USC's Nathalie Burle defines Francophonie and addresses its pedagogical implications in the learning of French.

This workshop will provide teaching strategies as well as classroom resources such as francophone literature, film, music, etc.

Burle is a lecturer in the USC Department of French and Italian. She received her doctorate in Educational Psychology, Learning, and Instruction from the USC Rossier School of Education. Her research interests are in cognitive language development, second-language acquisition and pedagogy, curriculum and faculty development, and photolanguage.

Saturday 11/07/2009: 8:30 AM - 4:00 PM

University Park Campus Taper Hall of Humanities 320

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The USC Catholic Center presents a talk by philosopher and author Fr. Robert J. Spitzer.

Topics will include what science can and cannot establish, and the current status of the relationship between reason and faith.

All are welcome.

For more information, visit www.catholictrojan.org or call (213) 749-5341.

Sunday 11/08/2009: 8:10 PM - 9:30 PM

University Park Campus USC Catholic Center

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Dr. Chen is associate professor of Clinical Pharmacy and Pharmacoeconomics Policy a Center for Excellence in Teaching Faculty Fellow.

When we think of a "university lecture," what most often comes to mind is an instructor speaking on a particular topic for several hours, with a short break between each hour. How effective is this traditional method of teaching? Maybe the telling question is: How much of these lectures do we remember today? For most of us, the answer is probably "very little." The key problem is that the traditional method of teaching is not consistent with what is known about adult learning.

The purpose of this seminar is to share proven teaching methods that will assist us in generating active participation, accelerated learning, and champions/leaders.

The session will focus on these questions: What makes the elements of national health care change collaboratives so powerful in accelerating the learning of participants? How can I use these elements to accelerate the actions of participants? What are examples of ways to integrate these elements into classroom lectures or small group discussions?

Dr. Chen will also talk about examples of teaching that incorporate "action learning," and "Ten Great Ways To Conduct Winning Breakouts."

Tuesday 11/10/2009: 12:30 PM - 1:30 PM

University Park Campus Doheny Memorial Library Room 233

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In a liberal democracy, what fundamental moral convictions should govern decisions on capital punishment, abortion and physician-assisted suicide?

Should we (the citizens of a liberal democracy, acting through our elected representatives) retain capital punishment, or abolish it? Should we ban abortion or permit it? Should we ban physician-assisted suicide or permit it? Should we refuse to extend the benefit of law to same-sex unions, or should we create civil unions for same-sex couples... and should such unions be called "marriages"? What is the proper role of religiously grounded morality in a liberal democracy?

Michael John Perry specializes in three areas:

• American constitutional law and theory, with an emphasis on constitutional rights and on the courts' role — especially the U.S. Supreme Court's role — in protecting constitutional rights
• Law, morality and religion, with an emphasis on the role of religiously based morality in the law and politics of liberal democracy
• Human rights theory
  

Perry is the author of more than 60 articles and essays and 11 books, including Under God? Religious Faith and Liberal Democracy (Cambridge, 2003), Toward a Theory of Human Rights: Religion, Law, Courts (Cambridge, 2007) and Constitutional Rights, Moral Controversy, and the Supreme Court (Cambridge, 2009). His 11th book, The Political Morality of Liberal Democracy, will be published by Cambridge University Press in 2010.

Since 2003, Perry has held a Robert W. Woodruff University Chair at Emory University, where he teaches in the law school. A Woodruff Chair is the highest honor Emory University bestows on a member of its faculty. Before coming to Emory, Perry was the inaugural occupant  of the Howard J. Trienens Chair in Law at Northwestern University (1990-97), where he taught for 15 years (1982-97). Perry then held the University Distinguished Chair in Law at Wake Forest University (1997-2003).

During the 2009-10, 2010-11 and 2011-12 academic years, Perry is splitting his time between Emory University and the University of San Diego, where, as the University Distinguished Visiting Professor in Law and Peace Studies, he is teaching a course on the law and morality of international human rights to law students and to graduate students at the Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies.

