July 2018: The incoming full-time MBA Class of 2020 in the USC Marshall School of Business is the first cohort to include as many women as men. “We are proud to achieve this distinction,” said James G. Ellis, dean of USC Marshall. “Our ongoing focus on diversity and inclusion is playing out in real numbers now.” USC Marshall becomes the first top-ranked business school to achieve gender parity in an MBA program. (USC News)

May 2018: The Keck School of Medicine of USC and nationwide partners are launching a landmark $1.5 billion National Institutes of Health-led program that seeks to accelerate the development of precision medicine. One of the project’s priorities is to achieve a demographically, geographically and medically diverse community of participants, especially by including those who are underrepresented in biomedical research. (USC News)

April 2018: The USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism received a $3 million gift from an anonymous donor to establish an endowed chair dedicated to advancing innovation, leadership and research into the ways music and popular culture can serve as conduits for cross-cultural exchange. Josh Kun, professor of communication, will be the inaugural holder of the Chair in Cross-Cultural Communication. (USC News)

April 2018: The USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology hosted the exhibit “Quiet Heroes — Over Eighty,” photographs that portray the diversity, beauty, dignity and contributions of older adults across Los Angeles. (USC News)

February 2018: During the African American Heritage Month celebration at Los Angeles City Hall, Mayor Eric Garcetti and council members Curren D. Price Jr. and Marqueece Harris-Dawson recognized a groundbreaking project organized by USC, in which 15 local high school students worked closely with acclaimed muralist Noni Olabisi to capture the African-American experience. (USC News)

January 2018: Dr. Shaun R. Harper spoke with EdSource about the USC Race and Equity Center’s planned 2019 launch of a national survey of student attitudes and experiences about race, gender and other factors in college campus climates, and what a sense of inclusion and belonging at a university means.

December 2017: Billboard highlighted the efforts of USC professor Stacy Smith, founder of the new Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, to establish rigorous data toward determining solutions for music production companies to improve diversity. One specific problem she notes is music’s lack of female producers. “When women act feminine, they are punished for not acting like leaders. When they act like leaders, they are punished for not acting feminine enough,” Smith said. (Billboard)

November 2017: The USC Price School of Public Policy hosted a Diversity in Planning Workshop attended by undergraduates and recent college graduates from across the country. The event was the latest in USC Price’s ongoing effort to increase diversity in Master of Planning degree programs. (USC News)

November 2017: The Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism announced that it is broadening the mission of its Media, Diversity & Social Change Initiative to include the music world as well as television and movies and is renaming the project the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative. The Walt Disney Company, NBC, Universal Music Group, Sony Pictures Entertainment, HBO, and talent agency WME are joining the effort. (Associated Press)

November 2017: Actor and writer Issa Rae spoke at the USC Annenberg-HBO Diverse Voices Forum series about her experiences as a black actor and TV producer and her work portraying race effectively on-screen. (Daily Trojan)

November 2017: Jeremy Goldbach, a professor at the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, created a “diversity toolkit” for businesses, educators, and other organizations to use. The toolkit is a social activity consisting of an icebreaker, five collaborate activities, and a closing activity that promotes discourse applicable to a wide variety of environments. (Daily Trojan)

November 2017: The USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and VICE Media will launch a new class in Spring 2018 about VICELAND’s Emmy-nominated documentary series WOMAN, with Gloria Steinem, to learn about gender representation in the media. (Daily Trojan)

October 2017: The USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and HBO kicked off the Diverse Voices Forums, a year-long series designed to explore the role of diversity in the future of entertainment. (USC Annenberg)

October 2017: Dr. Shaun R. Harper was installed as the Clifford H. & Betty C. Allen Chair in Urban Leadership at the USC Rossier School of Education. He is also a Provost Professor in Rossier and the Marshall School of Business and the founder and executive director of the USC Race and Equity Center. (USC Rossier)

October 2017: PwC brought its diversity training, “Blind Spots: Challenging Assumptions to Build Inclusive Leaders,” to the USC campus as part of its recruiting efforts with the Marshall School of Business and Leventhal School of Accounting. (USC Marshall)

September 2017: USC’s Rossier School of Education launched the Center for Empowered Learning and Development with Technology (CELDT) under the direction of Associate Professor of Education and Psychology Brendesha Tynes. (USC Rossier)

September 2017: The USC Gould School of Law’s Immigration Clinic kicked off free citizenship clinics to help students, staff, faculty and community members complete and file naturalization applications. (USC News)

May 2017: USC News profiled the USC LGBT Health Equity Initiative, designed to bring together scholars, community leaders, and experts in LGBT health to advance research, collaboration, training and outreach to build awareness and promote social change.

March 2017: The George Lucas Family Foundation expanded its support of student diversity with a second $10 million endowment to the USC School of Cinematic Arts. The new gift, announced by School of Cinematic Arts Dean Elizabeth M. Daley, raises the foundation’s student diversity support effort to $20 million. (USC News)

January 2017: USC announced that diversity and inclusion expert Dr. Shaun R. Harper will return to the university in July, joining the USC Rossier School of Education as the Clifford and Betty Allen Professor in Urban Leadership, and will launch the USC Race and Equity Center. (USC News)

September 2016Women of Cinematic Arts, an organization founded at USC in 2005, launched its first annual Feminist Media Festival. (USC News)

June 2016: The Political Science and International Relations (POIR) PhD program hosted the first POIR Predoctoral Summer Institute for First-Generation and Minority Scholars. (USC News)

May 2016: USC released student and faculty diversity numbers. (USC News)

April 2016: Graduate students from the USC Price School of Public Policy and USC School of Social Work joined the third annual Students of Color and Allies Policy Forum, which addressed issues of race and social justice in planning, policy, development, and social work. (USC News)

April 2016: USC Price School of Public Policy Associate Professor Juliet Musso helped organize the spring conference of the Association of Public Policy and Management, which brought researchers and graduate students together to consider how analytics can be more relevant in addressing social justice, diversity, and inclusion. (USC News)

March 2016: USC President C. L. Max Nikias received the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Heads Association’s 2016 Diversity Award, awarded to an organization or individual whose proactive efforts increase cultural, ethnic and gender diversity within the Electrical and Computer Engineering student body and among ECE faculty. Nikias’ recognition was based on his efforts to boost diversity across USC’s student population. (USC News)

March 2016: USC announced a university-wide diversity initiative focusing on graduate students to launch with programs and stipend opportunities. In a campus-wide memorandum, USC Vice Provost of Academic and Faculty Affairs Elizabeth Graddy and Vice Provost for Graduate Programs Sally Pratt outlined the Graduate Initiative for Diversity, Inclusion and Access (DIA), a three-pronged approach to not only increase diversity among incoming graduate students, but also boost funding for incoming students who contribute to campus diversity, expand outreach to minority-serving Los Angeles-area colleges, and broaden academic support for students. (USC News)

February 2016: In his annual State of the University Address, President C. L. Max Nikias said that USC will not be satisfied until the Trojan Family is united in a shared commitment to justice and equality and urged the university community to seize the time as an opportunity to stand strong for inclusion. (USC News)

January 20, 2016: The university hosts an open forum on campus climate, titled, “Where We Have Been, Where We Are Going,” was sponsored by the USC Office of the Provost and the USC Dornsife Office for Diversity and Strategic Initiatives. Read the article from The Daily Trojan.

Click here for Chronology items before 2016

Click here for Resolutions from 2015