<p>Star wars is the best thing that happened to this world</p>
<p>had no idea president sample has raised more than four BILLION dollars.</p>
<p>that's more than almost every state university has raised for each of their collective lifetimes. and that explains why it's not only trojan football that has been zooming into the elite class.</p>
<p>wow.</p>
<p>The location for the new building (where around $75mil of the gift is going) will be where the facilities management trailers currently sit, and the parking lot beside them (north of Heritage hall & the intramural field). With another building supposedly going up where the field is now (athletic training facilities & offices), that area of campus sounds like it will be getting crowded pretty quick.</p>
<p>Does anyone know what year Viterbi gave the donation? My son says that building is awesome. I am just wondering how long it takes before the donated money becomes a nice building.</p>
<p>I believe that gift was made in 2004. The thing with these big donations is that they know they are coming- the new Lucas has already been mostly designed. I've talked to someone who saw renderings of it (unfortunately, he described it as "classic look with modern amenities". boo), and the Daily Trojan article mentioned that people had already been invited to the groundbreaking in October before the donation was officially made, with the donors name left off. So USC is clearly permitted, bid (probably Matt or Clark Construction, their current favs), and ready to go. They've been working towards this for at least a year if the DT is correct about groundbreaking in October.</p>
<p>another point is that private schools can move on building way faster than publics can. you scoop up the cash and prez sample has the bulldozers at the ready, wheels rolling. that's what has propelled nearby chapman from a sleepy backwater campus to a "little SC" as they admit.</p>
<p>speaking of nice digs, the marshall school ain't bad either.</p>
<p>I believe viterbi donated in fall 2004...</p>
<p>also, viterbi didn't donate the building. Ronald Tudor did, and it flew up really fast (about 9 months I think), but that could be because Tudor owns the construction company (Tudor-Saliba) and my guess is that buildings on his dime go up as fast as possible :)</p>
<p>^^entirely a political move to get more jobs on campus. Didn't seem to work too well, though- next big jobs available all went to Matt and Clark.</p>
<p>
[quote]
speaking of nice digs, the marshall school ain't bad either.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>as a senior in marshall, i can testify the marshall buildings are in terrible shape. For such a distinguished undergrad business program, the facilities are not up to par. just compare the undergrad buildings (Hoffman, Bridge, Accounting Builiding) to the graduate (Popovich). At least the school is redoing all the buildings over the next couple years... i'm sure it will be in beautiful shape afterwards.</p>
<p>Yeah every time someone says the Marshall buildings are really nice, I think, "Oh yeah, Popovich..." Since I'm an undergrad, my business friends have classes at Hoffman and Bridge, and I often forget that Popovich is part of Marshall too.</p>
<p>upgrading buildings is a double-edged sword, when you don't then people complain about the outdated buildings, but when you do, people complain about the building being closed and having to move while it's upgraded.</p>
<p>not an easy thing to manage, really.</p>
<p>That's why construction crews wait outside for the last of the graduation ceremonies to be over in the spring, and work double-shift over the summer. It can't always happen, obviously, but USC tries to get all the work it can done in the summertime when there are fewer students on campus.</p>
<p>I've read that they do their very best to be sure they do all the noisiest work over the summer when there are the fewest students (like driving piles, etc.) That's a very thoughtful & sensible way to do construction, from the students & parents perspective.</p>
<p>good for all of you in trojan land...not always how things are done on other campuses around the state!</p>
<p>George Lucas can help more USC rise in the ranking games if he has joined in the faculty -- making himself accessible to USC students -- than his donating money. His pressence in the school is a more magnet to top students than his donations.</p>
<p>^ explain that, because last i checked, this year's applicants and matriculants had higher stats than those at UCLA and USC had a more than comparable acceptance rate...</p>
<p>^ Thats right. USC had higher SATs, Higher highschool GPAs, and the exact same acceptance rate as ucla.</p>
<p>they must be getting nervous in westwood if they are spending their time on the USC board</p>
<p>Just leave this thread alone, everyone. It's going to go way off-topic if you don't.</p>
<p>Why? Because his daughter started attending last spring. I went to high school with her...</p>
<p>Regardless, being a Cinematic Arts acceptee, I have no complaints here!</p>