What Matters to Me and Why
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“What Matters to Me and Why” is a monthly talk and discussion series featuring USC faculty and administrators. The series encourages reflection about values, beliefs, and motivation in the lives of those who help shape our university. Presenters are encouraged to talk about choices made, difficulties encountered, and commitments solidified.
View a list of past speakers here>>
WMMW also represents a creative solution to an important and often unrecognized problem in the university setting: the separation of intellectual life from personal and spiritual issue. For some time, students have been asking for more informal contact with faculty. They have expressed their desire to encounter faculty and administrators as rounded human beings, professional models, and mentors. The people who shape USC, who teach students the ways of their particular disciplines, and who help them develop marketable skills also have a great deal to pass on in terms of worldly wisdom, moral guidance, and sources of spiritual strength.
At each WMMW session, the featured guest spends about twenty minutes addressing the topic “What Matters to Me and Why,” and then the floor is opened to informal dialogue for the remainder of the hour. Just as there is no one way to address the topic, so there will be no one direction in which dialogue will proceed. The WMMW program maintains an arena in which people can talk about important, personally charged questions in an open, mutually respectful way.
Since WMMW takes place at the noon hour and since even busy people need to eat, lunch is provided throughout the series.
The program seeks to involve all members of the USC community and the Trojan Family. Not just students, but also faculty, staff, administrators, alumni, and neighborhood residents are encouraged to attend. Bringing together these diverse USC constituencies is another purpose of the series.
Sponsored by the Office of Religious & Spiritual Life, USC University Club and the Levan Institute for Humanities.