Wednesday 11/11/2009: 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM

University Park Campus Davidson Conference Center TBA

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Christopher Cox is 28th chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and a USC alumnus. Myron T. Steele, seventh Chief Justice of the Delaware Supreme Court, was named one of the most 100 influential people in corporate governance by Directorship magazine. They will be joined by more than 20 experts in various aspects of corporate governance, many of whom are sitting directors.

Organized by the USC Marshall School in 2006, the annual Corporate Governance Summit is designed to give directors and executives the information they need to meet the challenges of governance today. This program has been accredited by Institutional Shareholder Services and features experts from the USC Marshall School of Business and the Leventhal School of Accounting, and a wide range of speakers and panelists with hands-on experience.

In addition to Chairman Cox and Judge Steele, speakers will include:

• Warren Bennis, University Professor and distinguished professor of Business Administration and professor of Management and Organization at the USC Marshall School, and best-selling author
• Judith Blumenthal, professor of Clinical Management and Organization at the USC Marshall School, and director of Guess? Inc.
• Duke Bristow, professor at the USC Marshall School, and director of the Landec Corporation
• James Ellis, dean of the USC Marshall School, and director of Quiksilver Inc.
• Larry Harris, Fred V. Keenan Chair in Finance and professor of Finance and Business Economics at the USC Marshall School; director of the Clipper Fund Inc. and Interactive Brokers Group Inc.; and former chief economist of the SEC
• Bill Holder, Ernst & Young Professor of Accounting at the USC Leventhal School of Accounting
• Ken Merchant, Deloitte & Touche LLP Chair in Accountancy and professor of Accounting at the USC Leventhal School of Accounting, and director of Entropic Communications Inc. and Universal Guardian Holdings Inc.
• Kevin Murphy, Kenneth L. Trefftzs Chair in Finance at the USC Marshall School of Business, and special adviser to U.S. government on executive compensation
• Stephen Brown, director and senior counsel, Corporate Governance and Business Affairs, TIAA -CREF
• William F. Coffin, CEO, CCG Investor Relations
• Rich Corgel, executive director, Ernst & Young LLP
• Chris Crawford, senior vice president and regional practice leader, Willis Executive Risks
• Colleen Cunningham, global managing director, Resources Global Professionals
• Robert Deutschman, managing director, Cappello Capital Corp.
• Stanley Gold, president and CEO of Shamrock Holdings; director of The Walt Disney Company and Ansell Limited; chairman of Tadiran Communications Ltd.; and chairman of the USC Board of Trustees
• Joe Grundfest, W.A. Franke Professor of Law and Business, Stanford Law School
• Stephen Krasnow, managing partner and founder at APCO, The Appraisal Company
• Larry J. Livingston, music director of Thornton Orchestras and professor of Conducting, USC Thornton School of Music
• Simon M. Lorne, vice chairman and chief legal officer, Millennium Management LLC; director, Teledyne Technologies Inc.; and former general counsel to the SEC
• Ed Merino, CEO, Office of the Chairman
• M. Christian Mitchell, director of Special Value Opportunities Fund LLC, First Chicago Bancorp and Reis. Inc.
• David Robbins, partner, Bingham McCutchen
• Bob Rollo, partner, Heidrick & Struggles
• Walter Smiechewicz, senior managing director, Enterprise Risk Management, Countrywide Financial Corp.
• Les Sussman, managing director, Resources Audit Solutions
• Dean Yoost, managing partner, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP
• Richard Welch, managing partner, Bingham McCutchen

Most summit sessions are open only to registered event attendees. For information on speakers, panelists and the program, please visit www.marshall.usc.edu/summit. If you have any questions about the Corporate Governance Summit, please feel free to contact dbristow@usc.edu.

Dates: 11/12/2009, 11/13/2009: All day

University Park Campus Davidson Conference Center

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Careers outside academia can be rewarding intellectually and economically. Stephan Haas, Center for Excellence in Teaching fellow and professor of Physics and Astronomy, gathers a panel of former students and friends to discuss how to write a resume, prepare for an interview, negotiate a job offer, and avoid traditional pitfalls when looking for a job in industry.

