The days of an empty campus are over. This past week, students from across the country — and indeed, the globe — flocked to the University of Southern California to begin another year of classes, clubs, and connections. At USC Marshall alone, over 4,000 Trojans new and returning, undergraduate and graduate, started classes with world-renowned professors.

Surveying the incoming students, Sarah Townsend, vice dean of undergraduate programs, is impressed with the class’s ambition, adaptability, and caliber of their accomplishments. In a rapidly changing professional landscape, Townsend says USC Marshall students are stepping up to the challenge.

“These students have already started businesses, led organizations, competed at the highest levels, and given real time to their communities,” Townsend said. “And they have done all of it while growing up in a period of extraordinary change, from the pandemic to the rise of artificial intelligence. Their whole lives, they have been adapting to a world changing around them. Over the next four years, they will go from adapting to the world to changing it, and all of us at Marshall are ready to help them do it.”

Townsend says Marshall’s undergraduate program strives to embolden and empower these high-achieving students through three avenues. First, students have access to a network of resources that includes academic advisors, Career Services, the Financial Services Career Hub, and international programs.

The second key support, Townsend explains, is the school’s faculty, who are not only accomplished scholars but seasoned practitioners with decades of industry experience. The vice dean urges all students to take advantage of professors’ expertise by attending office hours and getting to know these world-class educators.

Above all, Townsend highlights the role of the Trojan Family, now over 100,000 strong at USC Marshall.

“Businesses run on people, and so does Marshall,” Townsend said. “Our students show up for each other, and our alumni do the same; that is the Trojan Family.”

While thousands of undergraduates attend USC Marshall, Kyle Mayer, vice dean of MBA programs, explains how the various MBA programs’ smaller cohort sizes allow for a highly personalized experience, setting up students for success on their individual career paths.

“The smaller cohort size enables students to get to know each other and build those stronger networks that stand the test of time,” Mayer said. “They also enable us to understand what each student wants and where they want to go, not just for the first job, not just for immediately after the MBA program, but where they want to take their career over the next 20, 30, 40 years after they leave here.”

Just over a week into the new school year, Mayer can already feel the energy on campus.

“There's something about this campus that creates an unbelievable connection for people,” Mayer observed. “They care about helping other people who are related to and connected to USC.”