LOS ANGELES, California (March 11, 2010) – C. L. Max Nikias, USC executive vice president and provost, will become the 11th president of the University of Southern California on August 3, 2010. His appointment was announced today by Edward P. Roski, Jr., chairman of the USC Board of Trustees.

Nikias will succeed Steven B. Sample, who has led USC since 1991. In November 2009, Sample announced his decision to retire August 2, 2010.

Over the course of his career as a researcher, educator, and university administrator, Nikias has earned accolades for his leadership, innovation and fundraising, as well as his ability to build partnerships among varied constituencies.

As President Sample’s second-ranking officer since 2005, Nikias is credited with accelerating the university’s recent academic momentum, recruiting new leadership, strengthening the academic medical enterprise, helping attract a series of major donations to the institution, creating innovative cross-disciplinary programs, enhancing the university’s globalization efforts and increasing support for students at the undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral levels.

Nikias’ selection by the Board of Trustees followed a search process that involved an advisory committee of trustees and senior faculty representatives, working with R. William Funk & Associates, one of the nation’s premier search consulting firm serving higher education. Between November 2009 and January 2010 the advisory committee met with 15 key USC constituent groups, including students, faculty, alumni leaders, community representatives, staff, and various university supporters and friends. After reviewing approximately 75 candidates, the committee interviewed seven finalists, all of whom were sitting presidents or provosts at major universities.

“It is a testament to Max Nikias’ abilities that, from such an impressive group of educators, he was unanimously recommended by the advisory committee,” Roski said. “During his 19 years as a faculty member and administrator at USC, he has provided distinguished service to the university in a variety of roles. He is a remarkable and inspiring leader, a brilliant scholar, and the best possible person to lead our university forward.”

President Sample praised the appointment: “I have long believed that Max Nikias is one of the country’s most talented provosts. I’m delighted to have a successor whose keen vision and energy will keep the university moving ahead at a rapid pace. USC will be in excellent hands with Max as president.”

“It is the greatest honor to be given this opportunity by USC’s Board of Trustees to work toward realizing the dreams and aspirations of the Trojan Family,” Nikias said. “The Trustees have committed themselves wholeheartedly to continuing the historic, rapid ascent begun by Steve Sample — and even to accelerating USC’s momentum based on opportunities that lie before us.

“This incredible, wide-ranging university represents an electric environment, one remarkably skilled at producing new ideas and new leaders to strengthen our society. Moving USC forward, and accelerating its breathtaking momentum, strikes me as the most rewarding endeavor in American higher education today.”

Added Nikias: “For the next five months, of course, USC continues to be led by Steve Sample, who has been America’s most dynamic and successful university president. He and his wife Kathryn have left as their legacy a university that has attained global stature. The only proper way to honor this legacy is to take a great university and make it even greater.

“It has been said that the only sure way to predict the future is to invent it. And because USC’s faculty, students, alumni and staff comprise a global intellectual community of unsurpassed breadth, energy and dedication, I have exceeding confidence in USC’s own future. My wife, Niki, and I and our daughters love being a ‘Trojan family,’ and we love being a part of the greater Trojan Family. To be able, then, to lead this Trojan Family forward now is the opportunity of a lifetime, as we write together the next chapter in USC’s extraordinary history.”

After being named provost in 2005, Nikias worked with faculty and deans to develop a number of new programs to create a distinct academic environment at USC.

In order to enhance the undergraduate experience for USC students, he established new scholarship programs that reward innovative scholarship and global academic immersion, and sponsored a USC Arts curriculum that encourages cross-arts interdisciplinary programs, including minors, progressive degrees, joint degrees, and joint classes. He also drove the creation of USC’s groundbreaking Visions and Voices initiative in the arts and the humanities, which has drawn tens of thousands of undergraduates from all disciplines to a range of artistic and cultural programming.

Nikias launched other initiatives, including a quintupling of funding for Ph.D. fellowships to $20 million per year; a grant program for advancing scholarship in the humanities and social sciences; and a program to recruit leading interdisciplinary scholars as Provost’s Professors.

He recruited new leadership to the Keck School of Medicine, spearheaded the integration of the school’s 19 Faculty Practice Plans, and oversaw the transfer of the University Hospital and Norris Cancer Center from Tenet Healthcare Corporation to USC.

Nikias was also instrumental in negotiating on behalf of the university the relocation of the Shoah Foundation – originally established by filmmaker and USC trustee Steven Spielberg – and the establishment of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education.

He established an Office of Research Advancement in Washington, D.C. that has been directly responsible for helping faculty win more than $140 million in federal research funding in the past 30 months.

