usc creative writing faculty

Return to: USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences    

Writing Program courses are designed to help students develop practices of reading, writing and critical reasoning that are necessary for success in academic and professional discourse. Writing Program pedagogy emphasizes small classes and frequent conferences in order to provide the highly individuated instruction and careful feedback necessary to extend the writing process and enhance the rhetorical judgment of each student. To meet the university’s writing requirement, students must complete WRIT 150    (or its equivalent) and an advanced writing course, WRIT 340   .

Jefferson Building 150 (JEF 150, mc 1293) (213) 740-1980 FAX: (213) 740-4100 Email: [email protected] dornsife.usc.edu/writing-program  

Director: Norah Ashe, PhD

Professor (Teaching): Diana Blaine, PhD

Associate Professors (Teaching): Norah Ashe, PhD; Stephanie Bower, PhD; Michael Bunn, PhD; Jeffrey Chisum, PhD; James Condon VII, PhD; Andrew De Silva, MPW; William Feuer, PhD; Nathalie Joseph, PhD; Stephen Mack, PhD; Matthew Manson, PhD; Mark Marino, PhD; Indra Mukhopadhyay, PhD; John Murray, EdD; Erika Nanes, PhD; Shefali Rajamannar, PhD; Eric Rawson, PhD; Sandra Ross, MA; Scott Smith, PhD; David Tomkins, PhD; Robert Waller Jr., MPW; William Wyatt, MPW

Assistant Professors (Teaching): Jennifer Sopchockchai Bankard, PhD; Jessica Wells Cantiello, PhD; LauraAnne Carroll-Adler, PhD; James Clements, PhD; Carlos Delgado, MFA; Elizabeth Durst, PhD; Antonio Elefano, JD; Jay Fisher, MPW; Farida Habeeb, PhD; Amanda Hobmeier, PhD; Ashley Karlin, PhD; Rory Lukins, PhD; P.T. McNiff, MPW; Sarah Mesle, PhD; Amy Meyerson, MPW; Cory Nelson, PhD; Daniel Pecchenino, PhD; Steve Posner, MPW; DeAnna Rivera, JD; Deborah Sims, PhD; Ellen Wayland-Smith, PhD

Lecturers: Emily Artiano, PhD; Justin Bibler, PhD; Tamara Black, PhD; Amanda Bloom, PhD; Ryan Boyd, PhD; Brent Chappelow, PhD; Nicholas De Dominic, MFA; Daniel Dissinger, PhD; Amber Foster, PhD; Mary Glavan, PhD; Rochelle Gold, PhD; William Gorski, PhD; Taiyaba Husain, MFA; Meridith Kruse, PhD; Kate Levin, MFA; Dana Milstein, PhD; Meghan Olivas, PhD; Vanessa Osborne, PhD; Benjamin Pack, MPW; Leah Pate, PhD; Stephanie Payne, MFA; Jessica Piazza, PhD; Alisa Sanchez, PhD; Atia, Sattar, PhD; Anne Schindel, PhD; Mary Traester, PhD

Lower-Division Requirement

WRIT 150 Writing and Critical Reasoning–Thematic Approaches    focuses on the rhetorical principles and techniques necessary for successful college-level writing. Special attention is paid to critical thinking and reading, sentence-level fluency, research techniques, and the elements of academic argument and reasoning. WRIT 150    will not satisfy the lower-division writing requirement if taken on a Pass/No Pass basis.

Advanced Writing Requirement

All students at USC, except those who satisfy their general education requirements through the Thematic Option Program, must complete WRIT 340 Advanced Writing   , an upper-division course designed to help students write on topics related to their disciplinary or professional interests. Students usually enroll in WRIT 340    in their junior year, and may not take the course earlier than their sophomore year. Different schools within the university offer sections of this course. Students should consult their major departments to determine which version of WRIT 340    best complements their program of study. WRIT 340    will not satisfy the university’s advanced writing requirement if taken on a Pass/No Pass basis.

All classes that meet the university’s advanced writing requirement teach students to write clear, grammatical, well-structured prose; to discover and convey complex ideas critically; and to appreciate the nuances of effective argumentation. The principal aim of the requirement is to develop a student’s capacity to formulate thoughtful and compelling writing for specific academic, professional and public audiences.

Preparatory Course Work

Some students are better served by taking a preparatory course before they enroll in WRIT 150   . Entering freshmen who score below a specified level on the verbal portion of the SAT take the University Writing Examination. Based on the results of this examination, certain students enroll in WRIT 120 Introduction to College Writing    or  WRIT 121 Introduction to College Writing in a Second Language    during their first semester at USC.

International students take the University Writing Examination after having completed any course work required by the American Language Institute.

Transfer Credit

Students may complete the lower-division requirement by completing an equivalent second-semester composition course that is taken for a letter grade option (not Pass/No Pass) at another institution after high school graduation and prior to enrolling at USC. Equivalent transfer credit is determined by the university’s articulation officer. The advanced writing requirement must be completed at USC.

Time Limits

Students should complete the lower-division writing course requirement by the end of their first year at USC and must complete it before they enroll in their sixty-fifth unit. Transfer students who have not completed the lower-division requirement prior to entering USC should enroll in WRIT 150    during their first semester at USC, and must enroll in WRIT 150    no later than their nineteenth unit (second semester) at USC.

• WRIT 095x Writing Tutorial
• WRIT 120 Introduction to College Writing
• WRIT 121 Introduction to College Writing in a Second Language
• WRIT 130 Analytical Writing
• WRIT 133 College Writing for International Students
• WRIT 150 Writing and Critical Reasoning–Thematic Approaches
• WRIT 340 Advanced Writing
• WRIT 440 Writing in Practical Contexts
• WRIT 450 Advanced Research Writing
• WRIT 499 Special Topics
• WRIT 501a Theory and Practice in Teaching Expository Writing
• WRIT 501b Theory and Practice in Teaching Expository Writing
• WRIT 540 Writing for Master’s Students

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Creative Writing Workshops for Faculty

April 3 @ 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm.

Classes will take place monthly. Wednesdays from 7:30-8:45pm on Zoom:

• January 10th
• February 7th

Course Objectives:

• To explore four writing forms—memoir, fiction and poetry—through weekly reading and writing exercises.
• To introduce the numerous ways of telling a story, both in clinical and creative contexts.
• To examine peers’ writing in an effort to think critically and thoughtfully as an editor.
• To explore the ways in which storytelling can allow us to imagine alternateoutcomes when working in clinical practice.
• To discuss how relevant literary concepts (such as metaphor, narrative, and point ofview) can help students reflect on their own actions and reactions in clinical practice.

Learner Outcomes – Students will be able to:

• Recognize writing’s usefulness in increasing depth of understanding and therapeutic connections with patients.
• Offer constructive and respectful feedback to their peers’ work.
• Develop and Hone their writing and revision skill by applying literary concepts totheir work.
• Execute the writing process, from inception of an idea to revised form.
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Expert Faculty with Industry Experience

School of cinematic arts faculty.

Danny Bilson – Director of the USC Games Program and Chair of SCA Interactive Media & Games Division. Executive vice president, Core Games, for THQ, Bilson has more than 20 years of writing, directing and creative development for all major entertainment mediums, including video games, film, television. He teaches the SCA character development and writing for games.

Tracy Fullerton – Founding Director (emeritus) of the USC Games Program, and former Chair of the Interactive Media and Games Division, Fullerton is currently Director of the USC Game Innovation Lab. Fullerton is an experimental game designer, entrepreneur, and author of Game Design Workshop, a design textbook in use at game programs worldwide. She teaches SCA’s core game design courses for incoming graduate and undergraduate students as well as the game directing class.

Richard Lemarchand – Lead designer on the critical and commercial hit series of games Uncharted, from the Sony-owned developer Naughty Dog, Lemarchand has a long history in the commercial games industry. He has been a full-time USC Games professor since 2012, teaching classes in game design, game production, and more. He makes experimental games as part of the USC Game Innovation Lab and his first book, A Playful Production Process: For Game Designers (and Everyone), was released by the MIT Press in 2021.

Andy Nealen – Andy Nealen is an Associate Professor of Cinematic Arts and Computer Science in the Interactive Media & Games Division at the USC School of Cinematic Arts and the Department of Computer Science at USC Viterbi. He teaches and researches in Game Design, Artificial Intelligence, Computer Graphics, and Game Engineering. Andy's work seeks to increase the accessibility of computer-based tools across a variety of application environments, drawing upon minimalist principles he first encountered while obtaining his Dipl.-Ing. in Architecture and Structural Engineering from TU Darmstadt. In particular, his research leverages and extends our understanding of how humans perceive shape, motion, and color. This focus on minimal and accessible designs for complex systems is evidenced in the Apple-Design-Award-winning game Osmos, as well as in his Sketch-Based Modeling, Game-Space Exploration, and Game Heuristics research. Andy received his PhD in Computer Science from TU Berlin, is a regular speaker at international game and computer graphics conferences, and is a regular contributor to ACM SIGGRAPH.

