C. L. Max Nikias Named 11th USC President

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Southern California
1

<p>Just got this in an email a few minutes ago...</p>

<p>TO: The USC Community</p>

<p>FROM: Edward P. Roski, Jr., Chairman, USC Board of Trustees</p>

<p>DATE: March 11, 2010</p>

<p>SUBJECT: C. L. Max Nikias is named 11th president of USC</p>

<p>Last night, by a unanimous vote, the Board of Trustees elected C. L. Max Nikias, USC executive vice president and provost, to serve as the 11th president of the University of Southern California, effective in August 2010.</p>

<p>As you can see from the attached announcement, Max is a remarkable and inspiring leader, a brilliant scholar, and the best possible person to lead our university forward. Because of what he has already accomplished at USC, and his bold and exciting vision for the future, he was the unanimous choice of the search advisory committee, whose members spent hundreds of hours reviewing portfolios and letters of nomination to get to 75 serious candidates, and then interviewing seven finalists – an impressive and diverse group of university presidents and provosts.</p>

<p>The committee's work also benefitted from the thoughtful and insightful comments of the students, faculty, alumni leaders, community representatives, staff, and various university supporters and friends who participated in the 15 constituent group meetings that were held on campus between November and January. They, along with the many other individuals who sent in their ideas and recommendations, provided invaluable advice and ideas to the Trustees and to the advisory committee.</p>

<p>And finally, I want to acknowledge our consultant, Bill Funk, who worked diligently to make this an exhaustive international search, and to the members of our Board of Trustees for their wise counsel in this critical matter.</p>

<p>President Steve Sample will, of course, continue to lead USC until Max Nikias assumes his new duties on August 3, 2010.</p>

<p>The Presidential Advisory Search Committee, which I chaired, included the following members of our university community:</p>

<p>USC Trustees</p>

<p>• Wallis Annenberg, chairman, president, and CEO of the Annenberg Foundation</p>

<p>• Frank Cruz, president of Cruz and Associates, co-founder of Telemundo, former chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting</p>

<p>• Stanley Gold, chairman emeritus of the USC Board of Trustees, president of Shamrock Holdings and Shamrock Capital Advisors</p>

<p>• Ray Irani, chairman and CEO of Occidental Petroleum Corporation</p>

<p>• Ronald Sugar, chairman emeritus of Northrop Grumman Corporation</p>

<p>• Ronald Tutor, chairman and CEO of the Tutor Perini Corporation</p>

<p>USC Faculty</p>

<p>• Warren Bennis, University Professor; Distinguished Professor of Business Administration, USC Marshall School of Business; founding chairman of USC’s Leadership Institute; author of 30 books on leadership (a field of study he pioneered), change, and creative collaboration; former president of the University of Cincinnati</p>

<p>• Solomon Golomb, University Professor; Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering and Mathematics; holder of the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Chair in Communications, USC Viterbi School of Engineering, with a joint appointment in the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences; member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; a Fellow of both the IEEE and the American Association for the Advancement of Science; recipient of the USC Presidential Medallion and the Shannon Award of the IEEE’s Information Theory Society</p>

<p>• Velina Hasu Houston, professor, director of the Dramatic Writing Program, associate dean of faculty, USC School of Theatre; internationally acclaimed playwright, published poet, essayist, and screenwriter who has had a significant impact on Pan-Asian American feminist dramatic literature; recipient of the inaugural USC Provost’s Mentoring Award</p>

<p>• Michael Nichol, professor of clinical pharmacy and pharmaceutical economics and policy, USC School of Pharmacy, and director of Graduate Programs in Health, USC School of Policy, Planning and Development, with joint appointments in the USC Davis School of Gerontology and the USC School of Policy, Planning, and Development; current member of the USC Academic Senate Executive Board and past president of the USC Faculty</p>

<p>• Vaughn Starnes, M.D., Distinguished Professor and Chairman, Department of Surgery, surgeon-in-chief at the USC University Hospital and the USC Norris Cancer Hospital, H. Russell Smith Foundation Chair for Cardiovascular Thoracic Research, Keck School of Medicine of USC; executive director of the USC CardioVascular Thoracic Institute</p>

<p>• Kevin Starr, University Professor; professor of history, USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences; California state librarian emeritus; author of multivolume series on the history of California; recipient of the 2006 National Humanities Medal</p>

2

<p>Congratulations C. L. Max Nikias!</p>

3

<p>This is WONDERFUL NEWS! I am excited for USC and the future President Nikias!</p>

4

<p>March 11, 2010 6:30 AM</p>

<p>C. L. Max Nikias, USC executive vice president and provost, will become the 11th president of the University of Southern California on Aug. 3. His appointment was announced today by Edward P. Roski, Jr., chairman of the USC Board of Trustees.</p>

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

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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 firms serving higher education.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>“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.”</p>

<p>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.”</p>

<p>Said Nikias: “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. 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.</p>

<p>“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.”</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>“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.”</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>He recruited new leadership to the Keck School of Medicine of USC, 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 Corp. to USC.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>In April 2008, he was named the 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.</p>

<p>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 the National Science Foundation was ranked first out of 117, including proposals from America’s top-ranked research universities.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>Nikias was the only dean in USC’s history to secure more than $200 million in such a brief period of time. He recruited 30 world-class faculty members to the USC Viterbi School and also tripled the number of women on the faculty.</p>

<p>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).</p>

<p>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.</p>

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

5

<p>From the LA Times:</p>

<p>[USC</a> Provost C.L. Max Nikias to succeed Steven Sample as president | L.A. NOW | Los Angeles Times](<a href=“Archive blogs”>Archive blogs)</p>

6

<p>What are everyone’s thoughts?</p>

<p>Is he truly the best man for the job?</p>

7

<p>It’s about raising $$$$, and from that angle he appears to be superbly qualified.</p>

8

<p>This is awesome!</p>