USC Pays Tribute to Its Volunteers : Spreading Cardinal--and Golden--Rule to Community

Color it cardinal and gold: Saturday is homecoming at the University of Southern California.

The alumni, ever faithful--that can also be spelled fanatic--will wear cardinal pants and gold shirts, or vice versa, and arrive for the pregame campus picnics, of course, in cars whose horns blow “Fight On for Old SC.” They will wear buttons with mottos like “God Is a Trojan” and “Glad to Be an SC Grad.”

The football team, despite a season that so far has seen more blahs than rahs, will show up in dark red football jerseys, gold pants and shiny cardinal helmets. The band, in its cardinal and gold uniforms and Trojan helmets, will strut around the Coliseum floor, instruments agleam.

USC is not the alma mater of such show-biz biggies as David Wolper, George Lucas and Tom Selleck for nothing.

That’s the glitzy image, but there is another facet of the university that will take the spotlight Saturday at homecoming: that of USC people--students, faculty, staff, alumni, friends--who care about their university, their community, their neighbors.

This year’s homecoming theme is “A Tribute to USC Volunteers.”

Their record is impressive. Each year more than 22,500 volunteers contribute more than half a million hours to 142 organizations working for the university or the community or both.

Wide Range of Activities

Their activities range from tutorial and sports programs for neighborhood children to a bilingual (English and Spanish) cancer hot line, from a family planning clinic to the varied activities of the more than 20 recognized religious organizations on campus.

Following are profiles of only a handful of USC’s volunteer programs.

So how does a Graduate School of Business Administration become a do-gooder?

Kenneth D. Hill, director of placement and career services, explained the business school’s “Consulting to Charities” program.

“USC derives a lot from its community, both through business support and its rich cultural environment,” he said. “We wanted to give something back to the community--and what the faculty had to give was expertise. We thought of the charities that couldn’t pay (professional) consulting fees.

“We didn’t know what we’d get into by volunteering such services, and we were afraid we might do more harm than good if we had to turn away requests.”

Hill solved that problem by seeking a referral from the United Way, which suggested the Woodcraft Rangers, a youth group whose director was about to retire and who was concerned about the transition.

“He also felt their accounting was operating out of a shoe box,” Hill said. “We took it on. Two young faculty members especially became interested, and they are still on the board of directors. It has been a success.

“Other charities heard through the grapevine and startled to trickle in. First, I go out and find out the needs. If the need is to build a support group or volunteers, that’s marketing; the need may be in accounting or management. I get a faculty member to match the problem.

“If that person can’t follow through, that’s too bad. We have had some failures. Faculty hearts are in the right place but time is so confined.”

Hill said that the original intent was not to involve students. In one instance, however, a class in consulting was looking for a project and its needs and those of a charity meshed very well.

“It was a child care center, Plaza Community Center in East Los Angeles,” he said. “The students attacked it with a lot of vigor. Many also had personal reasons for involvement--some were involved with children, another had a religious tie to a Methodist-run program. It was interesting also in that 60% to 70% of the class grade depended on the project.”

The business school volunteers, 10 or 11 faculty and staff members who give 20 hours over two or three months, are working with, among several agencies, the Kellogg Foundation, a program at United Way to train administrators and directors of charitable organizations.

“We like that one,” Hill said, “because we may be able to be helpful on a broader range by training people.”

Hill himself has worked with the Los Angeles Visitors and Convention Bureau and a report on how it functioned during the Olympic Games, especially in the area of housing. That report, he said, now is being circulated around the world--Korea, Canada, Europe, “any place that is planning an Olympics or a big fair or exposition.”

Aiding Small Businesses

Business school faculty also has worked with “business incubator” programs that seek to help small businesses get started. The goal is to put new business into areas of high unemployment. Working with the Vermont Slauson Economic Development Corp., Hill helped the group get a state grant to assist in forming an incubator program that, those involved hope, will become an industrial park.

Charity also begins at home--USC. Business school advisers have contributed their services to the USC Athletic Department on problems of allocation of programs, staff and office space and worked with the School of Medicine’s ophthalmology department.

Hill was quick to say that other universities have similar programs but that a University of Georgia survey found USC’s unique in two ways: “We were the only school with a person coordinating activities and providing some kind of credits to the faculty involved. It is an exciting program. It just takes a lot of work.”

Everybody likes Christmas, even security guards and parking watchdogs.

At USC, the security and parking department is gearing up for its annual Christmas Is Community campaign to collect foodstuffs for needy neighborhood residents.

Dennis R. Archambault, special projects administrator for USC Security, said that the program has mushroomed, increasing five-fold in a year from 25 to 125 families. Emphasis is on collecting donations of food staples--canned goods, including meats, beans, rice, potatoes, “anything that is nutritious and not perishable,” Archambault said.

Flyers go up a few weeks before Christmas at the university’s six guard gates, and up to 1,000 donors contribute one or more items. A local market and hotel also contributed last year, and some people give toys.

The Community Consortium, a coalition of local community and religious groups, identifies the most needy families and distributes the sacks of food. Levi Kingston, president of the consortium, described the Christmas Is Community operation as “small in scale but effective.”

“There are touching stories,” Archambault said, “a woman who has lost her mate, a family that has had tragedy befall, loss of seasonal jobs. And, all of a sudden, they have food for a week or two. They run the gamut--old people alone, single parents with kids, families with children who simply are poor.

“The impact is that they now have a sense of Christmas.”

Archambault said that the university contributes space to store donations, pickup trucks to deliver them and his time: “During the last week of the drive I make a run twice a day to each of the six guard gates. Almost everybody makes a contribution.”

In his nine years at USC, Archambault said, he has found “a really underlying theme of the university being involved with and concerned about the surrounding community. Christmas Is Community is our way of being able to share.”