TreaAndrea M. Russworm, Ph.D. - Dr. Russworm is the Microsoft Endowed Chair and a Professor in the Interactive Media & Games Division at the University of Southern California. She is also the founder of Radical Play (a games-based public humanities initiative and after school program), and she has been a professor and Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at UMass Amherst. A prolific author and editor, Russworm is a Series Editor of Power Play: Games, Politics, Culture (Duke University Press). She is the author or editor of three books: Blackness is Burning; Gaming Representation; and Theorizing Tyler Perry. With research expertise in digital culture, video games, and popular African American media, Professor Russworm’s scholarship and interviews have also been shared on CNN, The History Channel, Turner Classic Movies, in podcasts, and on streaming platforms like Twitch. She is a video game Hall of Fame voter, and she is currently writing a new monograph on The Sims and a book on race and the politics of play.

Mark Bolas – A pioneer in immersive technologies, Bolas is a research scientist, artist, and designer exploring perception, agency, and intelligence. He is director of the Mixed Reality Lab at USC. He teaches the SCA thesis and thesis preparation classes.

Peter Brinson – An award-winning game designer and developer (The Cat and the Coup, Waco Resurrection), Brinson’s work has been exhibited at venues including the Museum of Modern Art, the IGF, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and SIGGRAPH. He teaches the procedural media and intermediate game project classes.

Jim Huntley – Jim Huntley is a professor for USC's Interactive Media & Games department and head of marketing for USC Games. He led the creation of USC Games' Gerald A. Lawson Fund, which will support Black and Indigenous students who wish to pursue undergraduate or graduate degrees in game design or computer science from USC's program.

Margaret Moser – An experienced technical director and game designer, Margaret Moser has a background in mobile as well as experimental designs, including projects with the New York based development studios Playmatics and Leisure Collective.

Kiki Benzon – A multimedia artist with a background in English literature and neuroscience, as an associate professor of practice in the Media Arts + Practice division, Kiki teaches courses on transmedia entertainment, digital research methods, and interactive media.

Laird Malamed – Formerly Sr. Vice President and Head of Development at Activision-Blizzard, Malamed helped create the Call of Duty franchise. He teaches the SCA advanced games class and thesis class.

Marientina Gotsis – Marientina Gotsis is Professor of Practice, director of the USC Creative Media & Behavioral Health Center, and founder of the USC Games for Health Initiative. Gotsis is a virtual reality artist, interaction designer, health researcher in academia and industry, and educator/mentor of award-winning student projects for the past 20 years. She directs the MA in Media Arts, Games and Health and the MFA emphasis in Games and Health and teaches participatory design, mixed methods research, narrative medicine, and interdisciplinary collaboration.

David White – With over 25 years (and counting!) of interactive entertainment production management and design experience, David has produced and shipped over 60 games on multiple platforms, from console to mobile. He has worked with DreamWorks, Paramount, Nickelodeon, Nintendo, Microsoft, Sony and many others. David teaches production management in the Advanced Games program.

Robert Nashak – Former Chief Operating Officer of Survios, one of the premiere VR game developers. Prior to that, Nashak held executive positions at BBC Worldwide, Electronic Arts, Yahoo! Games, and Glu Mobile. He teaches the business and management of games.

Joseph Garlington – Former VP of the Interactive Studio at Walt Disney Imagineering, Joe Garlington is a veteran creator of themed entertainment having designed attractions for virtually all Disney theme parks and many other resorts and other businesses.

Heather Desurvire – Instructor in SCA Interactive Media & Games Division, Heather is President of User Behavioristics, Inc. a Player Experience Insight company consulting to top publishers and studios for creating better consumer games through optimal user and player experience. A published author and contributor to the HCI and game community knowledge base in Player Experience. Teaching the CTIN 404 course, students learn to analyze games and research tools for improving game through the player experience design. A former student with a #1 game on iTunes, tweeted “…Most useful class ever”.

Cynthia Woll – As a games industry producer and designer for more than 25 years, Woll has worked for a variety of game publishers and developers, including Atari, EA and Playtika. She has deep expertise in the production and design of free to play mobile games, and has spearheaded the launch and management of many successful titles.

Candace Reckinger – Candace Reckinger is an artist-director specializing in hybrid media and visual music using a mix of animation and photography. Her work ventures beyond the boundaries of conventional narrative exploring the border between the figurative and the abstract, the mythic and experiential, and the tension between movement and stillness. Her inspiration emerges from myth, landscape and music.

Angela Jones – Angie Jones is an artist and animator specializing in computer generated character and creature animation. As an animation director/supervisor and lead animator she works closely with directors and vfx supervisors to design character performances and sequences for major motion pictures, commercials and games. She enjoys the challenge of moving between the “sweet and endearing” and the “evil and deadly.” Her film and commercial work include Oscar-winning films, two Clios, and one VES award.

Mike Patterson – Mike Patterson is a director, designer and animation artist working in visual music. His animated film Commuter, along with 7 of his music videos, are in The Museum of Modern Artʼs permanent collection.

Eric Hanson – Eric Hanson is a visual effects designer specializing in the creation of digital environments. Having worked with leading visual effects houses such as Digital Domain, Sony Imageworks, Dream Quest Images, and Walt Disney Feature Animation, his work can be seen in “The Day After Tomorrow”, “Cast Away”, “Mission to Mars”, “Fantasia 2000”, and “The Fifth Element”, among others.

John Mahoney – John Mahoney is an adjunct faculty member who currently works in Los Angeles as a Concept Designer and Independent Film Maker. John’s illustration work has been showcased in Spectrum, the Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art and in the book Erotic Signature, the World’s Greatest Erotic Art of Today.

Maks Naprowski – Maks Naporowski joined the entertainment industry in Los Angeles as a Computer Graphics Supervisor at Swanson Productions in 1998 on a project called Fish Tank. In 2000, Maks contributed his talents to Sony Pictures Imageworks, where as lead technical director he tackled character concepts, animation pipelines, character setup and animation for such films Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, The Chubbchubbs! and Stuart Little 2. At Imageworks, Maks headed technical animation teams, was involved in pre-visualization, character rigging and animation on such films as Matrix Revolutions, Polar Express, The Aviator, Superman Returns, Ghost Rider, Beowulf and I am Legend. In 2010 Maks joined the full time faculty of John C.Hench Animation & Digital Arts at USC School of Cinematic Arts as Instructor of Cinema Practice.

Musa Brooker – Musa Brooker (that’s ‘moo-say’) is a Los Angeles based Director, Animator and Producer. Specializing in Stop Motion, the Philadelphia native holds a BFA in Animation from University of the Arts and an MFA in Experimental Animation from The California Institute of the Arts where he was a Jacob K. Javits Fellow. His directing resume includes the short film The Story of Pines for Participant Media, the web series Laurie’s Stories inspired by the TBS sitcom Cougar Town, and the recent Bratz web series produced by Stoopid Buddy Stoodios and based on the iconic doll brand.

Andres Kratky – Andreas Kratky is a media artist and assistant professor in the School for Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California. Kratky’s work comprises several award-winning projects such as That’s Kyogen, the interactive installation and DVD Bleeding Through – Layers of Los Angeles 1920-1986, the algorithmic cinema system Soft Cinema, and the interactive costume projection in the opera The Jew of Malta.

Jesse Vigil – Jesse Vigil is a professional writer, game designer, filmmaker, entrepreneur, and co-founder of Psychic Bunny, and the gone-but-not-forgotten indie games labelCodename. Currently, he is the Director of a shadowy Alternate Reality Game at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts that would be known as Reality Ends Here – if it actually existed, which it of course does not. The rest of the time Jesse teaches and is a Research Associate at the Game Innovation Lab.

Sean Bouchard – Sean has worked as a game designer and research project lead in the University of Southern California’s Interactive Media and Games Division since 2011. He regularly teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on game design fundamentals, experimental game design, polishing and publishing games, and game production. He also makes independent games and talks about game design on the internet.

Gordon Bellamy – Gordon Bellamy is currently a part time lecturer at the University of Southern California who has played key business and product leadership roles at Tencent, Electronic Arts, as a designer on Madden NFL Football, and MTV. He served as Executive Director of both the game industry’s trade organization, the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences and the International Game Developers Association.

Sam Roberts – Sam Roberts is currently the Assistant Director of the Interactive Media and Games division at the University of Southern California. In addition, he is a lead organizer of the IndieCade Festival of Independent Games and has worked as a creative director for theater, film, games, and new media for 10 years.

