Dean Yannis Yortsos Vision for the USC Viterbi School
An exciting new chapter in the history of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering is about to unfold. With my appointment as dean now official, I would like to share with you my thoughts, plans, hopes and expectations for our future.
The trust and confidence bestowed upon me by USC President Steven Sample, one of the nation’s great educational leaders, fills me with a deep sense of humility. The success of a school’s leadership is shaped largely by the central administration of its university. At USC, we are fortunate to have great academic leaders – President Sample and Provost C. L. Nikias – available to counsel, advise and help us realize our ambitions and goals.
The Viterbi School has also been blessed by a remarkable succession of outstanding deans who worked tirelessly and innovatively in the last decades to bring it to its current prominence. My challenge is to continue and enhance their legacy. It is a heavy responsibility, one that I embrace with full awareness, respect and tremendous excitement.
I embark in this new endeavor eagerly, having gratefully enjoyed almost three decades of opportunities that USC has afforded me. I enter this new phase of my academic life motivated by a sense of duty to serve and a deep desire to honor the trust that has been extended to me. I want to see the place where I have invested all of my professional life get even better.
During the past 5 years, as a senior associate dean and as the interim, I have been immersed in the running of a complex, high-caliber organization with an impressive hundred-year history and lofty ambitions for the future. I have seen and influenced to various degrees how it works, respires and moves. This vantage point has given me the privilege of a higher stage upon which to think, plan, visualize, dream and execute. I believe that I have come to understand more deeply what motivates and engages faculty, staff, students, alumni and friends, and how to help move this dynamic and complex entity forward.
In this phase of its history, the school is on an upward trajectory.
The challenge is to solidify our implied promise by reaching new plateaus of excellence. The path to success has been traced before. But the vision for the school will be different. Our influence has grown, nationally and globally. And our world has changed.
Engineering is undergoing a fundamental transformation, fueled by the tremendous technological advances in recent years. As aptly described in the flat world of Thomas Friedman, the playing field has been leveled across the globe. The changes are ubiquitous. Rising economies in the former third world put increasing pressures on natural resources, human capital, wages and the global environment.
Moreover, the economic health of the US depends crucially on technological innovation. Recent reports of the National Academies urge the federal government for new investments in science and engineering in order to preserve the US technological and innovation edge. Engineering schools will be called to manage this profound change. And the Viterbi School should lead this effort.
The ever-increasing capacity of computers has led some to pronounce a new era, in which value is created by the seamless blending of
"left-brain" and "right-brain" skills. This new world will require alliances of engineering with other disciplines, and across the globe. Conversely, professionals in other disciplines will need engineering to achieve a "left-brain" balance. The anytime-anywhere access of knowledge has led to an unprecedented transparency, shifting the balance from the provider to the customer, boldly challenging the old order. Customer needs, whether in products, education or medicine will be custom-made and personalized, rather than mass-produced, as in the old engineering (and education) paradigms. These unprecedented changes engender great challenges but also precious opportunities, which the Viterbi School should uncover and exploit.
Whether or not one agrees with these bold pronouncements, it is certain that the near future will be deeply influenced by profound global and value-creation shifts. This influence will be equally felt in education and research. In the US it will likely lead to a new engineer with ambidextrous analytical and creative skills. Sketches of this new professional were drawn in the NAE report of the Engineer of 2020. The Viterbi School, to claiming its place among the elite engineering schools, must shape this future, be a leader of this transformation, and take advantage of the opportunities that will arise. The challenges will be both within and outside USC, regionally, nationally and globally.
I see, therefore, that the essence of the Viterbi School’s challenge in the coming years is to:
Solidify our prominence among the elite engineering schools in the nation, in the context of a rapidly changing global, contextual and economic landscape, and lead the effort to shape a new paradigm in engineering education and research.
We should strive to become:
- The leader at USC in all quality metrics related to education, research and innovation, including distance learning and service learning…
- A leader nationwide in molding new paradigms of engineering education and research, and in influencing national policy…
- A national leader in the creation of innovation…
- A leader in global outreach and the shaping of new global models…
While at the same time continuing to:
- Solidify our place among the elite engineering schools in the nation and
- Deliver excellence in all our endeavors.
