March 1, 2004

Ninety-nine years after the first engineering classes began on this campus, we are proudly naming our school USC’s Andrew and Erna Viterbi School of Engineering.

No name could more appropriately capture the ingenuity and innovation that permeates this school. For Andy Viterbi is one of our own: a USC Ph.D., a USC Trustee, a member of the Board of Councilors, a pioneer in the global spread of wireless communications and a visionary engineer and entrepreneur who gave birth to the cellular technology that connects hundreds of millions of people.

Try to imagine a world without Andy’s inventions, and you’d have to travel back in time 30 years — before cell phones, direct broadcast satellite TV, deep space weather forecasting and video transmissions from the surface of Mars.

With their generous gift of $52 million, the largest ever received to name an engineering school, Andy and his gracious wife, Erna, have assured the future of the school with far more than the growth of our endowment. The innovative Viterbi spirit will inspire a new generation of engineers and catapult The Andrew and Erna Viterbi School of Engineering into the uppermost echelon of engineering schools.

We are well on our way. We are consistently ranked in the top ten of graduate engineering programs by U.S. News & World Report, and in the top five among private
schools.

With more than $135 million in annual research expenditures, our school consistently ranks in the top three nationally in funding per tenured faculty member. Currently, 23 faculty are members of the National Academy of Engineering, the fourth-highest total among the nation’s private universities.

The Viterbi School is one of only four, and the only one in California, with two prestigious National Science Foundation-funded Engineering Research Centers. We have just become the site of the Department of Homeland Security’s first Center of Excellence. In the fierce competitions for all of these centers, our school placed number one.

This wealth of leading-edge research enables our Ph.D. students to spread new technologies around the world. Eight hundred students are pursuing degrees through our Distance Education Network, which delivers classes utilizing an innovative high-speed Internet interface designed here. Our undergraduate curriculum is experiencing a dramatic transformation. And our incoming freshmen have logged the highest average SAT scores at USC for the past two years.

These talented young women and men will shape tomorrow’s world. Perhaps 100 years from now, when humans are broadcasting the weather from Mars, we may be able to trace the origins of those information technologies to The Andrew and Erna Viterbi School of Engineering.

On behalf of the students, staff and faculty, I express our deepest gratitude to Andy and Erna for this gift and the boundless opportunities it opens for all of us.

C. L.Max Nikias
Dean