Aniko Imre – Anikó Imre is an associate professor and chair of the Division of Cinema and Media Studies and a member of the faculty board of the Interdivisional Media Arts and Practice Doctoral Program (iMAP). She has published widely and teaches courses on film and media theory, global television, national and transnational media and European media.

Alex McDowell – Alex McDowell is Visiting Associate Professor in the USC Cinematic Arts divisions of Interactive Media and Games, Production, and Media Arts + Practice, where he is also creative director of the USC World Building Media Lab and the thought leadership network, theUSC World Building Institute.

Scott Fisher – Scott Fisher is a Professor and founding Chair of the Interactive Media Division and Associate Dean of Research at the USC School of Cinematic Arts. He is an interaction designer whose work focuses primarily on mobile media, interactive environments and technologies of presence. He is also Director of USC’s Mobile and Environmental Media Lab.

Viterbi School of Engineering Faculty

Scott Easley – An Emmy, Telly and Annie-winning commercial writer/creator, Easley has supervised animation teams for The Incredibles 2, Ratatouille, and the Wall-E video games. He teaches our games pipelines courses and mentors the art leads for our Advanced Games program.

Matthew Whiting – A fifteen year veteran of the games industry, Matt Whiting has worked on games including Spyro the Dragon, True Crime, Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters, and Shrek 2. He mentors the technical leads for our Advanced Games program.

Jose Villeta – Director for Technology for Disney Interactive, Villeta teaches courses on Game Hardware Architectures and Game Engine Development in the Department of Computer Science.

St. John Colon – St. John Colon is a founder, manager, art director, UI/UX designer, game designer and producer currently developing several social and mobile games, managing multiple internal & external development teams, and setting core technical standards in a variety of areas. St. John Colon (MFA, UCLA) has shipped more than 17.7 million video games in 55 different countries in cooperation with Square, Warner Brothers, Nickelodeon and and Disney/Pixar. St. John serves as an adjunct Professor at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and on the Advisory board of the Inner City Education Foundation of LA Arts program.

Artem Kovalovs – A graphics and games programmer at Naughty Dog, Kovalovs teaches console game development and immersive game development in the Department of Computer Science.

Trina Gregory – Trina Gregory is a senior lecturer for ITP teaching technology, programming, and mobile classes. She has worked full-time in the computer science field for over 12 years, mainly for SAIC developing, writing, and managing software for the Department of Defense.

Sanjay Madhav – Senior Lecturer in the Information Technology Program. Madhav is the author of Game Programming Algorithms and Techniques and co-author of Multiplayer Game Programming. He teaches programming courses, including some of the core video game programming courses for undergraduates. He has worked at several developers including Electronic Arts, Neversoft, and Pandemic.

Tom Sloper – Tom Sloper has been a game producer and designer for over 30 years, having designed and produced games for most major console platforms from the 2600, 7800, and Vectrex on up to the Playstation, Xbox 360, Dreamcast, and DS, as well as games for PC, Mac, Internet, and IPTV. He’s worked for Sega, Atari, Activision, and Yahoo. He is currently a full time faculty member of USC’s Information Technology Program.

Shirin Salemnia – Shirin Laor-Raz Salemnia is currently a part time faculty member of USC’s Information Technology Program. She is actively involved in the organization Women in Gaming, as well as serving as an advisor for multiple institutions including The White House Council of Women and Girls, Los Angeles Film School, The Girl Scouts of Greater LA, Woodbury University, the Bixel Exchange in collaboration with the LA Chamber of Commerce, and Girls in Tech. She is also the founder of multiple organizations including PlayWerks and WhizGirlsAcademy.

Lance Winkel – Lance Winkel is an award winning animated filmmaker, film festival programmer, animation educator, and practicing artist. As an effects artist and animator, his commercial clients have included Ford, Honda, Nissan, and Warner Brothers. Lance has taught 3D Computer Graphics Animation for over a decade at many prominent universities across southern California.

Nitin Kale – Nitin Kalé is an Associate Professor of Engineering Practice in the Information Technology Program (ITP) and the Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISE) at the Viterbi School of Engineering. Nitin is also the Associate Director for Academic Affairs at ITP. He has taught at ITP since 1995 in the areas of programming, web design, interactive multimedia and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

Mike Lee – Mike Lee teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in digital entrepreneurship and enterprise systems for USC’s Viterbi School of Engineering and Marshall School of Business. Prior to USC, he spent the previous decade at Fox and Warner Bros, as a VP of Technology and Director; Netscape as a Technology Evangelist; and CTO/VP Technology for various Internet/software companies.

Michael Crowley – Michael Crowley worked for 20 years in industry as a programmer, manager, and project manager. He came to USC in 1999 as a full-time lecturer with the department of Computer Science, in the Viterbi School of Engineering. Michael has enjoyed being the Director of ITP for the past six years.

Kendra Walther – Kendra Walther is a full-time lecturer in the Information Technology Program. She has worked for the Aerospace Corporation and taught Computer Science at Cal State LA, St. Albans School, and Milwaukee School of Engineering.

Ron Artstein – Ron Artstein is a research assistant professor at USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies as a computational linguist. His training and early work was in theoretical linguistics, specializing in formal semantics. Since 2004, when he joined the ARRAU project (which has since ended), he has expanded his work to computational linguistics, specifically working with annotated corpora. He is presently coordinating an effort to create and organize a corpus of spoken dialogue which is used in developing language comprehension and speech of virtual humans.

David Devault – David Devault is a Research Assistant Professor at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies and the Department of Computer Science at the University of Southern California. His research lies in the area of natural language dialogue systems, which converse and interact with human speakers in a natural language such as English.

Andrew Gordon – Andrew S. Gordon is a Research Associate Professor of Computer Science and Director of Interactive Narrative Research at the Institute for Creative Technologies at the University of Southern California. His research advances technologies for automatically analyzing and generating narrative interpretations of experiences.

Jonathan Gratch – Jonathan Gratch is the associate director for virtual humans research at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies, a research professor of computer science and psychology, and co-director of USC’s Computational Emotion Group. His research focuses on virtual humans and computational models of emotion. He studies the relationship between cognition and emotion, the cognitive processes underlying emotional responses, and the influence of emotion on decision-making and physical behavior.

Randall Hill – Randall W. Hill, Jr. became the executive director of the USC Institute for Creative Technologies in 2006. A leader in understanding how classic storytelling and high-tech tools can create meaningful learning experiences, Hill steers the institute’s exploration of how virtual humans, mixed reality worlds, advanced computer graphics, dramatic films, social simulations and educational video games can augment more traditional methods for imparting lessons.

Anton Leuski – Anton Leuski is a research assistant professor at the USC Department of Computer Science and a research scientist at the USC Institute for Creative Techonologies. His research interests include interactive information access, human-computer interaction, and machine learning. Leuski’s recent work has focused on applying statistical information retrieval approaches to dialogue text analysis, natural language understanding and generation. Of primary interest is the development of the statistical approaches for building effective text classification techniques with small amounts of training data. These text classification approaches allow very rapid development of practical solutions for natural language dialogue applications.

Louis-Phillipe Morency – Dr. Louis-Philippe Morency is currently assistant professor at the Language Technologies Institute (LTI) at Carnegie Mellon University. He was formerly research assistant professor at the University of Southern California (USC) and research scientist at USC Institute for Creative Technologies where he led the Multimodal Communication and Computation Laboratory.

Kenji Sagae – Kenji Sagae is a research assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Southern California and a research scientist in the USC Institute for Creative Technologies. Prior to joining USC in 2008, he was a research associate in the computer science department of the University of Tokyo. His main areas of research are natural language processing and computational linguistics, focusing on data-driven approaches for syntactic parsing, predicate-argument analysis and discourse processing. His current work includes the application of these techniques in various application areas, such as dialogue systems, modeling of human communication dynamics, and analysis of personal narrative in blog posts.

Steven Scherer – Currently, Scherer is working as Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies under the supervision of Louis-Philippe Morency. His research fields of interest are human machine interaction, social signal processing, and affective computing.

Bill Swartout – William Swartout is chief technology officer at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies, providing overall direction to the institute’s research programs. He is also a research professor in the Computer Science Department at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering.

David Traum – David Traum is a principal scientist at ICT and a research faculty member at the Department of Computer Science at USC. At ICT, Traum leads the Natural Language Dialogue Group, which consists of seven Ph.D.s, four students, and four other researchers.

Paul Rosenbloom – Paul S. Rosenbloom is a professor of computer science at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and is currently working with the USC Institute for Creative Technologies on a new cognitive/virtual-human architecture – Sigma (Σ) – based on graphical models.

Kallirroi Georgila – Kallirroi Georgila is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Southern California, and a Research Scientist at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies.

