Appointment of New University and Distinguished Professors
We are excited to honor this year’s exceptional members of our faculty with University and Distinguished professorships, USC’s highest academic honors. We present these annually to select outstanding faculty who have brought great distinction and honor to our university through their work. Their research enlightens and enriches collective understandings outside of USC and contributes to the advancement of society.
It is my pleasure to announce that this year we have appointed Adam Leventhal and Arthur Stone as University Professors, and David Armstrong, Helen Berman, and Maggie Nelson as Distinguished Professors.
Please join President Folt and me in congratulating these extraordinary individuals on this well-deserved recognition. We look forward to celebrating their achievements at the Faculty Academic Honors Convocation on April 16th.
As we do every year, we will seek nominations from the USC community for next year’s honorees at the start of the Fall semester. For an updated list of all USC University and Distinguished Professors, please visit the Provost Website.
Maja Matarić Elected to the NAE
The National Academy of Engineering today announced that Maja Matarić, Chan Soon-Shiong Chair and distinguished professor, Computer Science, Neuroscience, and Pediatrics, was elected as one of its members. Election to the NAE is the highest professional honor for engineers.
NAE members are elected by their peers, and the honor is reserved for outstanding engineering accomplishments. Matarić was recognized for contributions to human-robot interaction and socially assistive robotics.
According to the NAE’s press release, she is one of 128 new members (less than half of whom are from academia) and 22 international members in the NAE’s Class of 2025, bringing the total U.S. membership to 2,487 and the number of international members to 336. With her election, 24 USC Viterbi faculty have been elected to the NAE since 2008.
“Maja has been a pioneer in the area of socially assistive robotics and more generally in human-robot interaction. We are thrilled to see her recognized for her outstanding work across research, teaching and outreach. It is also fitting that her election adds a continuing thread to the excellence of robotics at USC, started by the late George Bekey (also an NAE member) and continuing with so many USC Viterbi talented roboticists,” said USC Viterbi Dean Yannis C. Yortsos.
To continue reading about Maja’s accomplishments, please visit the following news page by clicking here.
USC Dornsife’s Percival Everett wins National Book Award for ‘James’
Percival Everett, acclaimed USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences professor, has been awarded the prestigious 2024 National Book Award in the fiction category for James, a re-imagining of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
This marks another extraordinary milestone in a year of accolades for Everett, who recently received the Kirkus Prize for James and was shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize.
In his acceptance speech, Everett’s quiet, self-deprecating humor came through. “I want to thank the National Book Foundation and the judges for putting their reputations on the line here,” he said, before thanking his editors, publishers, publicist and agent.
“And I have to thank my teenage sons, Henry and Myles, whose near complete apathy about my career helps me keep things in perspective,” he said. “And as always, my best friend and wife, Danzy Senna.”
In its review of James, The New York Times praised the book as “Everett’s most thrilling novel, but also his most soulful. Beneath the wordplay, and below the packed dirt floor of Everett’s moral sensibility, James is an intensely imagined human being.”
With more than 30 published books, including Erasure — which was adapted into an Academy Award-winning film — Everett’s influence spans genres and generations. Known for its sharp, satirical take on race and the publishing industry, Erasure helped to establish Everett as a vital voice in American literature and was named by The New York Times as one of the best books of the 21st century.
As a Distinguished Professor of English at USC Dornsife, Everett has been recognized throughout his career with honors including the Arts and Letters Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Book Critics Circle. He is also a Guggenheim Fellow and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, cementing his reputation as one of the most versatile and respected voices in contemporary literature.
Everett’s achievement is one of several recent honors awarded to USC Dornsife English professors whose books have garnered widespread acclaim. His colleagues, including Pulitzer Prize winner Viet Thanh Nguyen and celebrated author Maggie Nelson, both of whom had books named to The New York Times list of the best books of the 21st century, exemplify the depth of talent and scholarly excellence that defines USC Dornsife’s English department. Together, they continue to shape contemporary literary discourse, inspiring readers and the next generation of writers and scholars alike.