The panel discussion will be followed by a Q&A.

Refreshments will be served.

To RSVP, send an email to usccet@usc.edu, using "Job" in the subject line.

Friday 11/13/2009: 2:00 PM - 3:30 PM

University Park Campus Seaver Science Library Room 150

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According to Nobel Laureate Robert B. Laughlin, we are in the process of losing the right to figure out things for ourselves.

"There is increasing talk about the disappearance of technical knowledge from the public domain, both because it is a security danger and because it is economically valuable," says Laughlin. "I argue that this development is not anomalous at all, but a great historic trend tied to our transition to the information age. We are in the process of losing a human right that all of us thought we had but actually didn't — the right to learn things as we can and better ourselves economically from what we learn. Increasingly, figuring out important things (as opposed to unimportant ones) for yourself will become theft and terrorism. Increasingly, reason itself will become a crime."

Prof. Robert B. Laughlin earned an A.B. in mathematics from UC Berkeley in 1972 and a Ph.D. in Physics from MIT in 1981. He served two years in the U.S. Army. Upon leaving MIT, he went to the Bell Labs theory group, and later to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where he still consults. Laughlin joined the physics faculty of Stanford in 1984. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and has won many prestigious awards, including the Oliver E. Buckley Prize, the Earnest O. Lawrence Award, the Benjamin Franklin Medal for Physics, and the Onsager Medal. He shared the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physics for his theory of the Fractional Quantum Hall Effect.

The keynote lecture is part of the Munushian Visiting Seminar Series, created by an endowment from the late Jack Munushian. Visit ee.usc.edu/munushian for more information.

Friday 11/13/2009: 2:00 PM

University Park Campus Andrus Gerontology Center Room 124

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Economist, author and social entrepreneur Elena Panaritis addresses the effects of informal property rights on real estate markets.

She will tackle scenarios from around the world and highlight the internationally acclaimed success story of Peru.

Elena Panaritis, author of Prosperity Unbound: Building Property Markets with Trust (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), is an acclaimed economist and social entrepreneur. Her ideas are particularly timely, especially in the context of the current global economic crisis and the ongoing efforts to eliminate illiquid/informal property markets around the world.

“It is no accident that this crisis has originated in the United States,” Elena explains. “The property system is built on a false assumption: that the property is valued correctly. Unless that’s fixed, the risk will always be far greater than necessary.”

Panaritis is the founder of a prototype triple-bottom-line investment advisory firm, Panel Group, and is a former World Bank economist. She has played a direct, hands-on role in creating stable property markets and preventing mortgage crisis such as ours. She created a new methodology and used it to spearhead property rights reform in Peru, with enormous and internationally recognized success. Some nine million people benefited from the reforms in about three years.

Robert Litan of the Brookings Institute and The Kauffman Foundation of Entrepreneurship calls Panaritis’ work a “real contribution.”

Panaritis is an expert on property rights, illiquid real estate assets, and public sector management. In addition, she teaches economic development, housing finance and property markets reform at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; INSEAD; and the Johns Hopkins University School for Advanced International Studies. In more than a decade as an economist at the World Bank, she spearheaded several institutional reforms, including the property rights reform in Peru. She currently blogs at www.prosperityunbound.com/blog.

Tuesday 11/17/2009: 12:15 PM - 1:30 PM

University Park Campus Ralph and Goldy Lewis Hall Room 101

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USC's Center for Effective Organizations holds a seminar for leaders in HR, organization effectiveness, and talent management.

Every organization recognizes the importance of competing for talent and organizing that talent once acquired. Yet research shows that most organizations still lack a deep and logical understanding of how decisions about human capital, talent, and organization design and effectiveness connect to business and strategic success.

Learn how to build that deep, logical understanding through a proven approach to analyze your business strategy and discover specific, actionable implications for your talent and organization, with clear strategic results.

Where will talent and organization investments make the biggest difference in your strategic success?

