New name, new initiative!

September 26, 2014
by Claire

Last Wednesday was a super exciting day for USC OT! With a $20 million dollar naming grant, our division is now called USC Mrs. T.H. Chan Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy. Students, faculty and many distinguished guests including former AOTA President and USC alumna Mary Foto, who I had the honor to escort. President Nikias came to make the announcement, along with our marching band (it’s not a big event without our Trojan Marching Band)!

As students, we received the invitation to attend the “historic announcement” a couple weeks before the event. Leading up to the announcement, we were all wondering what it would be: a new building? a new program? TUITION WAIVED?!

It was really inspiring to hear USC Trustee Ronnie Chan share his vision to unite efforts with USC to expand OT to others areas in the world, such as China. We could all tell this was a very special moment for their entire family. Having studied abroad in China during my undergrad and interned at an occupational therapy department in Taiwan, I would really love to see occupational therapy and East Asia come together even more closely. Our global initiative has really taken off with the MAI program and this past summer’s first international language exchange program, and I’m excited to see how this outreach will continue to grow!

This event made it to our USC headline news, and it was also really exciting to see how this announcement is gathering a lot of attention from other USC students. “Oh you study OT? Didn’t you guys just get a huge donation? That’s awesome!” It has been a great way to have a conversation about what OT is and why it’s awesome!

Because of our new name, all of our social media usernames are also being updated. If you haven’t been following, you can check out all the social media links on our website. We like to instagram 😊

Also, how does everyone like our new website? The photos are of our actual students and faculty — many of my classmates were going through and finding themselves on the website. (Leila made it in! Can anyone find her? 😛)

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