2025 Commencement

Please visit our commencement page for all information about 
our ceremony on May 16.

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Fall 2025 Applications NOW OPEN for On-Campus MSW

USC University of Southern California

News Archive

  • Tania Bradkin possesses a unique dedication to the human condition.

    A third-year MSW@USC student at the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work and part-time commissioner of social services for the City of Santa Monica, the 46-year-old Bradkin is a proud single mother of 14-year-old twins, preschool teacher and a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) for foster children in Los Angeles County.

  • Suzanne Dworak-Peck

    Social work pioneer Suzanne Dworak-Peck ’65, MSW ’67, has donated a historic $60 million to endow and name the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, cementing its standing as one of the world’s most innovative institutions within the discipline and strengthening its renowned educational and research programs. The gift is one of the largest contributions from an individual to a school of its kind.

  • Barbara Jury, ’50, has seen some radical changes in nursing since she started working in the profession in the 1950s.

    Glass syringes are now plastic and disposable. Measuring a patient’s vitals is now done by computer.

    “Who knows where nursing will go in time,” Jury said. “But you still have to remember it’s going to come down to a nurse reinforcing the care every day.”

  • In today’s tech age, growing up without access to a computer and the Internet is a major disadvantage.

    For most adolescents, it’s not an issue; 90 percent of teens in the United States have a computer in their home. However, it’s a different story for youth in foster care.

  • A typical nightmare scenario goes something like this: Robots first replace autoworkers on the assembly line. Then they move into white-collar jobs, writing articles, drafting legal documents and reading X-rays. Finally, the robots, growing ever smarter through machine learning and Big Data, displace even the most highly trained workers. The result: Unemployment rates skyrocket and the economy craters.

  • USC and the Cohen Veterans Network will open a free mental health clinic in Los Angeles to help veterans and their families make the transition to civilian life.

  • One-fourth of all online comments at the end of news articles about sexual assault and rape include victim-blaming statements, new research out of the University of Southern California shows.

    The study examined 52 articles and found that only one did not contain comments offering support for the accused perpetrator, the study said. Victim-blaming statements appeared in 1,097 of the 4,239 comments ― or just over 25 percent of them.

  • Alumna Suzanne Dworak-Peck, who has pioneered modern social work by elevating the profession on a global scale through policy, advocacy and the media, has assumed the role of chair of the USC School of Social Work’s Board of Councilors.

  • When USC President C. L. Max Nikias gave the USC School of Social Work a goal of $75 million as part of the $6 billion Campaign for the University of Southern California, Dean Marilyn Flynn initially thought it might be a good time for her to retire. “Then I thought, what if we actually did it?” she said. “Wouldn’t that be something!”

  • They crowd onto the roofs of trains and buses. They cross miles of open desert in the blistering sun. They face robbery, rape and violence.

    It’s a dangerous and traumatic journey for many unaccompanied children and adolescents heading north from Central America toward countries like Mexico and the United States. But it’s a risk they are willing to take to escape one of the world’s deadliest regions.