A Message from the Dean

I WELCOME YOU to this year’s edition of Callboard, celebrating a momentous time for the USC School of Dramatic Arts.

This issue marks our arrival to a new home, the 40,000 square-foot Dick Wolf Drama Center. A perfect metaphor for the dramatic arts, our new home is a LEED-certified adaptive reuse of a Romanesque Revival structure, completely renovated to train the next generation of storytellers. A gathering place for all our faculty, staff and students, past and present, the building combines splashes of the School’s history with exciting glimpses into its future. Friends and alumni of the School have stepped up to support the new space, including the building naming gift from creator/producer Dick Wolf and the Nakamoto family’s dedication of the Sparks Center, both of which you can read about in these pages.

In this year’s Callboard we also celebrate the School’s continued engagement with our LGBTQIA+ community, our alumni leading the way in the world of podcasting and the incredible research that keeps the School at the forefront of critical scholarship. In a chaotic time for our world and the city we love, I hope these stories of resistance and resilience will inspire hope in you as they did for me.

It’s an important time to be a Trojan. If you haven’t, please consider following me on Instagram at @deanroxworthy, where I continue to share the inspiring work being done by our students, faculty and alumni.

Emily Roxworthy
Dean