Steven Sample to step down from USC president post

After a nearly 20-year tenure that saw improvements in academics, finances, and sports, Steven Sample announced Monday he will retire before fall of next year.

He began this job, and will leave it, during a national economic crisis. Sample said the one 18 years ago forced him to lay off hundreds of employees after less than a year on the job.

"Many of these people had invested almost all of their professional life at USC. This isn’t like a profit- seeking company. There are long-term loyalties and long-term commitments in a university. I think that was the most painful part, just seeing people being laid off who hadn’t done anything wrong. It was purely just the question of the financial survival of the university. We had to do it."

Sample said USC emerged stronger from that episode – its endowment grew to about $3.5 billion now and the university's the largest private employer in the city of Los Angeles. He implemented a cost-cutting program that involved reducing the number of freshmen admitted each fall.

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It may seem counterintuitive, he said, but raising admission standards did allow USC to better plan its budget because fewer weak students dropped out and a higher-performing student body attracted better faculty. "Our academic standards are much higher than they were. I think we’re respected at a different level, nationally. Once our SAT scores became higher than Berkeley’s, that was the big turning point. No one believed that that could happen. I didn’t believe that could happen."

The change ruffled some feathers among the fabled Trojan Family – USC graduates whose children enjoy priority in admission. Sample said these so-called legacy admits benefited from the new policy. Now they’re 20 percent of new freshmen, double the rate of 18 years ago.

USC topped the list last month in the yearly "Saviors of Our Cities: A Survey of Best College and University Civic Partnerships," and that's proof, Sample said, that USC has improved relations between the affluent campus and the largely working-class, black and Latino neighborhoods that surround it. "I think we’ve done a great job. We give preference in hiring to our neighbors. We give a $50,000 bounty to our own employees if they’re willing to own and occupy housing in our neighborhood."

Sample does not take credit for the turnaround of USC football in the last 18 years. For that, he said, the athletic director deserves the praise. On the academic side, he underlined the achievements of USC’s engineering department and its music school. He said he hopes USC’s next president will propel its science research ranking into the top five schools in the country.

USC enrolls more foreign students than any public or private university in the United States. That effort, Sample said, is his contribution to better foreign relations in the future. "Americans tend to be the most insular, provincial people in the world. If it wasn’t invented here it doesn’t count, if it’s not in English it doesn't count. So I think that by having a fair number of international students on campus, I think that fact alone contributes to the education of domestic undergraduates as well."

He points out with pride a framed commendation from USC's Academic Senate that hangs on a wall in his sparsely decorated president's office. He also pulls down a ram's horn from the bookshelf behind his desk and blows several hearty notes. "This was the Hollzer Memorial Award, from the Jewish community. I’m the only Episcopalian shofar player in greater Los Angeles."

During the interview his hand visibly shook from Parkinson’s disease. He insisted that it’s only a minor factor in his decision to retire. "I’m about eight-and-a-half years since diagnosis. And it’s a nuisance, but not much of a nuisance, to be honest with you. In my case it’s down to a right hand tremor and oftentimes exaggerated a bit when interviewed by some reporters."

Sample is the 10th president of the 129-year-old university. He said he and his wife agreed that close to two decades as its president was a good run.