USC plays its first Big Ten conference football game at Michigan on Saturday; the first Big Ten home page, versus Wisconsin, is a week later. (USC Photo/John McGillen)
USC and Michigan compete on the field and collaborate in the classroom
For the first time in over half a century, USC will take the field at Michigan Stadium against the Wolverines. But the relationship between two of the nation’s top universities goes beyond the gridiron.
The only time the USC football team set foot in Michigan Stadium in 1958, the Trojans had yet to have their first Heisman Trophy winner. Both the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology did not yet exist. Gas was around 30 cents per gallon, and U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower was in the middle of his second term. The next seven meetings between the two storied programs would all be in Pasadena at the annual Rose Bowl game.
Saturday’s game is the first between the two football powerhouses as conference foes. With USC joining the Big Ten Conference last month — along with UCLA, Oregon and Washington — a new era of athletic competition began for not only the Trojans, but for all of college sports. It’s also a move that puts USC in a position to further both its academic and athletic prowess among some of the nation’s top universities.
Upon officially joining the Big Ten, USC not only entered one of the premier sports conferences, but one of the most highly regarded academic conferences as well. Joining the Big Ten means joining the Big Ten Academic Alliance, a partnership that facilitates the sharing of resources, infrastructure and expertise among universities.
Now that USC is a member of the Big Ten Academic Alliance, Trojan faculty, students and staff can take advantage of everything from library assets to peer groups, research consortiums, course-sharing programs and more.
USC in the Big Ten: Academic opportunities
Though the alliance creates the opportunity for more collaborations, partnering with Big Ten schools for academic purposes isn’t entirely new to USC. Earlier this year, USC and University of Michigan faculty partnered for the Mechanics of Hearing workshop, held at Michigan’s Ann Arbor campus. Karl Grosh, a University of Michigan professor of mechanical engineering, selected Karolina Charaziak of the Keck School of Medicine of USC to co-organize a workshop on auditory mechanics. The weeklong workshop focused on research topics such as sensitive hearing, hearing changes through the life span, and the influence of genetics and pharmaceuticals on hearing.
“I was ecstatic he invited me to join the organizing committee,” said Charaziak, an assistant professor at the USC Caruso Department of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery at the Keck School of Medicine. “After working with the organizing committee for over a year to put this workshop together, I’m proud to say that it was a huge success.”
As USC embarks on this new athletic and academic journey, expect to see more opportunities for collaborations with top research institutions from coast to coast that expand the university’s influence and impact across the country and globe.
