Our Communities

About Us

In 1992, USC President Steven B. Sample articulated five university-community initiatives aimed at focusing the university’s outreach and public-service programs on making a visible difference in the neighborhoods surrounding the University Park and Health Sciences campuses.

The five initiatives direct the university to:

• Provide educational, cultural and developmental opportunities for every child who lives in our immediate neighborhoods.
• Work with our neighbors, city and county officials, and the police to ensure safer streets in the areas surrounding our two campuses.
• Encourage more entrepreneurs, and especially minority entrepreneurs, to establish businesses in the immediate vicinity of our campuses.
• Encourage more USC employees, and especially our lower-paid long-term employees, to own and occupy housing in the immediate vicinity of our campuses.
• Preferentially employ at USC more persons who have lived in our immediate neighborhoods for all of the past five years.

Academic units across the university - from the USC Thornton School of Music to the School of Dentistry, from the USC College to the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and USC Marshall School of Business - are deeply involved in carrying out the initiatives. The Office of Student Affairs coordinates student volunteer and outreach efforts, and administrative offices such as Financial and Business Services oversee housing and hiring programs.

Responsibility for overseeing the university’s overall implementation of the five university-community initiatives lies with the USC Office of Government and Community Relations. This office is charged with managing USC’s relationships with all of its external constituencies, including neighborhood residents, civic leaders and other stakeholders from the neighborhoods surrounding the University Park and Health Sciences campuses as well as government officials at the local, state and national levels. The USC Office of Civic and Community Relations, established in 1985 and now part of the Office of Government and Community Relations, is responsible for administering university-wide initiatives as well as for documenting and evaluating USC’s community involvement.