Apply Now for 2025

Summer 2025 Advanced Standing and Fall 2025 
Applications NOW OPEN for On-Campus MSW

USC University of Southern California

News Archive

2014

  • By age 12, Maurissa Sorensen had experienced abuse, depression and much uncertainty. She knew something needed to change. So Sorensen made an adult decision: she advocated to enter herself into the foster care system to seek a better life, one that didn’t include mental hospital visits and an abusive home.

    “I figured out early on in life that I needed the support of people, and I knew if I stayed with my mom that I would have never gotten better,” Sorensen said.

  • Iris Chi, the Chinese-American Golden Age Association/Frances Wu Chair for the Chinese Elderly at the USC School of Social Work and a senior scientist at the USC Edward R. Roybal Institute on Aging, has been named a fellow to the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare, the first national society honoring excellence in the research and practice of social work.

    “It’s a great honor to be elected to the academy,” said Chi, who also holds a joint appointment in the USC Davis School of Gerontology. “It is one of the highest honors in the social work profession.”

  • Transitioning into new schools and coping through a parent’s wartime deployment can increase the risks that military children are victimized by other students and are carrying weapons to school, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Southern California.