USC’s Class of 2025 celebrates commencement at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in May, bringing the Trojan Family to the 500,000 living alumni milestone. (USC Photo/Henry Kofman)
The Autumn 2025 issue of Trojan Family Magazine is here
Interim President Beong-Soo Kim celebrates the impressive reach of the Trojan Family, now half a million strong.
Family Matters
It’s official: The Trojan Family is now half a million strong. This milestone confirms the reach of our Trojan Family, our impressive legacy and the impact we have on lives around the globe.
I have always felt the spirit of the Trojan Family in a personal way — as the son of two Korean immigrants who attended graduate school at USC in the late 1960s. More than 50 years later, the Trojan Family continues to amaze and uplift both me and this university.
One of my priorities has been to get out and meet as many Trojans as I can, and I always leave my encounters energized and inspired by your passion, dedication and generosity of spirit. There are many things that put USC in a category of its own, and the Trojan Family is perhaps the most important of them all.
In these pages you’ll also learn about some other ways that USC distinguishes itself in its pursuit of excellence. One story, which demystifies the process of drug development from early-stage molecule modeling to clinical readiness, illustrates how our researchers are combining USC’s strengths across different disciplines — from biology and pharmacology to chemistry and AI — to develop cures for cancer, infectious diseases and neurological disorders.
And the story about the transformational impact of the USC Leslie and William McMorrow Neighborhood Academic Initiative highlights USC’s continued focus on improving student outcomes and uplifting our neighboring communities.
Our piece on the work of the USC Center for the Political Future could not be more timely. During an era of intense polarization, USC continues to be a place where students and faculty with widely differing opinions and beliefs feel welcome, where people seek to engage constructively with each other over those differences, and where intellectual rigor and honesty create new vistas of understanding and common purpose. Cultivating these values of open discourse and free inquiry is one of my highest presidential priorities.
After reading these stories, I hope you will come away as excited as I am about how USC is shaping both our present and our future. While it’s easy nowadays to focus on some of the challenges facing higher education, there is so much happening at USC — from students attending their first game at the Coliseum, to patients saved by innovative procedures, to faculty changing lives through their research, creative expression and teaching — to remind us why our mission remains so vital.
For both USC and the Trojan Family — all 500,000 of us — the future shines brightly.
Fight On!
Beong-Soo Kim
USC Interim President
