News Archive
Students
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USC is one of the first universities in the nation to offer a criminal justice concentration specifically focused on youth.
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Two years ago, Allison Chapman decided she was no longer going to put off earning an advanced degree. The daughter of a licensed clinical social worker (LCSW) and granddaughter of a clinical psychologist, she grew up in a family who volunteered together in the community.
“I was always at a shelter or other service organization, always raised to do something for someone else,” Chapman said. “I feel like I’ve been a social worker my whole life.”
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In March of 2023, Nicole Carson found herself driving across the island of Guam in a total blackout at two o’clock in the morning. Electricity across most of the island was out following a super typhoon that had hit the previous week. A mere three weeks earlier she had arrived on the island with her husband and four-year-old daughter. It was an unexpected change of assignment for her husband, a chief navy diver in the U.S. Navy.
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In May 2025, Lisa Whealy receives her Doctor of Social Work (DSW) from the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work. Her path to completing this degree, however, was a journey of discovery.
At the beginning of 2020, Lisa Whealy was in her final semester to complete a master’s degree in communication management from USC Annenberg, and self-employed as a music journalist and publicist. Then, the pandemic hit.
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The USC PhD Achievement Awards recognize six doctoral candidates, and their primary faculty advisor, from across the university, with exceptional academic profiles. Among the recipients for 2025 are PhD candidate Lucinda Adjesiwor and Associate Professor Julie Cederbaum of the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work.
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In the 2023-2024 season, the USC Trojan Boxing Club had five athletes on the winner’s podium at the U.S. Intercollegiate Boxing Association (USIBA) National Championships, including the award for Best Male Boxer of the Tournament. It also produced USC’s first ever National Collegiate Boxing Association (NCBA) champion, Jordan King, a business administration major at USC Marshall School of Business. King received The John J. Fitzpatrick 2024 Most Outstanding Boxer Male award for his performance at the NCBA championships.
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When Cat Birkenfeld, BA ’23, was a child, she passed a juvenile detention camp on her way to school every day. She remembers peppering her mother with questions about why those kids were there. The bridge between their experiences seemed to her both insurmountably vast and also merely a matter of chance.
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Exercise and team sports have been proven to provide clear mental health benefits according to numerous studies. For some athletes who reach an elite level, sports can also be an opportunity to gain an educational scholarship and degree, or help lift their families out of poverty. Yet, despite these benefits, elite collegiate athletes display higher risk for anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation than their peers.
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Social work doctoral graduates awarded prestigious postdoc fellowships for novel research approachesAcademia can be a competitive landscape, but for two doctoral candidates completing their PhD studies in May 2024 at the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, it has been an opportunity to lift each other up. The educational journeys of Adriane Clomax (she/her) and Rory O’Brien (they/them) mirrored each other as recipients of the Oakley Fellowship endowed by the USC Provost. Only eight such fellowships are awarded to PhD candidates university-wide each year.
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Rebekah Edmondson says it was her duty to support the members of a specially trained unit she worked alongside during her multiple deployments to Afghanistan.