Parag Halvadar – Parag Havaldar received a PhD in Computer Vision and Graphics from the University of Southern California in 1996. Since then he has been working in the media industry to design/architect software solutions for the multimedia pipeline from authoring, compression, distribution, digital rights management. Currently, Dr, Havaldar is a software supervisor at SONY Pictures Imageworks, where he leads SONY’s proprietory efforts in the area of performance capture.

Saty Raghavachary – Dr. Saty Raghavachary is a Senior Lecturer at the CS Dept, where he teaches courses on computer graphics (CG), databases and introductory programming. Before joining USC full-time, Saty was a Designated Support Specialist at Autodesk Inc., makers of Maya, Softimage, 3DS Max, AutoCAD and several other industry-leading software tools.

Morteza Dehghani – Morteza Dehghani is an Assistant Professor of psychology, computer science and the Brain and Creativity Institute (BCI) at University of Southern California. His research spans the boundary between psychology and artificial intelligence. His work investigates properties of cognition by using documents of the social discourse, such as narratives, social media, transcriptions of speeches and news articles, in conjunction to behavioral studies.

Jerry Hobbs – Jerry R. Hobbs is a prominent American researcher in the fields of computational linguistics, discourse analysis, and artificial intelligence.

Rajiv Mahesawarn – Rajiv Maheswaran is CEO of Second Spectrum, an innovative sports analytics and data visualization startup located in Los Angeles, California. Prior to Second Spectrum, Rajiv served as a research assistant professor within the University of Southern California’s Department of Computer Science, and a project leader at the Information Sciences Institute at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. He and Second Spectrum COO Yu-Han Chang co-directed the Computational Behavior Group at USC.

John May – John May is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto, Adjunct Faculty at the Southern California Institute of Architecture, and principal of millionsofmovingparts, a Los Angeles-based design practice.

Suya You – Suya You is a Research Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department at the University of Southern California. His expertise is in the fundamental and applied aspects of interactive multimodal systems, computer vision, and 3D graphics and visualization.

Michael Arbib – Michael A. Arbib is the Fletcher Jones Professor of Computer Science, as well as a Professor of Biological Sciences, Biomedical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Neuroscience and Psychology at USC. As both a theoretical neuroscientist and a computer scientist, Arbib argues that by deducing the brain’s operating principles from a computational standpoint we can both learn more about how brains function and also gain tools for building learning machines.

Shaddin Dughmi – Shaddin Dughmi is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at USC, where he is a member of the Theory Group. He received a B.S. in computer science, summa cum laude, from Cornell University in 2004, and a PhD in computer science from Stanford University in 2011.

Shahram Ghandeharizadeh – Shahram Ghandeharizadeh received his Ph.D. degree in computer science from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1990. Since then, he has been on the faculty at the University of Southern California. In 1995, he received an award from the School of Engineering at USC in recognition of his research activities. His primary research interests include design and implementation of multimedia storage managers, parallel database systems, and active databases.

William Halford – William Halfond is an associate professor in computer science at the University of Southern California. Halfond’s research is in software engineering in the area of program analysis and software testing. His research work focuses on improving quality assurance for web applications, developer-oriented techniques for reducing the power consumption of smartphone mobile applications, and software security.

Ellis Horowitz – Dr. Ellis Horowitz is currently Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at the University of Southern California. Dr. Horowitz has held numerous academic administrative jobs including Associate Chairman of Computer Science at the University of Wisconsin. At U.S.C. he was chairman of the Computer Science Department from 1990 to 1999. After completing his term as Computer Science department chairman, Dr. Horowitz was appointed Director of Information Technology and Distance Education in USC’s Viterbi School of Engineering.

Ethan Katz-Bassett – Ethan Katz-Basset is an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department at the University of Southern California. With his colleagues Ramesh Govindan, and Wyatt Lloyd, he runs a networking and systems research group. His primary interests are in networks and distributed systems. His goal is to improve the reliability and performance of Internet services.

David Kempe – David Kempe received his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 2003, and has been on the faculty in the computer science department at USC since the Fall of 2004, where he is currently an Associate Professor and Associate Chair for Undergraduate Programs. His primary research interests are in computer science theory and the design and analysis of algorithms, with a particular emphasis on social networks, algorithms for feature selection, and game-theoretic and pricing questions.

Sven Koenig – Sven Koenig is a professor in computer science at the University of Southern California. Sven is interested in intelligent systems that have to operate in large, nondeterministic, nonstationary or only partially known domains. Most of his research centers around techniques for decision making (planning and learning) that enable single situated agents (such as robots or decision-support systems) and teams of agents to act intelligently in their environments and exhibit goal-directed behavior in real-time, even if they have only incomplete knowledge of their environment, imperfect abilities to manipulate it, limited or noisy perception or insufficient reasoning speed.

Dennis McLeod – Dennis McLeod is currently Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southern California, and Director of the Semantic Information Research Laboratory. Dr. McLeod has published widely in the areas of data and knowledge base systems, federated databases, database models and design, ontologies, knowledge discovery, scientific data management, information trust and privacy, and multimedia information management.

Ulrich Neumann – Dr. Ulrich Neumann is a professor in the Computer Science Department at the University of Southern California. He earned an MSEE from SUNY at Buffalo in 1980 and his computer science Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1993 where his focus was on parallel algorithms for interactive volume-visualization. His research relates to video visualization, interactive media, tracking for augmented reality, and human facial modeling, rendering, and animation.

Guarav Sukhatme – Gaurav S. Sukhatme is a Professor of Computer Science (joint appointment in Electrical Engineering) at the University of Southern California (USC). He is the co-director of the USC Robotics Research Laboratory and the director of the USC Robotic Embedded Systems Laboratory which he founded in 2000. His research interests are in multi-robot systems and sensor/actuator networks.

Milind Tambe – Milind Tambe is Founding Co-Director of CAIS, the USC Center for AI for Society, and Helen N. and Emmett H. Jones Professor in Engineering at the University of Southern California(USC).

Shanghua Teng – Dr. Shang-Hua Teng is a professor who has twice won the prestigious Gödel Prize in theoretical computer science, first in 2008, for developing the theory of smoothed analysis , and then in 2015, for designing the groundbreaking nearly-linear time Laplacian solver for network systems.

Cyrus Shahabi – Cyrus Shahabi is a Professor of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering and Spatial Sciences and the Director of the Information Laboratory (InfoLAB) at the Computer Science Department and also the Director of the NSF’s Integrated Media Systems Center (IMSC) at the University of Southern California (USC). He is also the director of Informatics at USC’ Viterbi School of Engineering. He was the CTO and co-founder of a USC spin-off, Geosemble Technologies, which was acquired in July 2012.

Claire Bono – Claire Bono is a lecturer who teaches CSCI 455 Introduction to Programming Systems Design

Sheila Tejada – Dr. Sheila Tejada is currently a professor in the Computer Science Department at the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles, where she teaches courses and performs research applying artificial intelligence, machine learning and robotics in education.

Ann Cherevenak – Ann Cherevenak leads research and development projects in the area of scientific data management, including policy-driven data management. Her current projects include research that explores policy-based network resource allocation and the relationship between policy-driven data placement and scientific workflow management.

Yolanda Gil – Yolanda Gil is the Principal Investigator and Project Leader of the Interactive Knowledge Capture research group at USC’s Information Sciences Institute (ISI). Her research focuses on intelligent interfaces for knowledge capture, which is a central topic in our projects concerning knowledge-based planning and problem solving, information analysis and assessment of trust, semantic annotation tools, agent and software choreography, and community-wide development of knowledge bases.

Jihie Kim – Jihie Kim is a Research Assistant Professor in Computer Science at the University of Southern California and a Computer Scientist at the USC/ Information Sciences Institute.

Kristina Lerman – Kristina Lerman is a Project Leader at the Information Sciences Institute, and Research Associate Professor in the USC Viterbi School of Engineering’s Computer Science Department. Her research applies graph theory and machine learning to problems in computational social science, including social network and social media analysis, information diffusion in networks, social voting and recommendation, and more recently, dynamics of cognitive performance.

Nora Ayanian – Nora Ayanian is a Gabilan Assistant Professor of Computer Science at University of Southern California. Her research focuses on creating end-to-end solutions for coordinating teams of robots that start from truly high-level specifications and deliver code for individual robots in the team, such as using simple multitouch inputs to control a team of UAVs.

Leana Golubchick – Leana Golubchik is a Professor of Computer Science, with a joint appointment in Electrical Engineering, at USC. Her research interests are broadly in the design and evaluation of large scale distributed systems, with emphasis on analysis techniques needed for rapid evaluation of design ideas that lead to insight about systems’ performance and reliability.

Yan Liu – Yan Liu has been an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department, of the Viterbi School of Engineering at USC since August 2010. Before that, she was a research staff member in the Data Analytics Group at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center since November 2006.