This seminar provides a proven framework that helps business, HR and organization leaders answer this key question.

You will learn and apply the framework featured in Beyond HR (Harvard Business School Publishing) by John Boudreau and Pete Ramstad. Using that framework, Boudreau and Ramstad show you how to analyze your own strategy to uncover hidden, vital pivot-points where your HR and talent management will make their biggest strategic contribution.

The seminar is built on Boudreau and Ramstad's unique "decision science" for talent, which shares many of the same principles of decision sciences like finance and marketing. This framework has enabled organizations to achieve true line-of-sight between HR investments and their sustainable strategic success.

This framework and the talentship decision science are based on 10 years of research, application and work with leading organizations.

This program will provide:

• Unique focus on the integration between business strategy, HR strategy, and talent and organization implications
• Hands-on experience with the proven framework featured in the Harvard Business School Publishing book Beyond HR, with the goal of developing and analyzing strategies to discover unique strategic value in human and organizational capital
• A guided learning process, with a proprietary array of rigorous and practical tools that have been used by organizations such as Allstate, Corning, Deluxe, Microsoft, Northrop Grumman, PepsiCo and The Toro Company
• A workshop learning approach that is based on leading research in strategy, economics, organizational behavior and psychology 
  

This is a highly interactive workshop. Participants work directly with tools to analyze organizational strategy at all levels. You will use tools to identify the "lenses" that reveal where talent and organization decisions most affect strategic and business success, and the implications for human resource and organization practices. You will practice by applying these tools to available information from specific organizations, and you will learn about other organizations through discussion and break-out work.
 
Who Should Attend

This event is for any leaders wishing to help their organization find unique strategy opportunities in their talent management strategy and how it is organized and deployed. This includes leaders in human resources, HR strategy, organization effectiveness, and talent management. This workshop will be particularly valuable for HR generalists, business partners, strategists, functional leaders, leaders outside of the HR function, or those with non-HR backgrounds who have recently taken HR leadership positions.

Dates: 11/18/2009, 11/19/2009, 11/20/2009: All day

Exelon Corporation Headquarters Chase Towers 10 South Dearborn Street 48th Floor Chicago IL 60603

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How do immigrants remain attached to their place of origin while becoming involved in American civic life?

Are the two attachments incompatible, or do they spur each other on?

Hometown Associations (HTAs), organizations for immigrants who share the same place of origin, may serve to increase the civic capacity of immigrants from across the globe. Beyond hosting social and cultural events for their members, HTAs often serve as mechanisms to raise money for their hometowns and, more informally, help immigrants navigate civic and political systems in their new hometowns.

Our panel brings together representatives from several Los Angeles HTAs — some of America’s largest — with academics who have researched HTAs to discuss the role these organizations play in the economic, political and social integration of immigrants in the U.S.

Join us as we explore this facet of immigrant integration in Los Angeles.

Moderator

• Ricardo Ramirez, USC professor of Political Science and American Studies and Ethnicity
  

Speakers

• Sara Zapata-Mijares, president and founder of Federación de Clubes Yucatecos-U.S.A.
• Omar Corletto, president of Comité de Festejos Centroamericanos
• Jules Boyele, president of the Congolese Community of Southern California
• Chancee Martorell, executive director, Thai Community Development Center
• Luis Escala Rabadán, professor of Social Studies, El Colegio de la Frontera Norte
  

Wednesday 11/18/2009: 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM

University Park Campus Leavey Library Auditorium

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Interesting speakers will highlight a wide range of issues and perspectives that affect Korea.

Wednesday 11/18/2009: 12:30 PM - 5:00 PM

University Park Campus Davidson Conference Center Vineyard Room

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Sandra K. Erickson, Ph.D., is professor, Medicine/Endocrinology and Metabolism, VAMC, University of California, San Francisco.

Her research focuses specifically on nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). As with most common diseases, both genetic predisposition and environmental factors play a role in NAFLD. Dr. Erickson's group is studying both aspects by making use of mouse strain differences in susceptibility and identifying genes involved in the development and progression of NAFLD.

