” Hughes said. “It’s one more miracle. He’s had so many of them.”

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.”

The Nurses of Keck Hospital and USC Norris Cancer Hospital annually nominate and select winners for various awards in celebration of National Nurses Week. While previous awardees have been exclusively nurses, non-nursing members of the care team were made eligible to receive this year’s award. Among thousands of USC providers, Nguyen was chosen as the first non-nurse clinician to win the accolade.

“I was definitely surprised by the award,” Nguyen said, “but more importantly I am honored to have been nominated and chosen by my nursing colleagues. I am truly fortunate to be able to work with some of the most amazing patients and health care providers on a daily basis.”

Katie Jordan, associate chair of occupational therapy clinical services, said: “Having our work as occupational therapists recognized by our colleagues in nursing is a great honor. We are all very proud of Dr. Nguyen and look forward to many more opportunities for interprofessional collaboration with the nurses of USC.”

Occupational therapy also made a strong showing earlier this month at USC’s first Interdisciplinary Poster Symposium during National Hospital Week.

Kimberly Perring, an occupational therapy doctorate resident, won the Evidence-Based Practice Award for her poster titled “Behavioral Treatment for Urinary Incontinence and Urinary Retention.” In addition, occupational therapy was the profession with the second-most posters selected for display at the symposium.

“Having a poster alongside OT clinical faculty and other health care professionals was an honor in itself,” Perring said. “I hope my recognition will raise more awareness of OT’s unique roles within acute care.”

Added Jordan: “Having our work displayed through the hospital over Hospital Week has improved awareness of our unique services and sparked new interprofessional collaborations around mutual interests.”

Corliss Bennett-McBride, director for the Center for Black Cultural and Student Affairs (CBCSA), explained the purpose of these special ceremonies.

“It gives you that cultural intimacy,” she said. “There’s a personal aspect. Separate — no. It’s ‘in addition to.’ It’s geared toward that community. We can celebrate the way we would like to do it.”

The CBCSA will host the African-American Cultural Celebration (Black Grad) featuring African drummers, gospel singers, speeches from a valedictorian and salutatorian, and a spoken word performance by Nate Howard, who is graduating with a degree in communication.

Black Grad will take place on May 16 at 8:30 p.m. in Bovard Auditorium. Graduating students must register online by May 15, and participation is free. Tickets for guests may be purchased online or at the door for $10. For more information, visit sait.usc.edu/cbcsa/black_graduation_info.asp

Similarly, Asian Pacific American Student Services (APASS) is co-sponsoring an evening with the Asian Pacific Alumni Association and the Asian Pacific American Student Assembly. Denzil Suite, associate vice president for Student Affairs, will give welcome remarks, followed by traditional Chinese dancing, speeches from students and a keynote address by Phil Yu, creator of the “Angry Asian Man” blog.

Mary Ho, director of APASS, called the evening “a celebration to honor students of Asian descent and an acknowledgement of their culture and heritage in this intimate graduate celebration.”

The event is scheduled for May 16 at 8:30 p.m. in the Ronald Tutor Campus Center Ballroom. Participation is free, and graduating students and guests must register by May 15 at tinyurl.com/apgrad2013

On the same Thursday evening, El Centro Chicano will host a bilingual graduate celebration, which kicks off with a procession of graduating students at 8 p.m. Led by Aztec dancers, the procession will begin at El Centro Chicano (United University Church 300, 817 W. 34th St.) and culminates at Howard Jones Field, which the Aztec dancers bless as the ceremony begins. Every participating graduate has the opportunity to speak for 20 seconds about anything they like. Many thank mentors, family and friends for their continued love and support.

“It’s very inspirational; we have it very family-oriented,” said Billy Vela, director of El Centro Chicano. “It has all the elements of why graduation is special, and folks get to be recognized within their community.”

Guests of the celebration do not need to RSVP or purchase tickets. Guests should arrive at Howard Jones Field between 6 and 8 p.m.

Two other cultural celebrations previously took place on campus. On April 18 in the University Club, the Office of International Services had an end-of-year celebration, which included performances by USC Thornton School of Music students, USC Kazan Taiko drummers and Brazilian samba dancers. Anne Kaufman, an international student adviser, said the event not only celebrated graduating students’ achievements, but it also provided them with an opportunity to mingle cross-culturally.

A few weeks later on May 4, the LGBT Resource Center, in conjunction with the Lambda Alumni Association, put on the 19th annual Lavender Commencement Celebration in Argue Plaza. Student graduates received a certificate, goody bag and rainbow tassel, and Lambda awarded scholarships to distinguished graduates.