Maja Mataric – Maja Matarić is the Vice Dean for Research for the Viterbi School of Engineering. She is responsible for research development and mentoring, interdisciplinary collaborations and programs, research awards coordination, K-12 outreach activities, and technology transfer.

Annenberg Faculty

Henry Jenkins – One of the first media scholars to chart the changing role of the audience in an environment of pervasive digital content, Jenkins is at the forefront of understanding the effects of participatory media on society, politics and culture.

Dmitri Williams – With research focusing on the social and economic impacts of new media, Williams was the first researcher to use online games for experiments, and to undertake longitudinal research on video games.

Thornton School of Music Faculty

Garry Schyman – Adjunct Instructor in the SMPTV (Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television) program in the Thornton School of Music. Schyman is an experienced film, TV and game composer. His credits for games include the Bioshock series for which he won the BAFTA award on Bioshock Infinite. Schyman is a part time instructor but remains a full time active composer for games and other media.

Marshall School of Business Faculty

Anthony Borquez – Anthony Borquez is the Founder and CEO of Grab. In 2013, Anthony spun out a new company: Grab Analytics. Grab Analytics is a strategic partner with Twitter and helps companies effectively market on the Twitter platform. Anthony was Founder/CEO of Blue Label Interactive. Dr. Borquez has been teaching at the University of Southern California since 1994.

Gould School of Law Faculty

Dan Nabel – Dan Nabel is an in-house attorney at Riot Games. Prof. Nabel currently teaches “Topics in Entertainment: Video Game Law” and previously co-taught “Deposition Strategies and Techniques” for several years. He also serves as a Director for CASA of Los Angeles — an organization dedicated to improving the lives of neglected and abused foster children with trained volunteer advocates.

Creative Writing at University of Southern California

Creative writing degrees available at usc, usc creative writing rankings.

Popularity of Creative Writing at USC

Usc creative writing students, usc creative writing bachelor’s program.

Of the 45 creative writing students who graduated with a bachelor's degree in 2020-2021 from USC, about 31% were men and 69% were women.

The following table and chart show the ethnic background for students who recently graduated from University of Southern California with a bachelor's in creative writing.

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Freshmen Application Procedures

The primary goals of the Film & Television Production program are to develop the student’s ability to express original ideas and to instill a thorough understanding of the technical and aesthetic aspects of motion pictures and television. Students learn all aspects of the art of storytelling and develop the ability to take audiences on emotional journeys using a wide array of cinematic skills. Students learn to access this unique power by working in many forms - from traditional large-screen films to those designed for the smallest cell phone screens, to episodic content across multiple formats. Courses in production provide individual and group filmmaking experiences and the opportunity to learn all aspects of filmmaking in a collaborative environment.

Access the Film & Television Production B.F.A. Program - First-Year/Freshmen Applicants SlideRoom Application here.

The Cinematic Arts Personal Statement will be read by the admissions committee as a measure of creativity, self-awareness and vision. We are looking for a sense of you as a unique individual and how your distinctive experiences, identities, values, and/or views of the world have shaped who you are and what you want to say as a creative filmmaker. We want to know about the kind of stories you want to tell. Bear in mind that enthusiasm for watching films, descriptions of your favorite films and the involvement in the filmmaking process is common in most candidates. As a result, we encourage that you focus on your individuality. Note that there is no standard format or correct answer. (500 words or less)

• A description of a four-minute film that contains no dialogue. It can be fiction or non-fiction. The story has to be communicated visually. (400 words or less)
• A dialogue scene between two people in screenplay format. (400 words or less)
• July 2023,  A Day in the Life,  digital video, 12 minutes. Position: writer/director. A documentary on a homeless Iraq vet who has lived on the streets since his return from the military. Created for senior-year multimedia term project, San Raphael High School, Miami, Florida.
• March 2023,  Doorways,  a series of 5 black-and-white photographs. Position: photographer. "Second Prize Winner" in the Des Moines Sunday Journal photo contest.
• February 2022,  Cellomorphosis,  short story. Position: writer. A variation on the novella by Franz Kafka; published in Writing, vol. IV, 2022, at Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts.

We're not looking for a specific number of projects, but rather a demonstrated commitment to creative work.

Describe how you handled a difficult situation that you have faced with other people in your creative life.

• Video Introduction

Submit a 30-60 second video of yourself speaking directly to the camera, in a single take with no edits, introducing yourself and explaining what will make attending SCA a successful experience for you and others.

• Submit a 2-minute short film based on the prompt: "A secret." Previous work cannot be used; you must create a film for this application.
• Submissions can be any genre, narrative, documentary, or experimental. The reviewing committee is interested in seeing your storytelling ability. Creativity is what's important, not scale. We understand the time and production limitations. This exercise does not require large expenditures or a huge production; cell phones may be used for this project if desired. The project should be in English or be subtitled in English.
• Applicants must perform at least 3 of the 6 jobs, which are: 1) Director, 2) Producer, 3) Writer, 4) Editor, 5) Sound Recording and Design, 6) Cinematography and Production Design.
• (If you'd like to show us additional creative work, your Creative Portfolio section can include links to previous film samples.)
• In addition: Please submit a critique of your film and a crew list (in PDF format only).
• The critique should be brief, 150 words or less, and in the form of notes you would give the filmmakers as if you had not made the film yourself. We want to see your objectivity and ability for self-reflection.
• The crew list should include the names of the crew members performing the 6 jobs outlined above.
• Videos should be housed on a publicly viewable link and not password protected. Videos should be no more than 2 minutes maximum, with no more than 15 seconds of credits.

The faculty admissions committee evaluates applications for originality, clarity, personal insight and artistic excellence. As part of the Film & Television Production program applicant review process, applicants may be selected to have a remote interview with faculty or staff. Not every applicant will be interviewed, and an interview is not required for admission. The window for the interview time may vary, so please keep an eye on the inbox of the email address used in your application for a request to schedule one. Please respond to such requests within 72 hours.

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How to Write the USC Supplemental Essays 2023-2024

The University of Southern California has a few supplemental essays and creative short answers that students must complete. Your essays are one of the only opportunities you’ll have to show an admissions officer who you are beyond the numbers, and with USC’s many different prompts, it’s clear this school wants you to seize that opportunity.

Here are our tips for responding to the USC essays in a way that will help your application stand out!

Read these USC essay examples written by real students to inspire your own writing. 

USC Supplemental Essay Prompts

All applicants.

Prompt 1: Describe how you plan to pursue your academic interests and why you want to explore them at USC specifically. Please feel free to address your first- and second-choice major selections (250 words).

Prompt 2 (optional): Starting with the beginning of high school/secondary school, if you have had a gap where you were not enrolled in school during a fall or spring term, please address this gap in your educational history. You do not need to address a summer break (250 words).

Short Answer Prompts: Respond to all the prompts below (100 characters unless otherwise specified)

• Describe yourself in three words (25 characters each)
• What is your favorite snack?
• Best movie of all time
• If your life had a theme song, what would it be?
• What TV show will you binge watch next?
• Which well-known person or fictional character would be your ideal roommate?
• Favorite Book
• If you could teach a class on any topic, what would it be?

Viterbi School of Engineering Applicants

Prompt: The student body at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering is a diverse group of unique engineers and computer scientists who work together to engineer a better world for all humanity. Describe how your contributions to the USC Viterbi student body may be distinct from others. Please feel free to touch on any part of your background, traits, skills, experiences, challenges, and/or personality in helping us better understand you. (250 words)

Engineering and Computer Science Applicants

Prompt: The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and their 14 Grand Challenges go hand-in-hand with our vision to engineer a better world for all humanity. Engineers and computer scientists are challenged to solve these problems in order to improve life on the planet. Learn more about the NAE Grand Challenges at http://engineeringchallenges.org and tell us which challenge is most important to you, and why. (250 words)

Dornsife Applicants

Prompt: Many of us have at least one issue or passion that we care deeply about — a topic on which we would love to share our opinions and insights in hopes of sparking intense interest and continued conversation. If you had ten minutes and the attention of a million people, what would your talk be about? (250 words)

All Applicants, Prompt 1

Describe how you plan to pursue your academic interests and why you want to explore them at usc specifically. please feel free to address your first- and second-choice major selections (250 words)..

The tricky bit about this prompt is that it essentially combines the “ Why This Major ” and “ Why This College ” essay archetypes into one essay with a strict cap of 250 words. That’s a lot of information in not a whole lot of space, which might feel overwhelming. The first thing you should do is figure out the content of your essay.

Step One: Think about your academic interests (i.e. your majors). 

• How did your interests develop? 
• Why are you passionate about your interests? 
• What are your goals within your interests?
• How will pursuing your major help you achieve your goals in life? 

Step Two: Think about the answers to those questions in relation to USC. 