Pizza will be available on a first-come, first-served basis.

Thursday 11/19/2009: 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM

Health Sciences Campus Hoffman Hall, Hastings Auditorium

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Is there anything wrong with paying an executive an amount that dwarfs salaries at the bottom of the corporate ladder?

For those who find themselves at the top of the corporate heap, it has become both accepted and expected to receive a salary based on very favorable terms that can bear little resemblance to those offered other employees. While this is perfectly legal, is it moral? Must executive compensation depend on the standard metrics of performance, merit or contribution? And what about payment incentive structures that lead to risky behavior which could lead (as it has in the past) to economic disaster?

When is it not okay to pay in a particular way?

Friday 11/20/2009: 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM

University Park Campus Ground Zero Performance Cafe

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With fellow Trojans, learn how to navigate and leverage LinkedIn for networking and job search opportunities.

This event will include an interactive computer-based training session.

The agenda will include the following topics:

• LinkedIn 101
• Ways LinkedIn can help you
  

Attire is business casual. Please note that Career Planning & Placement Center alumni events have filled very quickly in the past. Reservations are on a first-come, first-served basis.

If you have questions regarding this event or need special accommodation for the event, please call (213) 821-6289 or email alumniCS@usc.edu.

Friday 11/20/2009: 1:00 PM - 2:30 PM

University Park Campus Waite Phillips Hall Room B36

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New faculty members are invited to reflect on the delights and challenges they have faced in their first 100 days at USC.

The discussion will be led by Sarah Banet-Weiser (School of Communication), Margaret Rosenthal (French and Italian) and Stephan Haas (Physics).

Have you already been here three months? Now that you've settled into some kind of routine, it's a good time to reflect and share your experiences as a new faculty member at USC.

What have been the most rewarding moments for you so far? Have your colleagues been helpful in getting you started? Are there issues you wish someone had told you about in advance? It’s not too late! A team of diverse and experienced faculty members is ready to discuss the challenges you are currently tackling, ranging from teaching to getting grants to preparing for the tenure process.

RSVP to usccet@usc.edu with "100 Days" in the email subject line.

Tuesday 12/01/2009: 12:30 PM - 1:30 PM

University Park Campus Doheny Memorial Library Room 233

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A lecture by Rudi G.J. Westendorp, M.D., Ph.D., professor at the Netherlands' Leiden University Medical Center.

Wednesday 12/02/2009: 12:00 PM - 1:15 PM

University Park Campus Andrus Gerontology Center Room 224

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While traditional lecturing methods dominate in most classrooms, passive student learning has been shown to be far less effective than "active learning." But what is "active learning," and how can you use it in your classroom?

Research shows that students learn best when they actively participate in the learning process. Active learning methods include a variety of strategies which make the student responsible for creating and applying knowledge, rather than simply being a vessel receiving material from the instructor; they acknowledge that learning is an active process, and that different students learn in different ways. In a traditional classroom, teachers are typically expected to lecture and give out assignments and exams, and students are expected to listen to the lecture and take notes. In an "active learning" environment, on the other hand, multilayered, thought-provoking and challenging methods are introduced so that students participate in more interactive, nontraditional ways.

While Active learning techniques can be extremely beneficial for students, they present some challenges for instructors — from creating collaborative activities, to managing students through projects, to designing exercises that encourage students to think critically and analytically. Other challenges include knowing when to employ Active learning techniques, and when a traditional lecture style may be more suitable.

Join us for a workshop to help you develop your own active methods for creating excitement in the classroom.

Lunch will be provided.

October 28, 12-1 p.m.
University Park Campus, Ahmanson Center, Room 238
RSVP to usccet@usc.edu with "Active Learning UPC" in the email subject line.

December 3, 12:30-1:30 p.m.
Health Sciences Campus, Keith Administration Building, B21/23
RSVP to usccet@usc.edu with "Active Learning HSC" in the email subject line.

Dates: 10/28/2009, 12/03/2009: All day

Multiple Locations

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