University Advancement

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Clips

Where Have All the Jazz Musicians Gone? Los Angeles.

Undergirding the sense of opportunity in the Southland is the steady expansion of the educational infrastructure, with the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music and its crosstown rival, the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. The California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) has been an oasis for musical visionaries like Charlie Haden, Wadada Leo Smith, and Bennie Maupin and, in 2016, recruited the inventive New York saxophonist/composer Steve Lehman. And Cal State Northridge and Cal State Long Beach have long supported strong jazz programs. It’s become more common for students to graduate from these programs and settle in Los Angeles, like Berkeley-raised tenor saxophonist/composer Hitomi Oba did. Indeed, being a Bay Area jazz fan means getting accustomed to bidding adieu to beloved players, who for generations have headed East looking to make a name for themselves in New York. But losing treasured artists to L.A. stings in a different way, with a mix of pride and disappointment when they get career support that’s not available in the Bay. -- San Francisco Classical Voice

A new material holds promise for the next generation of organic electronics

“You can proceed by trial and error to make a material,” Nguyen says. “You can make a whole bunch of them and hope for the best, and maybe one out of twenty works or has interesting properties; however, we worked with a professor at California State Northridge, Gang Lu, who used AI to select building blocks and do calculations to get a rough idea of how to proceed, given the energy level and properties we were aiming for.” -- Nanowerk

In Her Own Words: Erika Beck educates thousands as well as her own sons

The pandemic literally brought work home for millions of women but few faced matters of scale as directly as university president Erika Beck. With the responsibility of the education of 40,000 university students, she also juggled sports schedules, pets and, most importantly, the social and educational needs of her two sons. -- BizWomen

Conductive polymer holds promise for the next generation of organic electronics

Artificial intelligence (AI) played a role in developing the material. "You can proceed by trial and error to make a material," Nguyen says. "You can make a whole bunch of them and hope for the best, and maybe one out of twenty works or has interesting properties; however, we worked with a professor at California State Northridge, Gang Lu, who used AI to select building blocks and do calculations to get a rough idea of how to proceed, given the energy level and properties we were aiming for." -- TechXplore

Academy announces partners for Gold Rising program

The program’s production track features online technical work­shops and masterclasses for stu­dents interested in cinematography, costume design, film editing, pro­duction design, sound and visual effects, a category newly added to the program this year. The 31 par­ticipants in this track are from California State University Northridge, Exceptional Minds Academy, Los Angeles City College, Los Angeles Film School, Los Angeles Trade-Technical College, New York Film Academy and select local community col­leges from the Academy’s Community College Film and Media Arts Consortium. -- Beverly Press

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