August 27, 2025
Dear Faculty and Staff,
During this first week of classes, I am particularly grateful for everything you do to teach and support our students, while also advancing our broader mission of academic, research, and clinical excellence. Our students and patients are always at the core of our mission, but we could not serve them without our most valuable resource, which is all of you.
As we start this new academic year together, I want to provide a brief update on our financial resilience efforts, which have had a painful impact on many members of our Trojan Family. I also want to reflect on recent conversations with many of you, and share my excitement about the opportunities ahead for USC to advance its mission and impact.
Financial Resilience Update
My July 14 letter explained why the university needed to address our structural deficit and federal funding uncertainties quickly and decisively. You will be receiving a more detailed update on the university’s financial resilience efforts within the next few weeks, but in the meantime, I can share with you that our approach has been working. Thanks to tireless work by so many people across the university and health system, most of our schools and units, including Keck Medicine, have either begun implementing or completed their plans to reduce operating expenses in ways that protect both our academic mission and the student and patient experience. While these actions are necessary to ensure our university’s future, the resulting layoffs are difficult and disheartening in so many ways. To each and every impacted member of our Trojan Family, I want to extend my deepest compassion and gratitude for your service to USC.
Feedback from Town Halls
As a result of our budget challenges, I’ve had the privilege of speaking directly and in person with over 5,000 faculty and staff members over the last several weeks. Thank you to everyone who has shown up to listen, engage, and share your candid perspectives and suggestions for how we can improve as a university. From these sessions have emerged some common themes.
First, it is clear – even amidst the frustrations and anxiety over our current challenges – how much our community loves USC and wants to contribute their ideas and expertise to help the university be the best that it can be. The hundreds of comments that we’ve received through the financial resilience website also reflect a hunger for more direct engagement with university leadership. Such engagement — in both directions — is critical to building the institutional alignment needed to drive our most ambitious aspirations. Alongside my ongoing consultation with the Staff Assembly, Academic Senate, and faculty and staff across the university, I am forming a Faculty Advisory Committee that will share its perspectives and ideas on how to advance academic excellence at USC.
Second, our community wants to know that the hard work they are doing will be worth it in the end – both for themselves and for the university. They want to understand that the university is moving in the right direction, based on a shared set of values, and has a clear plan for turning our current challenges into opportunities. The university’s leadership — including the Board of Trustees, deans, and senior leaders — is completely aligned and determined to carry out precisely such a plan this year. USC deserves nothing less.
Priorities for the Year Ahead
With the significant progress we are making to address our financial challenges, we can now focus our attention on some important opportunities for USC to advance its mission and global reputation for excellence. These opportunities include:
(1) Refocusing on the basics of academic excellence and student success. Last year, Provost Andrew Guzman charged a Student Success Working Group to identify opportunities for USC to raise the bar on graduation rates, post-graduation employment, and other key student outcomes. That working group is now working with the deans and other senior leaders to make measurable progress toward these goals this year. The provost will also be leading a broader academic excellence initiative with details that will be announced soon.
(2) Incorporating AI into teaching, research, and operations in a responsible, ethical, and humane way. I have asked Marshall Dean Geoff Garrett to lead an AI Strategy Committee – comprised of other deans and experts across the university – that will develop recommendations around what we teach, how we teach it, and to whom, as AI transforms learning and work. This committee will build on new teaching resources on AI being offered by the Center for Excellence in Teaching, and engage the broader university community – including students – throughout the coming year. As for research, USC has over three dozen different institutes, centers, and labs doing work relating to AI, and we have an opportunity to better coordinate, focus, and invest in these efforts to maximize their impact.
(3) Developing new private partnership models to diversify research funding and expand opportunities for our students and faculty. This is an important area of focus given the shifts in federal research support. I have asked Dr. Ishwar Puri, senior vice president for research and innovation, and Andy Wilson, vice president of business development for health affairs, to join me in co-leading this initiative, which will bring in other senior leaders and build on existing private partnerships across the university and health system.
(4) Strengthening a shared culture grounded in the values of academic freedom, open dialogue, and mutual respect. The Joint Provost-Academic Senate’s Task Force on Academic Freedom and Professional Responsibility, which was tasked last year with examining the rights and responsibilities of faculty in defending and promoting academic freedom, has issued a Preliminary Report. I want to thank the task force’s co-leaders, Professors John Matsusaka and Robert Rasmussen, as well as the other members of the task force, for their thoughtful recommendations. I have asked Professor Neeraj Sood, a member of the task force, to help advance this work as the president’s special advisor on open dialogue. Both of us are deeply committed to ensuring that USC remains a place where our students, faculty, and staff don’t just tolerate different viewpoints but actively seek them out. By fostering a robust culture of open and constructive dialogue, we not only fuel academic excellence but equip our students with the civic values and professional skills needed to navigate — and improve — an increasingly complex and polarized world.
In short, I could not be more excited about what we will accomplish together in the year ahead. More information about the initiatives described above will be posted on the president’s website. Thank you for your deep commitment to USC and our mission of advancing knowledge and transforming lives.
Fight On!
Beong-Soo Kim
Interim President