If everybody likes Christmas, not everybody likes dentists.

But the USC School of Dentistry is out to help with its Mobile Dental Clinic, a program that roams from Baja California to the San Joaquin Valley to serve children of migrant workers.

It is, according to its director, Dr. Dan Schoenberg, assistant professor of clinical dentistry, “the largest mobile (dental) clinic in the world that is student-run.”

The program began in the mid-’60s with pilot clinic in Mexico that largely did emergency tooth extractions. It has grown to a $160,000 annual operation--that produces $600,000 worth of dentistry--and a fleet of 14 vehicles. It operates under contracts with federal, state and county agencies, including funds through the State Board of Education’s migrant education department, Schoenberg said.

“We see more than 2,000 children a year,” he said. “To qualify (in California) they have to have moved into California from out of state and not qualify for any insurance or Medi-Cal. In Ventura County, for instance, if a child qualifies for the school lunch program he or she qualifies for the mobile dental clinic.”

School nurses do an initial screening, usually selecting 140 or so of the most urgent cases from 500 or 600 children. The mobile clinic spends eight days at a location, doing preliminaries such as screening and X-rays on a Friday, making first appointments for Saturday and follow-up appointments the next week.

In addition to USC dental school seniors, participants include dental hygiene students, dental assistant trainees from the local community, members of local service organizations and, “once in a while, dental students from UCLA.”

Schoenberg’s statistics show that patients ranged from 4 to 18, with an average age of 9.4 years, and that 63% had never been to a dentist. Of cases seen, 66.5% were in need of immediate emergency treatment.

“At the end of the year we had completed 97% of cases. These were not in need of any more dental work,” Schoenberg said. “Of the remaining 3%, most were those who did not show up for the next appointment. The rest were cases that were over our heads in the field.

“Our work also is educational, not just drilling and filling and leaving. We give each patient a toothbrush and information about cleanings. We also have a course for the parents to teach them how to take care of their children’s teeth--and their own. A lot of the reason these people have never been to a dentist is education; a lot also is straight economics--they can’t afford it.”

In addition to giving the university an opportunity for community service, the mobile clinic is a “fantastic” opportunity for students, Schoenberg said.

“The exposure to different community environments sensitizes the students,” he said, “and the clinical experience is tremendous. It is a private practice experience; the students get the opportunity to play doctor for a while. But the clinic is oriented for the patient, not the student experience.”

The mobile unit’s 10 clinics a year account for 14,500 volunteer hours from students, faculty, dentists and local volunteers. But, Schoenberg said, more is needed: “Volunteers and donations, dental equipment, vehicles--and cash is wonderful.”

Once a year, for one week, 150 children from the USC neighborhood go to Troy Camp. There 35 student volunteers show the kids the fun of camping in the fresh mountain air.

Rico Spadaccini, assistant director of the Norman Topping Student Activities Center and staff adviser to Troy Camp, has only one regret: “I’d love for the camp to go all summer.”

That, he said, is not possible because of lack of funding and because most students need to get paying summer jobs.

Cost of the camp depends on where facilities to rent can be found, Spadaccini said. Funds for Troy Camp come from the proceeds of Songfest, usually about $8,000, and a “Pass the Can” drive among those attending the homecoming football game, usually about $4,000.

For the last 17 years USC also has operated a summer Sports Club for 400 youngsters from 10 to 16 who come to the campus for a six-week program that is 75% sports and 25% enrichment. About 40 volunteers contribute approximately 800 hours to the Sports Club program.

The Andrus Gerontology Center Volunteers started out as research subjects in a 1973 demonstration study. Now they are involved in activities that run the gamut from speaking to students in classes and people in the community to publishing books.

Doris Meacham, 67, chairman of the Andrus volunteers, sat in the group’s office with members Louise Martin, 69, and Elestia Shackelford, 73, and spoke of its activities: a speakers corps, work as docents, advocacy for older people, research, leadership development, education, a newsletter.

Members, they explained, help in classes, as research, and provide students with interaction with the older generation.

“Some of these young people do not have grandparents, do not know older people,” Meacham said. “We talk on the Depression and World War II, some of the things we have lived through.

“We also speak in senior centers, to organizations, at convalescent homes, to religious groups and in schools and colleges.”

Their research projects have resulted in publication of several books. A study using humor in a long-term care facility led to “Humor: The Tonic You Can Afford,” a handbook that has sold more than 1,000 copies at $6.50 each.

A demonstration project on the effectiveness of older people in volunteerism and their contributions to the community led to another publication, “Who Me--A Leader?”

“We felt the need to use leadership abilities that older adults have,” Louise Martin said. “Senior centers are crying for leadership. We got a grant and worked three or four years on the characteristics of older adults, the kinds of roles older adults could assume, their teaching styles, communication skills. We even did a filmstrip.”

The group, which includes more than 100 members and meets weekly from September to June, worked this summer on yet another book, “Who Cares,” which Martin described as “helpful hints for those who care for older people. It is written by older care-givers for older care-givers.”

The volunteers also act as hosts and hostesses at Andrus Gerontology Center events, sponsor seminars and publish the seminar presentations as monographs.

“The faculty and staff are marvelous,” Elestia Shackelford said. “They give their time for the seminars. We charge admission and we use the funds to continue our programs.”

Andrus volunteers pay the salary of their office director, postage, printing, phone costs and for office supplies. The university provides office space and helps search out grants to maintain volunteer programs.

Each volunteer contributes a minimum of 15 hours per month, but many spend up to 60 hours a month on Andrus programs.

“The group,” Martin said, “has real sustaining power because of the tremendous stimulation and growth. We never do the same thing twice in the same way. We never go home without learning something that we didn’t know--and at our age that’s really something.

“And we were only supposed to play bingo!”