Vincent Vigil, director of the LGBT Resource Center, said that Lavender — along with all of the cultural graduation ceremonies — provides a personal, community-centered feeling for the graduating students.

“It’s to honor the graduates for all of their accomplishments but then also to acknowledge their identities,” he said. “It shows that the university valued their experience.”

“I’d been wanting to do this for 10 years and finally technology caught up,” Weintraub said. “When President [C. L. Max Nikias] made clear he wanted online classes that made sense, I raised my hand really fast.

“I’ve known we needed to do this for a long time,” she added. “If working professionals weren’t going to come to us, we needed to go to them.”

Friday will mark the first commencement ceremony for students who earned an online degree from USC Annenberg. Known going forward as the trailblazers of the school’s advance into online education, 47 working professional men and women will earn their degree in the Master of Communication Management (MCM), coursework that prepares students to manage the process and flow of communication. The focus is on integrating organizational, strategic and marketing communication whether applied in the corporate, governmental or nonprofit sectors.

The program launched in September 2011; there now are about 140 students enrolled.

USC Annenberg also offers a communication management degree on campus, and it’s actually the school’s oldest graduate degree. Every faculty member who teaches online has a PhD and also teaches on campus.

“The program is just as rigorous as the on-campus program,” said Weintraub, who has been teaching an online class at USC Annenberg since 2003. “The bottom line is it’s exactly the same degree, the same program, just a different delivery system.”

And Weintraub soon confirmed that the delivery system attracts exactly the kind of client USC was looking for — working professionals. The classes are stacked with men and women working in public relations, journalism, marketing, corporate communication, education, human resources and health care.

The students, who hail from Alabama, California, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, Texas, Virginia and Washington were drawn to the program because it promised to be rigorous and demanding.

“I didn’t feel comfortable doing any other online program,” said graduate-to-be Daniel Kopec, who writes and produces documentary films for PBS in Seattle. “Even in the workplace, I knew the degree would be recognized and would have value, and it wouldn’t be viewed as a second-tier degree.”

“Personally,” said Kopec, “it was such a huge achievement for me because you want a master’s degree to be challenging. So it was fulfilling to know I could operate at that level.”

Weintraub maintained that the online degree is in many ways more difficult than the one offered inside the halls of USC Annenberg. That’s because the degree is designed to be learner-centered. In other words, students are tasked with “pulling” information rather than having faculty “push” it toward them.

In a traditional classroom, faculty members deliver lectures, and students discuss the material. But online, students are compelled to pull materials together in an active way. One example is a project that tasks MCM students with solving problems as the chief communication officer of the course’s fictional company. On their own and in groups, they integrate the readings, online materials and data gathered to create a strategic communication plan.

“I suspect it feels like they live in a universe of homework,” Weintraub said. “As they are not in class for three hours a week as the on-campus students are, it completely changes the frame of instruction. I don’t know if the workload is heavier, but I suspect it feels so.”

She admitted to sending students mini-pep talks throughout the semester.

“I remind them, ‘You wanted a rigorous master’s program. You didn’t want an easy one.’ ”

John Perez, a health care project manager for the University of California, Davis, Medical Center in Sacramento, said: “I remember many times during the program, thinking, ‘There’s no way I can get through this. And when I got done, I thought it was one of the most difficult things I had done in my life. Now there’s no way I’d do anything differently.”

Perez operates at a higher level now after completing the MCM program, he said.

“When information comes in that’s major or significant for this organization, I look at it very differently than I did two years ago,” he said. “I’ll pause, see what the source is, what the risks are, gather my initial thoughts and then present them to the key leaders to see if this is the direction we want to take.

“In the past, I would have a knee-jerk reaction, do something quickly and deal with the fallout. I think strategically now.”

Online MCM students also honed their time-management skills during the program.

“It definitely isn’t for everybody,” said Jennifer Davies, 27, who works in corporate communications for Nevada’s statewide energy utility and got engaged, married and bought a house while earning her degree. “You have to be task-oriented or you’re going to fall behind. Whatever’s going on, you can’t go to bed until it’s done.”

At the same time, she said, “It’s perfect for working professionals who don’t want to give up their jobs and move to LA. All they need is a computer and the ability to carve out time and make it a priority.”

Davies said she appreciated the real-time aspect of the program and investigating communication blunders or marketing campaigns that had popped up in the news only days or weeks before. The online platform offers the flexibility to update content regularly.

“Then we would read about it, research it, discuss it, analyze it, respond to our classmates and offer feedback. So it’s really an all-encompassing experience. You really apply what you learn,” she said.

Now Davies said she’s much more analytical in her job, especially now that she has training in marketing and can connect the dots of how theory, organization and application work in the communication world.