• How will USC help you to further develop your interests? 
• What resources does the university have that will help you achieve your goals? 

While your essay should explore resources that will aid in your academic pursuits, you should also keep it as specific to USC as possible—this essay should not be able to be copied and pasted for any other university! Here’s an example of how to achieve the specificity you need:

Bad: USC is a great school, located in the beautiful city of Los Angeles, with unparalleled academics and renowned instructors.

Why is this bad? This sentence could just as easily apply to UCLA. Without the bit about Los Angeles, the reasoning could even apply to any decent school in existence.

Good: At USC, I plan to participate in the Joint Educational Project (JEP) to find a community of students who, like me, are passionate about the intersections of teaching and social justice. Through JEP, I will be able to actively use the teaching principles I learn in my classes about the Dynamics of Early Childhood.

Why is this good? It references a unique resource at USC and relates to the student’s academic interests.

The Final Step: Write a cohesive essay that tells admissions officers why you are pursuing your field and why USC is the right place for you to pursue it. Some examples could include:

• An Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering student who was obsessed with the launching of the Antares rocket, movies like Gattaca and The Martian , and their physics summer camp as a middle schooler. They could describe their goal of working for NASA, then discussing their interest in the USC Rocket Propulsion Laboratory (RPL).
• An English student who ultimately wants to write romance novels discussing the Creative Writing Hour series that is hosted by English faculty. They might want to reference some of the big-name professors at USC—like Maggie Nelson, Aimee Bender, Dana Johnson, and T.C. Boyle—who have inspired their love of writing.
• A Fine Arts applicant mentioning the Fisher Museum of Art that is on USC’s campus. It was after a school field trip to the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) that they first tried working with graphite and learned of their life goals. They know the power of art museums for inspiration and are excited to have a constant source of inspiration just minutes away.

If you are worried about the word count, one way to maximize the little space you have is to find a way to relate your first- and second-choice majors. This way, your explanations of each wouldn’t read like separate essays; rather, they would be telling different parts of the same story. A student with a first-choice major in Physics and a second-choice major in English might want to write about their ultimate goal of writing Science Fiction novels. A student with a first-choice major in History and a second-choice major in East Asian Languages and Culture might write about their goal of curating Asian American history museums.

Make sure you focus on your academic interests/goals and tell admissions officers the ways that USC will help your academic dreams come true, and you will be set!

All Applicants, Prompt 2 (optional)

Starting with the beginning of high school/secondary school, if you have had a gap where you were not enrolled in school during a fall or spring term, please address this gap in your educational history. you do not need to address a summer break (250 words). .

USC’s second prompt is optional and won’t apply to most students. However, if you do have a gap in your educational history, then be sure to use this space to address it. Give a brief explanation of the reasoning for the gap—be it illness, a move, etc.—as well as an overview of how you spent this time outside of school. 

For example, let’s say your family moved across the country and you took a term off during the transfer. You can describe your role in the move (perhaps you were in charge of organizing a yard sale), why the circumstances warranted an educational gap (maybe the new school doesn’t allow mid-term transfers), and any other projects or commitments to which you dedicated your time. 

Ideally, you want to demonstrate how you made the most of this time off and why the time off was necessary.

All Applicants, Short Answer Prompts

Respond to all the prompts below (100 characters unless otherwise specified), 1. describe yourself in three words (25 characters each), 2. what is your favorite snack, 3. best movie of all time, 4. dream job, 5. if your life had a theme song, what would it be, 6. dream trip, 7. what tv show will you binge watch next, 8. which well-known person or fictional character would be your ideal roommate, 9. favorite book, 10. if you could teach a class on any topic, what would it be.

In this section, USC lets you have a little fun. The questions ask for short, rapid-fire responses that give you the opportunity to let your individuality shine.

The most important thing to keep in mind with the short answer supplements is that USC is asking you to provide new information that sheds light on different aspects of your personality. 

Don’t repeat tidbits you’ve already mentioned, although you can and should develop new angles of themes you’ve already established. Most importantly, have fun in this section! If you’re having fun writing it, chances are your admissions officer will have fun reading it.

You can leave descriptions or notes in your responses, though remember that you have 100 characters max. If your choices are more offbeat, we recommend giving a brief description, as your admissions officer certainly won’t have the time to look things up. If your choices are pretty well-known, you can still leave a note about why you chose them (as in the sample response to #8). It’s another opportunity to share your personality, which is valuable!

• Describe yourself in three words (25 characters max each).

Example: Cinephile. Cynophile. Logophile. 

Tip: Be creative!

Example: My Gram’s Lebuchken, tiny gingerbread-esque German cakes that my family devours each holiday season.

Tip: This is an opportunity to show your roots or quirky favorites. Make your response more interactive by including descriptive words that appeal to the senses, especially taste and smell. Also, if you’re using another language or describing a less common food, feel free to provide a short description or explanation so that someone who’s never heard of it before can still imagine it. 

Example: October Sky; Homer’s rockets remind me of my own homemade science creations, like my DIY lava lamp.

Tip: A lot of applicants will write Harry Potter . Be genuine in your response, but take this opportunity to stand out rather than providing a generic answer. 

Example: A math professor; sharing my love of topology to positively shape students’ view of the subject. 

Example: Crossword Puzzle Writer; my mornings aren’t complete without a cup of OJ and my daily brain teaser.

Tip: If you go with a serious answer, make a clear connection to your major to show that you’re focused on your academic path. Don’t give a generic answer like “doctor” or “lawyer;” talk about what specialty or subfield interests you most. That said, you could also go for a more lighthearted answer, like a crossword puzzle writer, to use the space to show personality.

Example: The [TV show] Intro; I’d like to think of myself as a [character], but I have to admit I’m more of an [character]. 

Example: Happy Birthday by AJR – a catchy tune with funny/sarcastic lyrics about the reality of modern life.

Tip: Just as with the best movie prompt, you may want to avoid mainstream selections and instead put forward a title that says something about you. What song would you want the admissions officer to play while reading your application? Make sure the song you choose is appropriate. 

Example: Road trip around Iceland’s perimeter; stops include Thingvellir National Park and the Geysir Springs.

Tip: Be more specific than simply “Hawaii” or “Europe.” Also, just as with all the prompts, you want to convey something about yourself in your response, so avoid mainstream or overly luxurious answers.

Example: Aggretsuko (anime about a red panda who relieves job stress by singing death metal at karaoke bars)

Tip: Follow similar guidelines to the theme song prompt—mainstream selections are fine and are potentially relatable to the reader, but that quirkier show you have your eye on might make for a more fun response. If your selection is lesser-known, consider adding a brief description.

Example: Rory Gilmore – there definitely won’t be a shortage of coffee or good conversation.

Tip: It’s okay to go with a more well-known character here, since that will allow the reader to relate. It’s just important to use that extra space to elaborate on why you’d want to live with this person.

• Favorite book

Example: Shoe Dog by Phil Knight – I read the entire book in my favorite pair of Air Max 97s.

Tip: Follow the same advice for best movie of all time.

Example: SETI: Using the Drake Equation to Find E.T., complete with a field trip to outer space!

Tip: You can have some fun with this prompt; try thinking outside the box of the generic “Intro to Calculus.” You can also have the class relate back to your intended major, though that’s not absolutely necessary.

The student body at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering is a diverse group of unique engineers and computer scientists who work together to engineer a better world for all humanity. Describe how your contributions to the USC Viterbi student body may be distinct from others. Please feel free to touch on any part of your background, traits, skills, experiences, challenges, and/or personality in helping us better understand you. (250 words)

USC’s engineering school is extremely competitive to get into, forcing admissions officers to choose between many qualified applicants who look relatively similar on paper. This essay wants to get down to the heart of why they should pick you over others. 

The most important word in this prompt that should job out to you is “contributions”. In this essay, you need to convey what you will bring to the engineering community that is unique. You might be saying to yourself “what can I contribute to an established university?”, but there’s actually a lot to work with here. The prompt gives suggestions of sources that could contribute to your uniqueness so let’s look at some examples of traits and how they relate to contribution to USC.

Trait: You’re from a coastal town in Florida that is experiencing flooding.

Contribution: You plan to join the Structures and Material Lab in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering to discover which materials are erosion-resistant.

Trait: You’re the only daughter among four brothers.

Contribution: Since you’re no stranger to asserting your voice as a woman in a male-dominated setting, you want to become a mentor through the Women in Science and Engineering’s Young Researchers Program and encourage female high schoolers to pursue STEM.

Trait: You have OCD.

Contribution: Rather than being a hindrance, you channel your obsessive tendencies into meticulously completing complex calculations which you are excited to do as an Aerospace Engineering major.

Trait: You started an iPhone repair business out of your garage in high school.

Contribution: Your experience working with technology has given you insight into specific aspects of hardware design that could be improved that you plan to experiment with under the supervision of X professor.

