As Hollywood tallies its year-end totals, a new study released Feb. 5 offers insight into how gender and race/ethnicity of the lead/co-lead character is related to economic success.

When a student schedules an appointment with USC librarian Chiméne Tucker, they usually meet in her office in the Doheny Memorial Library. Along with the expected bookshelves, the room welcomes students with herbal tea, coffee, and a light scent of orange and lavender from an aromatherapy oil infuser — all signs that Tucker realizes there’s more to her job than books, databases and citations. “I call it research therapy,” she said.

Driving down Highway 62 on the way to Joshua Tree National Park, Francisco, one of the 20 high school students on the bus, noticed something different about the landscape. If he ever moved here, he told the group, he’d open up his own roadside taco stand, like the ones near his home in South Los Angeles. That way, he’d give people a taste of where he’s from.

Josh Kun, professor and Chair in Cross Cultural Communication, talks about the act of listening. In this short video, the award-winning cultural historian and expert on the intersection of arts, culture and politics shares how his focus on music extends to performative lectures, books he has written, a collaboration with the Los Angeles Public Library and a popular undergraduate communication course he teaches.

Stephen D. O’Leary, a former associate professor of communication at USC Annenberg known for his scholarship on religion and media, as well as his love of choral music, has died. Suffering from liver cancer, he passed away on Jan. 24, according to his family. He was 60 years old.

USC Annenberg students in an “Advanced Disruption: Innovation with Emerging Technology” journalism class, run by Robert Hernandez, associate professor of professional practice, teamed with a local nonprofit to create immersive stories. Using virtual reality and 360-degree videos, our students partnered with Peace4Kids, an organization working with youth in foster care, to help create these narratives. This is the behind-the-scenes look at the experience.

From the moment he first saw the University Park campus as a prospective undergraduate student in the mid-’90s, JaBari Brown knew he wanted to be part of the USC culture. “It was just one of those things where, I could see myself here,” he said.

Dylan Valley was in Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport coming back from a fellowship conference in Berkeley, California to his hometown of Cape Town when he received an email that his virtual reality film, Azibuye – The Occupation had gotten into the Sundance Film Festival. “I started dancing in the terminal,” Valley said.