Can these goals be accomplished? I submit that the answer is an emphatic yes. But it will require the constructive engagement and attention of all the Viterbi constituencies, a proactive leadership, a responsive and collegial administration, bold initiatives, innovative management of resources, and the steering and vision needed to create avalanches of excellence. This multi-objective effort will demand the energy and commitment of faculty, students, staff, the Board of Councilors, alumni, donors and friends.
Solidifying the school's standings will be measured by our ability to reach top-10 rankings in any quality surveys, regardless of the metrics used. Continuing the success of the last few years in the award of new centers of research excellence will be crucial. It will also require, in this era of interdisciplinarity, that several of our departments claim top-10 status.
The school's faculty is its foundation and its essence. Engaging and motivating all its members will be a prerequisite to any of our endeavors. Constantly improving its quality, through the recruitment of outstanding young and prominent senior faculty in key areas, and its composition, by increasing the percentage of under-represented and female faculty, should be of the highest priority.
The research enterprise must remain the school's jewel. It should be nurtured in all its current spires of excellence in the school and at our Information Sciences Institute, in our three national centers and all our other research centers. Enhancing our existing excellence in fields ranging from communications to information science to engineering sciences, we should prepare to build strength in exciting new research areas, in close collaboration with the USC Keck School of Medicine and the College, and taking full advantage of the synergies likely to develop in the new Provost’s initiatives: in biomedical and biochemical technologies; in nanotechnology, quantum computing and molecular electronics; in energy and alternative energy sources, which in the words of President Shirley Jackson of RPI is the "arms race of the 21st century;" and in the management of natural resources and environmental quality.
I am thrilled with the emergence of engineering as an enabling technology throughout the sciences and the arts. I envision a new research enterprise that will solve up-to-now intractable systems problems in other sciences, by the import of engineering tools and methodologies. And with the USC Stevens Institute now a university-wide priority, the Viterbi School is ideally positioned to play a vital role in technology commercialization.
We must revise our undergraduate curricula to prepare the new engineer – a professional equipped with strong analytical capabilities, the latest in cutting-edge technologies (including biology, which is becoming the new pillar of engineering), the skills for innovation, entrepreneurship, and leadership, and the ease to function in a global environment. We must recruit the best, retain those we attract, provide a unique education (learner-centered, technology-enhanced, enriched with community, service learning and global immersion), and graduate them complete with career placement.
We must strive for a fully supported PhD class, and aim for the unrestricted support of all qualified first-year PhD students. The recruitment of a diverse group of high-quality domestic and international students, and their successful placement after graduation, is a necessity.
Our Distance Education Network (DEN) is a tool of unparalleled quality and reach: From the global offering of our MS educational programs, to K-12 outreach and to life-long learning for alumni and professionals. And given its positioning and reputation, it is an invaluable resource that we need to exploit and grow.
Globalization is making the interaction between overseas and US universities a two-way street. As never before, we must now compete with international institutions for graduate students from overseas.
The changing engineering job market is dramatically affecting the way corporations employ, recruit and support research. We must aggressively explore potential opportunities for interaction and/or partnerships in this new global context, with a physical or virtual presence overseas, which is an option that must be carefully considered.
Strong support from our alumni, donors and friends will be crucial to achieving our vision and goals. We are now completing the fifth year of a seven-year fundraising initiative with a $300 million goal. The pace is ahead of the target and was highlighted in the past year by two outstanding gifts, the naming of the Mork Family Department of
Chemical Engineering and Materials Science and the Klein Institute for Undergraduate Engineering Life. Yet, our endowment income remains below what it should be. It is of paramount importance, therefore, that our fundraising efforts continue at the same or even accelerated level of intensity in the years to come.
Last but not least, the school's administration must remain nimble, responsive and caring. Nurturing and developing the staff, and modernizing the infrastructure, virtual, digital and real, is an absolute necessity to accomplish our goals. The full engagement and support of our excellent staff will be an invaluable resource to propel the school forward.
Our goals are ambitious, as they should be. The challenges are daunting, in proportion to our ambitions. But the ingredients to meet them successfully are all here. They are the strong constituencies of the Viterbi School, and the culture and tradition of 100 years of USC engineering, with each year stronger than the previous. As the new dean of the school I will embody your dreams and aspirations and will devote all my energy for the school to reach new heights of excellence.
I am thrilled to respond to this momentous call and look forward to working with each of you in this exciting new chapter of the school's history.