As you can see from these examples, there are many ways to approach what you can contribute to the Viterbi community. When it comes to actually writing this in your essay, you should start by highlighting the unique aspect of yourself that you are choosing to focus on with a short anecdote. For example, the student writing about being from a coastal town might open with a vivid description of the damage caused by erosion from the most recent flood.

Once you’ve caught the reader’s attention and communicated what your unique background is, explain how that has positioned you to bring something special to the USC community. It’s important to be as detailed as possible by including specific programs or institutes, professors, classes, or research projects you are interested in. You can also mention more than one way that you will contribute—just ensure that each one is fully fleshed out.

Finally, end your essay with a concise conclusion. This might look like returning back to your anecdote from the beginning, talking about your future plans and how USC will get you there, or something else entirely. 

The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and their 14 Grand Challenges go hand-in-hand with our vision to engineer a better world for all humanity. Engineers and computer scientists are challenged to solve these problems in order to improve life on the planet. Learn more about the NAE Grand Challenges at http://engineeringchallenges.org and tell us which challenge is most important to you, and why. (250 words)

Before you can start answering this prompt, you need to do a little research! Once you go to the website linked above, click on the Challenges button at the top of the page and it will take you to the 14 Grand Challenges that engineers across the globe are committed to addressing. These challenges are broken up into four categorical themes (Sustainability, Health, Security, and Joy of Living) and they range from providing access to clean water to improving urban infrastructure to engineering better medicines to preventing nuclear terror attacks.

Your job is to pick one of these challenges that speaks the most to you. Keep in mind, we didn’t say pick the challenge you think is the “trendiest” or the admissions officers would be most impressed by; in order to write a successful and engaging essay your genuine passion and fascination with the issue has to come through. 

Once you have a challenge in mind, now you have to connect it to you. This is where you will bring in your previous experiences, your academic interests, and personal anecdotes to demonstrate why that particular issue resonates with you. For example, maybe you picked Manage the Nitrogen Cycle because your favorite memories from when you were little were gardening with your grandma which started your fascination with how plants sustain themselves and interact with the environment.

It’s important to connect to the challenge with both past experiences and future goals. So, continuing the nitrogen cycle example, maybe your dream one day is to own your own farm that is pesticide-free, so you are passionate about engineering nitrogen-free fertilizers. They don’t all have to be this personal—it’s just as valid to say you are committed to providing clean water because you dream of a world where no one is denied basic human rights like water—but you should have some explanation of the impact overcoming one of these challenges would have on you and the broader community. This helps demonstrate to the admissions officers that you appreciate the weight of these issues.

One thing to remember that trips up some students: you aren’t asked to solve the challenge in this essay. Although you can definitely contribute ideas you have, especially if you have previous experiences that relate to addressing the issue, it’s not required. The major point of this essay is to learn more about global issues you care about and why you are choosing to address them through an engineering perspective.

Many of us have at least one issue or passion that we care deeply about — a topic on which we would love to share our opinions and insights in hopes of sparking intense interest and continued conversation. If you had ten minutes and the attention of a million people, what would your talk be about? (250 words)

This prompt requires less deep thought than the former. The “education” prompt asks students to think deeply about a question they have probably never thought about before, while this prompt asks you “what are you thinking about all the time?”  

If an idea comes to mind when you first read this prompt, that’s probably where you should start. USC is not looking for wild answers where students turn the holes in swiss cheese into a complex metaphor—they really just want to hear what you care about. That being said, what you care about can totally be weird or nuanced, as long as your interest in the subject tells admissions officers something about you.

Some examples of how you could work this prompt:

• Writing about a social justice issue. Introducing a specific anecdote (that you would introduce during your hypothetical talk). Providing insightful and unique commentary on the issue—whether that be how we got here or where we should go from here.
• Writing about a school of thought in science or philosophy. Explaining the importance of certain types of questions. Giving specific examples (historical, fictional, and anecdotal) that show that you have thought through the importance of rationalism, taoism, sensationalism, or any other school.
• Writing about a lecture on a specific book. Discussing how White Teeth, Giovanni’s Room, or Moby Dick tells multiple important life lessons in one pretty package. Drawing connections between the fictional world and the real world.
• Writing about the valuable lessons that can be learned from another culture. Introducing stories from your past that show the value of Japanese respect, Persian hospitality, or Indian selflessness. Recognizing negative aspects of cultures, but recognizing the lessons that can be learned when you take the time to learn them.

While these are just some examples, this prompt leaves the door open for you to explore whatever you care about. Because this essay is the simpler option, make sure that your writing is impeccable if you choose this second prompt. Engage with anecdotes and a unique personal voice to keep your essay engaging. Don’t give the reader the option to stop reading!

Where to Get Your USC Essays Edited

Do you want feedback on your USC essays? After rereading your essays countless times, it can be difficult to evaluate your writing objectively. That’s why we created our free Peer Essay Review tool , where you can get a free review of your essay from another student. You can also improve your own writing skills by reviewing other students’ essays. 

If you want a college admissions expert to review your essay, advisors on CollegeVine have helped students refine their writing and submit successful applications to top schools. Find the right advisor for you to improve your chances of getting into your dream school!

Related CollegeVine Blog Posts

University of Southern California

School of dramatic arts, master of fine arts dramatic writing.

Third-year MFA Dramatic Writing student and actor discussing script changes during a rehearsal for a production in the School’s annual New Works Festival Year 3. Photo by Craig Schwartz

American Theatre is at a transformative moment — be a part of that change.

The Master of Fine Arts in Dramatic Writing (MFADW) at the USC School of Dramatic Arts provides students with the foundation to not only build a fruitful career, but to further discover and develop their own authentic voice.  

At the heart of this program, the MFADW teaches playwriting first and foremost, then expands into adaptation, screenwriting, television writing, digital media and beyond. Presentations occur each year as part of a yearly New Works Festival, presented in conjunction with prominent local and national theatres most recently including The Hero Theatre, The Latino Theatre Company and Pasadena Playhouse.

Opportunities for collaboration with acting students at the graduate and undergraduate levels are also supported — as well as internships and exposure to a wide array of celebrated guest artists, who have included Suzan-Lori Parks, Stephen Adly Guirgis, Colman Domingo, Paula Vogel, Tony Kushner and many others.

SDA MFADW alumni have found their success on stages throughout the country and internationally, as well as on film and television, and other media. More importantly, they have learned ways to sustain and to find joy in their dramatic writing, giving them not simply a career but a calling.

Our conservatory-style MFA program offers artists the opportunity to engage with other artistic students and develop a skill-set that extends their curiosity and challenges their imagination in a supportive, environment.

For more, visit the USC Catalogue .

A minimum of 72 units of graduate coursework, the submission of a full-thesis on the University’s thesis submission due date, successful annual reviews, and full participation including rehearsals and attendance in all New Works Festivals events, must be completed prior to degree being granted.  These requirements will be part of the grade evaluation for THTR 596b.

Learn more about the learning objectives.

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Recent Events

The Magill Poetry Series featuring Tom Sleigh

Thu, Mar 24, 2022 4pm

Doheny Memorial Library (DML), Doheny Memorial Library Room 240

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AT SKYLIGHT: ANNA JOURNEY in conversation with JOSEPH BOONE

Fri, Mar 4, 2022 7:30pm

SKYLIGHT BOOKS: 1818 N Vermont Ave Los Angeles, CA 90027

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The Boudreaux Visiting Writer Series: Natalie Diaz

Wed, Feb 16, 2022 3:30pm

Virtual Event

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Maggie Nelson reading and in conversation with Alison Cuddy

Tue, Dec 7, 2021 5pm

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An Evening with Zadie Smith

Tue, Nov 2, 2021 7pm

Bovard Auditorium (ADM)

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P&P Live! Maggie Nelson | On Freedom with Grace Lavery

Tue, Oct 5, 2021 5pm

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Building Fictional Worlds

Creative director, visual artist, writer, editor

The School of Visual Arts online courses are hosted in Canvas, our College-wide learning system. Most computers (5 years old or newer recommended) can access the course(s) without a problem. The courses work with Windows (Windows 7 and newer), Macintosh (Mac OSX 10.10 and newer), and Linux (chromeOS). Participants will need a minimum screen size of 800x600 (the average size of a netbook) and good broadband (Minimum of 512kbps) Internet connection to participate in the online courses.

One business day after completing registration, you will receive a confirmation email from the Registrar’s Office which includes a schedule, username and password .

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Steps to Access Your Online Course

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Winners of the 2024 Freund Prize for Creative Writing read on September 26

8/08/2024 By | Meegs Longacre

The Department of Literatures in English celebrates the winners of the 2024 Philip Freund Prize for Creative Writing in recognition of excellence in publication: Andrew Boryga, Aisha Abdel Gawad, C. Michelle Lindley, Amanda Moore

The alumni prize is supported by the Philip Freund '29 endowment and comes with a $5000 award and an invitation to participate in the Freund Prize Reading in the fall semester.

