Alumni don’t let Crosstown Rivalry decide their path

Edward Rhodes remembers marching in blue and gold during the Rose Bowl game in 1966. He recalls watching Kareem Abdul-Jabbar play on the freshman basketball team. He recollects the era of John Wooden, having been present for all but two of the coach’s championships.

But the man with so many memories at UCLA has been teaching at the University of Southern California since 1978.

In a week that is historically known for being the height of tension between the two schools, individuals like Rhodes are in the unique position of being able to associate with both aspects of the crosstown rivalry.

Rhodes, a professor in the department of physics and astronomy at USC, received his bachelor’s, master’s and postdoctoral degree from UCLA. Although he and his wife, also a UCLA alumna, have a son who attended USC and a daughter who attended UC Berkeley as undergraduates, Rhodes said people generally support the school they went to as an undergraduate.

“It is somewhat difficult to be on the USC campus simply because of all the spirit activities directed against UCLA. It’s hard to see people throwing teddy bears off of buildings,” he said.

Rojeh Melikian, a UCLA alumnus, attended medical school at USC and said he still roots for the Bruins, but a competition between schools has not affected his career choices.

“I went (to USC) for the education, I wouldn’t let rivalry stand in the way of that,” he said.

While individuals can bridge the gap of a college rivalry, the work they do also acts as a link between the two universities.

Rhodes works at the Mount Wilson Observatory, where several UCLA faculty members and graduate students also conduct research. He communicates with UCLA researchers on the tower, and he has even employed a UCLA graduate student.

In addition to the Mount Wilson Observatory, several centers have been established with the intention of being collaborative research endeavors.

The USC/UCLA Center of Biodemography and Population Health is one such project that aims to create and encourage research on aging.

Teresa Seeman, the UCLA director for the center, obtained her undergraduate and master’s degree from UCLA but began her research in this field when she worked at USC.

It was there she met Eileen Crimmins, the USC director for the center, and Seeman has been working with Crimmins since 1995.

“I’m in the medical school at UCLA, so I bring in all the medical expertise, and (Crimmins is) in the social sciences at USC. … It’s very complementary,” Seeman said.

While UCLA generally brings in a biological background to the center, faculty members in other areas such as economics have also contributed to the center’s research.

The Center of Biodemography and Population Health is housed at the Program in Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology in UCLA’s School of Medicine, where Seeman is also a professor, and in the Andrus Gerontology Center at USC.

Other collaborative projects between the two schools have been centered around issues related to Los Angeles as a whole.

CleanTech Los Angeles, a partnership between the city of Los Angeles, USC, UCLA, the California Institute of Technology and a host of other institutions, aims to “establish Los Angeles as the global leader in research, commercialization and deployment of clean technologies,” according to its Web site.

Michael Swords, UCLA’s executive director of strategic research initiatives, said one of the program’s most successful efforts has been in trying to create hubs, or economic development centers, in Los Angeles.

Hubs are areas in which businesses are afforded certain economic policies such as tax breaks and employment training, he said.

He also said that more generally, the advantage of having universities in a partnership like CleanTech Los Angeles is that they can not only receive grants to develop new technologies but can often also become places in which to test the technologies.

Collaboration between the universities creates a lot of research advantages, Seeman said.

“We have the ability to tap into expertise in both universities, depending on what question we’re looking at,” she said.

David Jackson, director of the Southern California Earthquake Center and a professor of geology and geochemistry at UCLA, said there is a diversity in talented faculty, which helps the research environment in an multi-university project.

The SCEC, a center for providing earthquake research, is located at USC and has leaders representing a variety of schools including UCLA, USC, UC San Diego and UC Santa Cruz.

Jackson said because faculty members from the center see each other frequently, if one faculty member is asked a question during one meeting, he or she is likely to look up the answer by the next one.

“You’d be surprised how much stimulation that provides. … The discussions were much deeper,” he said.

Jackson also said faculty members became familiar with graduate students from other institutions and were able to use a lot of shared information.

Although researchers are able to come together in order to explore a particular subject, they may still be aware of the fact that they belong to different institutions.

“When it comes to the science, we do fine, but everyone supports their team,” Seeman said.