At the University of Southern California, there are a few different incarnations of prestige. They reside in athletic tradition, celebrity donations, high-profile speakers, a couple of stellar undergraduate programs, and USC’s status as a top-tier research institution. This is not an exhaustive list, but it is illustrative of how we measure worth at our school. I can tell you where to find the George Lucas Building, or the Iovine and Young Academy; I can tell you about when I saw Bill Clinton speak in Bovard Auditorium; I can show you the Heisman trophies in Heritage Hall (including O.J. Simpson’s); I can give you the U.S. Report rankings on the Annenberg School for Journalism & Communication and the Thornton School of Music. And yet, I know nothing about the research that goes on within the 0.353125 square miles of our campus.

It takes but a cursory exploration of USC’s research website to see some of the fascinating projects that are currently in the works by faculty and students alike. Among the headlines today:

    –We are not alone: Fish get arthritis, too

    –USC stem cell researchers develop new ways to study ‘organs on a chip’

    –Engineers try to get to the heart of real love

The university should be, first and foremost, a place of learning. We come here to earn a degree, yes, but also for exposure to ideas that can’t necessarily be accessed by the general public. Our understanding of education has shifted amidst an explosion of open-source learning, and the ensuing democratization of information. However, the fact remains that we are as close to the cutting edge of discovery as we could hope to be. Why are we not taking full advantage of this privilege?

I think it is either a lack of interest, or a lack of awareness that allows for this commonplace disinterest. Pave paradise, put up a parking lot.

So to take advantage of my remaining time as a USC student, I will be spending my final year finding professors who are doing things that interest me, inspire me, or just seem kinda cool.  I will be writing about them every other week, and I hope that through this blog someone, maybe you, will find something, too.

Kevin Litman-Navarro is a senior majoring in philosophy and minoring in classics. His column, “Academia Nuts,” runs every other Thursday.

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