Nikias is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the California Council on Science and Technology and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is the recipient of the 2008 IEEE Simon Ramo Medal.

In April 2008, he was named inaugural holder of the Malcolm R. Currie Chair in Technology and the Humanities, USC’s first endowed faculty position honoring exceptional achievements in both realms. Each fall, he teaches an orientation-week seminar to incoming freshmen on the development of democracy and the dramatic arts within ancient Athens.

Nikias was recruited to USC in 1991 to develop a national-caliber center for multimedia research, and became the founding director and principal investigator for the Integrated Media Systems Center (IMSC). In a fierce competition in 1996, the IMSC proposal to NSF was ranked first out of 117, including proposals from America’s top-ranked research universities.

He served as dean of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering from 2001 to 2005. During a fundraising campaign that lasted less than four years, he secured a naming gift from Andrew J. and Erna Viterbi, as well as other gifts from major donors and institutions for individual academic departments and institutes. Nikias was the only dean in USC’s history to secure more than $200 million in such a brief period of time. Nikias recruited 30 world-class faculty members to the USC Viterbi School and also tripled the number of women on the faculty.

He graduated with honors from the Famagusta Gymnasium, a school in Cyprus that emphasizes sciences, history, and Greco-Roman classics. He received a diploma from the National Technical University of Athens, also known as National Metsovion Polytechnic, the oldest and most prestigious higher education institution of Greece. He earned M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the State University of New York at Buffalo before holding faculty appointments at the University of Connecticut (1982-85) and Northeastern University (1985-91).

Nikias has been a high-level technical consultant to the department of defense, holding a security clearance for 15 years. He has authored more than 95 peer-reviewed journal articles, 180 refereed conference papers, three textbooks, and eight patents. Three of his publications received best paper awards.

He lives on the Palos Verdes Peninsula with his wife, Niki, and their two daughters, Georgiana and Maria, both of whom attend USC.

2010 USC Orange County Distinguished Speakers Series

featuring

Gerard J. Tellis, Ph.D.

Director of the Center for Global Innovation, Neely Chair of American Enterprise
and professor of marketing at the USC Marshall School of Business

“Do Innovations Really Pay Off?”

Wednesday, March 31, 2010 @ 7:00 p.m.
USC ORANGE COUNTY CENTER
2300 Michelson Drive, Room C, in Irvine
Tickets $15

GERARD J. TELLIS, Ph.D. is the director of the Center for Global Innovation, the Neely Chair of American Enterprise and a professor of marketing at the USC Marshall School of Business. Dr. Tellis is an expert in innovation who has published four books and over 100 articles. His research has received 15 awards, including the Bass, Odell, Maynard (twice), and Vijay Mahajan award for lifetime contributions to marketing strategy. Professor Tellis is an associate editor of the Journal of Marketing Research and previously served on the editorial board of the Journal of Marketing and Marketing Science. He is a trustee of the Marketing Science Institute, a distinguished professor at Erasmus University and a senior research associate at Cambridge University. At USC, he directs the Center for Global Innovation. Dr. Tellis will discuss all aspects of innovation, from global strategy and market entry to new product growth, advertising, promotion and pricing.

Get more information on our series and purchase tickets here

Troy Camp

Recently, we have been reaching out to organizations with similar service-minded values to get the word out about USC Troy Camp. Our goal is to build relationships with organizations such as the South Orange County Alumni Club to jointly help children in the LA area.  We invite your membership to our 2nd Annual USC Troy Camp Gala.

Attached you will find a explaining our programs in more detail.  We look forward to working with you. Thank you!

Best Regards,

Collin Evans
USC Troy Camp
Director of Public and Alumni Relations
public.relations@troycamp.org

Troy Camp Gala

Brochure (front)

Brochure (back)

2010 USC Orange County Distinguished Speakers Series

featuring

HOWARD GILLMAN

Dean of the USC College of Letters, Arts & Sciences and professor of political science and history

“A Glimpse of the Future: Predicting the Next 10 Years for the College”

Wednesday, February 24, 2010 @ 7:00 p.m.
USC ORANGE COUNTY CENTER
2300 Michelson Drive, Room C
Irvine, CA 92612
Tickets $15

HOWARD GILLMAN is dean of the USC College of Letters, Arts & Sciences and professor of political science and history. He is a nationally recognized scholar, longtime faculty member and leader in university and community affairs. Dean Gillman has received numerous scholarly awards and been recognized repeatedly for his teaching, service and mentorship. He will discuss efforts to prepare the College to address the changing nature of undergraduate education, graduate training and academic scholarship.

Get more information on our series and purchase tickets here.