The 2024 Freund Prize Reading will take place on Thursday, September 26 at 5:00 p.m. in Rhodes-Rawling Auditorium, Klarman Hall KG70. Recipients will read from their award-winning work. Books by the authors will be available for purchase thanks to Ithaca's local cooperative bookstore Buffalo Street Books , and a book signing will follow the reading.

More about the 2024 Freund Prize recipients:

Andrew Boryga (BA ‘13), Novelist & Journalist

Andrew Boryga (he/him) grew up in the Bronx and now lives in Miami with his family. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic, and been awarded prizes by Cornell University, The University of Miami, The Susquehanna Review, and The Michener Foundation. He attended the Tin House Writer’s Workshop and has taught writing to college students, elementary school students, and incarcerated adults. Victim is his debut novel.

Aisha Abdel Gawad (MFA ‘13) , Writer

Aisha Abdel Gawad's (she/her) debut novel, Between Two Moons , was published by Doubleday in 2023. Between Two Moons is the recipient of a New York City Book Award, a finalist for the Gotham Book Prize, and was longlisted for the 2024 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction and the 2023 New American Voices Award. Aisha's short fiction and essays have appeared in publications such as the Kenyon Review, American Short Fiction, Bon Appetit, and Literary Hub. She is a high-school English teacher based in Connecticut.

C. Michelle Lindley (MFA ‘22) , Writer

C. Michelle Lindley (She/Her) is a writer from California. Her work can be found in Conjunctions, The Georgia Review, and elsewhere. She is a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow for 2024 and has an MFA in Creative Writing from Cornell University. Her debut novel, The Nude , is available now.

Amanda Moore (MFA ‘01), Poet & Educator

Amanda Moore’s (she/her) debut collection of poetry, Requeening , was selected for the National Poetry Series by Ocean Vuong and published by HarperCollins/Ecco in 2021. Her poems and essays have appeared in journals and anthologies including Best New Poets, ZZYZVA, Ploughshares, LitHub, and Poets & Writers. An editor and reader for Women’s Voices for Change and Bull City Press, Amanda also runs writing workshops and community classes, translates poems by contemporary Costa Rican women, and teaches high school English. She lives by the beach in the Outer Sunset neighborhood of San Francisco.

This reading is part of the Fall 2024 Barbara and David Zalaznick Reading Series. The series also will host poet Elisa Gabbert on September 19, writer Rowan Ricardo Phillips on October 17 and author Sigrid Nunez on November 7.

Your August 2024 Reads

A&S honors 10 faculty with endowed professorships

Early version of Black Pride brought US a step closer to Juneteenth

Peter Loewen named dean of Arts and Sciences

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Picture Prompts

142 Picture Prompts to Inspire Student Writing

A school year’s worth of short, accessible image-driven posts that invite a variety of kinds of writing.

By The Learning Network

We’ve been publishing our Picture Prompts series four days a week since 2016. Below, we’ve rounded up all the prompts we published for the 2023-24 school year.

These short, accessible, image-driven prompts invite students to pen short stories, poems and memoirs; share experiences from their lives; analyze illustrations, graphs and charts; and tell us their opinions on hot-button issues.

You can find even more in our roundups for the 2022-23 , 2021-22 and 2020-21 school years, as well as in our collections of 125 picture prompts for creative and narrative writing and 25 spooky images for writing scary stories .

To learn how you can use Picture Prompts to build literacy skills, promote critical thinking, inspire discussion and foster creativity in your classroom, watch our three-minute tutorial video or our on-demand webinar . For dozens more ideas, see our lesson plan “ How to Teach With Our Picture Prompts (and Other Times Images) .”

If you use this feature with your students, or if you have other ideas for how to use photos, illustrations and graphics to encourage writing, let us know in the comments.

Share experiences from your own life.

Boys and Cologne Soapbox Derby Graphs Old and Young 2,000 Bags Spring Holidays Baking Spring ‘Floor Person’ Checking Your Watch ‘Wild’ Ice Skating Lunar New Year Hot Pot Distracted Walking Breakfast Wild Weather Maps Healthy Habits Holiday Classics Compliments Family Drama Thanksgiving Dinner Libraries Scary Movies Carving Pumpkins Fall Friday the 13th Our Own Language Skydiving Lazy Days Back to School

What story does this image inspire for you?

Falling Into a Hole Friends? Up, Up and Away! Pet Alligator Shadowy Figures Help Fishing in a Stream Tiny House Rats on a Dog Walking Away Public Selfies Hidden Doorway Playing Dominoes Point of No Return Sunset by the Water Valentines Biking Climbing a Ladder Reflections Happy Creatures Snowfall Blindfolded The Red Planet Dog TV Walking Through Town People and Penguins Witches on the Water Spying Show Time! A Wave Goodbye Ancient Arrow A Hand Up Darkened Library The Concert

What do you think this image, chart or cartoon is saying?

Pink Head, Green Check City Street Lapel Buttons One Seat Underwear on a Statue Justices An Elevator Filled With Robots Flying Plastic In a Box Watching Snacks and Drinks Tree Stump Behind Columns Lying in Bed Soccer and Dollars Two People Sitting Package and Globe Hot-Air Balloon Civil Conversation Raking A Shadow Parent and Child Atop a Cellphone The Super Wealthy Brick Wall Eagle and Ropes Painting Blank Space Exercise Football and Bag of Money Worm in an Apple Head in the Clouds

What’s your opinion on this issue?

‘Cowboy Carter’ New Stamp Design Prizewinning Miniature Poodle Cicadas for Dinner Met Gala Student Orchestra Tech in the Classroom Salt Movie Memorabilia 100 Years of Furniture March Madness Texting Styles Concerts Leap Day Broadway Shows Ice Cream Celebrity Feuds A.I.-Generated Faces World’s Largest Cruise Ship Your Energy Playlist Taylor Swift and the N.F.L. In-and-Out Lists Contenders Coveted Cup Your 2024 Most-Anticipated List 2023 in Pictures Style in 2023 $700 Million Deal Dream Décor Skipping School Giving Tuesday Pop-Tart Critic Time Change Pink Jersey Floating Home The Mall Breaking Police Robot Celebrity Relationships Fall Music New iPhone Tiny Homes Floods in Libya Football Season Land, Man and Sky Fall Video Games

Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public and may appear in print.

Find more Picture Prompts here.

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CW Alum Rowana Miller's debut novel forthcoming in 2025

Rowana Miller's (C'22) debut novel  Secrets of the Blue Hand Girls  has been acquired by Wendy McClure at Sourcebooks Fire in a two-book deal. First begun in Nova Ren Suma's  2019 Writing for Young Adults workshop , this YA thriller explores first love, surviving high school, defining justice, and the murderous lengths to which teenage girls will go for acceptance. Publication is scheduled for fall 2025.

Congratulations Rowana! Read the full announcement in Publishers Weekly at the link below.

What are you looking for?

Faculty publications, explore faculty publications.

See below for a selection of our faculty’s numerous published works. Only the three most recently published works for each writer are displayed. For more comprehensive information about faculty members and their publications, please visit our Faculty profiles page.

THE BUTTERFLY LAMPSHADE | Aimee Bender

An invisible sign of my own | aimee bender, the particular sadness of lemon cake | aimee bender, blue skies | t.c. boyle, i walk between the raindrops | t.c. boyle, talk to me | t.c. boyle, jeff in venine, death in varanasi | geoff dyer, the last days of roger federer | geoff dyer, see saw: looking at photographs | geoff dyer, dr. no | percival everett, telephone | percival everett, the trees | percival everett, large white house speaking | mark irwin, a passion according to green | mark irwin, tall if | mark irwin, break any woman down | dana johnson, elsewhere, california | dana johnson, in the not quite dark | dana johnson, the athiest wore goat silk | anna journey, the judas ear | anna journey, vulgar remedies | anna journey, inhabitants and visitors | robin coste lewis, to the realization of perfect helplessness | robin coste lewis, voyage of the sable venus | robin coste lewis, descartes’ nightmare | susan mccabe, h.d. & bryher: an untold love story of modernism | susan mccabe, swirl | susan mccabe, the argonauts | maggie nelson, the art of cruelty: a reckoning | maggie nelson, on freedom: four songs of care and constraint | maggie nelson, colored television | danzy senna, new people | danzy senna, you are free | danzy senna, the auroras | david st. john, the face | david st. john, the last troubadour | david st. john, the heartbeat of wounded knee | david treuer, prudence | david treuer, rez life | david treuer, ph.d. in creative writing & literature.

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