“You get so caught up in learning your job that you don’t think about the strategy behind it,” she said. “It’s important to know where you want to go before you get going.”

The hard work has paid off. Davies recently accepted a new job with the city of Las Vegas as an assistant public information officer. With nearly 500 other applicants vying for the position, Davies is certain her MCM degree helped set her apart.

Meanwhile, though they were separated by states and time zones, the MCM students became friends.

John Perez, left, presides over the wedding of classmate Anna Tretyakov and her husband.

Perez, who’s also an ordained minister, officiated at the wedding of classmate Anna Tretyakov. Some students became the best of friends and talked daily. Others flew regularly to visit each other. A homecoming reception last fall drew more than 50 (including some first-year MCM students) from all over the country. They couldn’t wait to lay eyes on each other for the first time in person.

And that, program leaders said, was by design.

The goal of the degree is not just to impart theory and content. Faculty members also were intent on students graduating with the ability to work with colleagues from unfamiliar backgrounds.

To that end, they required group collaboration as a central focus of each course and not by groups that students chose. They were assigned to groups, which were mixed and switched up regularly. No cliques were allowed, said Neil Teixeira, director of distance learning for USC Annenberg.

“It’s new challenges, new experiences, new people to meet and work with,” Teixeira said, referring to a method that reflected the real-world working environment where professionals must work with people they don’t know.

“You can’t rely on just working with a team you know. You have to be prepared for the collaborative environment no matter who’s in it,” he explained. “If we can prepare our students to manage team projects and team expectations well, we can prepare them for all kinds of environments and provide a skill that is going to be applicable in almost any field.”

The strong bond also was forged because of the students’ unique position as the first class in the program, Teixeira said.

“We told them, ‘You’ll make suggestions that will lead to innovations that will impact students to come. I think that empowered them to say, ‘We’re part of a special group at Annenberg,’” he said.

And their input was crucial, Weintraub said.

“I feel particularly proud of these students because they were the early adopters,” she said. “They were the pioneers. They partnered with us and gave us feedback, and their commitment was phenomenal. There was no way of envisioning the rigor, the demands on their time, and they stuck with it. Every graduate is special, but you only have one first-born.

“I said, ‘We’re going here’ and who knew we’d actually arrive? And we’re right on schedule.”

The way Nicholson saw it, there would always be one reason or another to put off getting his graduate degree. Why let orders to report to Afghanistan get in the way?

On May 17, Nicholson will be one of 47 students who will have earned MCM degrees. It will be the first USC Annenberg commencement ceremony for a master’s degree delivered online. Other graduates completed their coursework from their home states of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, Texas, Virginia and Washington as well as California.

Nicholson, a native of Southern California, has traveled throughout the world after 16 years as an active-duty U.S. Army officer, and he’s accustomed to moving house and home for work. When he started the master’s program, he was stationed at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas while completing a program at the Army’s School of Advanced Military Studies. Four months later, he was on his way to work at NATO strategic headquarters in Kabul, Afghanistan, where he spent the next year — and three semesters.

He’s now back home at Fort Leavenworth with his wife, Emily, his 8-year-old daughter, Allie, and his 6-year-old son, Noah.

As a public affairs officer for the Army, Nicholson’s workdays in Kabul began at 7 a.m. and lasted until 8 or 9 p.m. After that, he “hit the books,” so to speak. He worked every day. He slept four to five hours a night during most of the one-year deployment.

“I tried to stay in a routine,” Nicholson said. “As long as I could stay in a routine, I could keep it straight.”

He usually had Friday mornings off, and he’d use that time to catch up. Nicholson said he discovered the structure and rigor of a military career served him well as he pushed himself to meet the demands of working a full-time deployment while simultaneously earning a master’s degree.

“There was no room for procrastination whatsoever,” he said. “It was an extremely busy year, and I appreciated the flexibility of the program and how it was delivered.”

His classmates and professors stayed flexible as he traveled beyond Afghanistan for work to NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, to Turkey for a strategic communication conference and to Germany to train incoming military and civilian staff. But the onus was on him to work ahead of schedule and stay accountable in the group projects that are a focus of the program.

Part of Nicholson’s job in Kabul was crisis communication. Early in his deployment, news broke of the burning of Korans at Bagram Airfield in Kabul. Citizen protests escalated into deadly riots that drew international attention.

“Turn on the news, and if you see stuff going on, you’ll know I’m busy,” he told his colleagues. But he’d also shoot them an email letting them know he was tied up, and he’d check back in as soon as he could.

“I can’t even imagine the obstacles he had to overcome to make sure things were getting turned in on time,” said classmate and fellow graduate Jennifer Davies, a corporate communications officer for Nevada’s statewide energy utility. “We talked about having to go to work all day — and who knows what he was having to do all day — and still was getting it all done.”

Others in the program appreciated Nicholson’s unique take on lessons and projects, Davies said.

“I think that military perspective was enlightening, and he’d had a lot of leadership roles and knew what worked and what didn’t,” she said. “He offered a lot of really great and candid feedback because he’d been in those situations, both as a leader and as the person being told what to do. He offered a really rounded perspective for us.”

In some ways, taking on the MCM program while working on the other side of the world made sense, Nicholson said.

“When you deploy down there, all you have to do is work. I wasn’t kicking in doors, but it was heavy-thinking type of work. I did need a break and would switch to schoolwork,” he said.

And that was when he discovered a symbiosis between his job and studies.

Nicholson’s focus in public affairs is on strategic communication planning, which gelled perfectly with the coursework of the MCM degree.

“I work in a field that directly applies to what I was studying,” he said. “It contributed to the work I was doing on a daily basis, so both fed into each other. I brought ideas from what I was learning and immediately used them in my day-to-day environment.”

Gaining that rounded perspective — considering communication problems from all angles by moving back and forth between school and work — paid off.

Nicholson said he still taps into his academic experience and the perspective he gained from his diverse classmates, almost daily.

“There are more areas you’re able to make connections with, both from an academic and a practitioner sense,” he explained. “In the program, we were all working in the field — some were in marketing firms, public relations firms — everyone was in the communication field. It gave us all better breadth.”

He added that he wasn’t the only one juggling many hours of work with the rigorous MCM program.

“I saw the same discipline in people who were working in other fields,” he said. “Most people had full-time jobs, families and these classes going on, so you learn pretty quickly how to manage your time. Because we all have a lot to balance.”

Going into its third year, the program aims to strengthen an array of humanities disciplines across the university.

Chosen from more than 950 applicants in 14 fields, this year’s scholars will join USC in mid-August and represent “another class of exceptionally talented and accomplished scholars,” wrote Garrett, senior vice president for academic affairs.

“Relying on their diverse perspectives and academic backgrounds, they will invigorate discussion and further develop professionally by researching and teaching with our outstanding faculty,” she added.

The 2013 Provost’s Postdoctoral Scholars are:

Alison Annunziata (Slavic languages and literatures) received her PhD in Russian literature from Columbia University in 2012. Her research interests cover late 18th- and early 19th-century Russian prose, postmodern perspectives in the Enlightenment, poetics of domesticity and exile, Russian formalism and Tolstoy. While at USC, she plans to refine her dissertation and produce a manuscript distilling two critical periods — the Enlightenment and formalism — to their central motifs of light and form.

Sean Nye (musicology) received his PhD in comparative studies in discourse and society from the University of Minnesota in 2012. Nye’s research interests include Austro-German musical aesthetics and literature in the 18th to 20th centuries, electronic and industrial music, cultural musicology, and subcultural studies, gender and sexuality, media and sound studies, science fiction and Theodor Adorno. He plans to turn his dissertation, Teutonic Time-Slip, into a book and start a second project dealing with Philip K. Dick’s interests in music and stereo sound.

Natalia Pérez (Spanish and Portuguese) received her PhD in Spanish from Princeton University this year. Her dissertation, Whispered Materiality: Voice and Gender in the Theater of Early Modern Spain, focuses on the philosophical question of voice in relation to the theater of the Spanish Golden Age. While at USC, she plans to work on a book project tentatively titled Marrano Theater: Distribution of the Sensible in the Early Modern Comedia.

Molly Pulda (English) received her PhD from the City University of New York this year. She plans to turn her dissertation, Sympathetic Ink: Memoirs of Family Secrets, into a book manuscript while furthering her research on secrecy in contemporary American literature.

Atia Sattar (comparative literature) received her PhD in comparative literature from Pennsylvania State University in 2012. Her research interests include medicine and literature; science, technology, and society; and 19th-century British and French literature. She intends to turn her dissertation, The Aesthetics of Experiential Medicine: Literature and Scientific Inquiry in the Nineteenth Century, into a book.

According to Garrett, three scholars from last year’s cohort have secured faculty positions after one year of postdoctoral fellowship.

Bradford Bouley will join the Department of History at Penn State University as an assistant professor this fall. Anastasia Kayiatos will join the Department of Slavic Languages and Literature at Macalester College as a visiting assistant professor this fall. Bryan Roberts will join the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method at the London School of Economics in spring 2014.

In addition, Alejandro Pérez-Carballo, from the 2011 cohort, will begin this fall as an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts.