“Mental health ultimately means that an individual, through rich emotion affirming encounters with living, has integrated his or her life in such a way that the emergent self-structures, deeply affective, can steer a satisfying, cognitive course through future emotional jungles of lived lives.” – Jaak Panksepp1
Course Description
This course will give students an overview of foundational concepts required for designing, developing, and evaluating interactive entertainment and transmedia-based interventions at the intersection of neuroscience, public health, and medicine. Students will develop a unique transdisciplinary perspective of intervention rationale and impact related to wellness, illness, and resilience, following a trajectory of critical periods of life and living. They will develop essential abilities of reading, writing skills, and experience analysis and synthesis skills.
Learning Objectives
This course aims to prepare students for transdisciplinary collaboration with teams of artists, designers, scientists, health professionals, and engineers, whose mission is to develop and evaluate interventions focused on improving human health and the experience of living. Students will obtain essential mastery of core concepts in the field, including challenges and opportunities. They will acquire the necessary skills for analyzing prior art and proposing future work through a transdisciplinary lens, which will integrate their skills and experiences. Students will obtain a common philosophical and theoretical framework that underlies intervention design and evaluation. They will practice conducting literature reviews from diverse fields, creating speculative design documents informed by theory, prior art, or other evidence, presenting innovation applications to an audience, and synthesizing concepts from multiple disciplines.
Prerequisite(s): None.
Co-Requisite(s): None
Concurrent Enrollment: None.
Recommended Preparation: Prior classes in at least two or more of the following at any level — social sciences, game or media production, humanities, biomedical sciences, and allied health professions.
Course Notes
The course is taken for a letter grade. The course is Hybrid and Online (Zoom).
Technological Proficiency and Hardware/Software Required
Students will be required to use Zoom, Slack, Miro, Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides, all of which are provided for free by USC and the instructor, and bibliographic reference software, such as Zotero (free). A working webcam, microphone, and headphones are required for Zoom.
The class schedule is available only to enrolled students via the class GDrive. In general, the schedule includes: 5 lectures, 3 student panel presentations, 2 narrative medicine workshops, 1 game playtest, 1 design workshop, 1-2 film screenings, and 1 peer review workshop.
Sample schedule from Spring 2023
READINGS/RESOURCES
Required Book Chapters
The only required book every student in the class has to read is from philosophy because one cannot approach questions about living, art, or science without a philosophical orientation:
How to Be an Epicurean: The Ancient Art of Living Well by Catherine Wilson (2019), Basic Books: NY. 304 pages.
Chapters 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14
If you do not want to purchase the book, chapters 5, 10, 12, and 14 have been placed in the ARES course reserves and will fulfill your minimum reading requirements.
Supplemental reading: Dembroff, R. (2020). Cisgender commonsense and philosophy’s transgender trouble. Transgender Studies Quarterly, 7(3), 399–406. https://doi.org/10.1215/23289252-8553048
Class Readings & Resources Library
Students are expected to utilize the course Readings & Resources Library and do their own research using other scholarly sources and to document what they read and view in their Scholarly Journal. The Library is extensive, and I add more items as time passes. Do not panic due to the length of the Library. You are not expected to read/view all the resources within a given topic/theme. Some are more specialized and will appeal to you depending on your interests. Aim to read ¼ of what is available per topic area, and your Take Home Exam and other papers will benefit immensely.
Try to read outside your discipline even if you do not fully understand everything. At a minimum, read all the abstracts/summaries to be aware of the literature, even if you do not have time to read closely. In addition to the readings, resources such as websites, videos, podcasts, and interactive works are available in the Library. Such works are not considered optional or supplemental but sometimes are highly critical to improving understanding. As you read/view, make a note, even if tiny, about something in your Scholarly Journal (more on this in a subsequent section) so that the memory stays. Bonus materials and things I find during the semester that I think you will enjoy with free access are also added in ARES Course Reserves.
Groupware & Access
We will use USC Google Drive to store class resources for depositing the Take Home Exam and Written Assignment, Slack to chat with each other and share links and extra credit assignments, Zoom for online sessions, and Blackboard only for grades and official announcements.
For the Zoom sessions, students should plan to be somewhere with good internet access, have headphones, and be in a quiet environment, ideally on their laptop. Some readings will be on ARES, but others can be requested via USC interlibrary loan ILLIAD (pdf or ebook delivery service).
All readings are available to students for free, and they will learn how to access them via the USC Library and Google Scholar connected to the USC Library. There will be demonstrations of Zotero for the management of readings and outputting references for your papers.
Finally, students are entitled to a free annual license of The Brain Architecture Game (Remote Teams Edition) and the DIY version, and you must abide by its standard licensing agreement and terms of use.
Students should use a service like grammarly.com to proofread their papers, especially if English is not their native language.
The instructor will introduce other tools to help manage the class (Miro and more).
Assignments
Below is how assignments are graded:
Table 1. Assignment point worth
Assessment Tool (assignments)
Points
% of Grade
Written assignment(s) (preliminary grade will be given for Take Home Exam; the grade will be split if you do a separate Final Written Assignment instead of revising Take Home Exam)
30 (or 15 and 15)
30
Scholarly Journal
50
50
Student Panel Discussion
10
10
Peer Review
10
10
TOTAL
100
Extra credit assignments will be available after some class experiences.
Grading Scale
Course final grades will be determined using the following scale:
Table 2. Course Grading Scale
Letter grade
Corresponding numerical point range
A
95-100
A-
90-94
B+
87-89
B
83-86
B-
80-82
C+
77-79
C
73-76
C-
70-72
D+
67-69
D
63-66
D-
60-62
F
59 and below
Assignment Submission Policy
Written assignments, scholarly journals, student panel presentations, and peer review comments will be submitted into your named folders in the USC Google Drive. Extra credit assignments can be sent privately via Slack or email.
Grading & Ungrading
I have been practicing ungrading (and here) since before the pandemic. You have to try pretty hard to fail this class, and it is not because it is easy. There is no reason to fail it or get a bad grade. There is so much flexibility with lecture recordings, scheduling, deadlines, and extra credit.
Presence and eventual completion are more important than internal deadlines in this course. Lectures are recorded. Some films may be available for screening on your own. If you miss your panel presentation, you have to deliver a recorded presentation for your panel in order to get your points. If you cannot participate in peer review, you cannot make up those points in any way but extra credit assignments. The A is yours to lose and re-earn throughout the semester. Change your mindset.
The only deadline I cannot change is the university’s end grading deadline. Before you stress out, just reach out.
Attendance vs. Presence
Although student real-time presence may not always be possible in the class, absenteeism will affect student inability to meet all the course objectives. The instructor will record all sessions, and the course load has been made flexible enough for you to survive even if you cannot make all the sessions live.
When you are connected, you are expected to be ready to respond to the conversation when connecting via Zoom, even if your camera is off. Your children, pets, parents, and roommates are welcome to be in the video frame so long as their presence is additive and not prohibitively disruptive. Babies and grandparents are welcome. I don’t care too much if you are in your pajamas or sweatpants, be comfortable, but be fully dressed because we’ve all seen those videos on the internet :) And if you are feeling very sick, or are a caregiver, stay in touch and let the instructor and/or classmates know what is up before or after missing a class if you are comfortable doing so. If you must turn off the camera to cook or feed someone, so be it.
If students have an unavoidable conflict, please contact the instructor via email or phone (if emergency). Participation also means having the class and your peers in mind: contribute fun resources into Slack, comment on people’s work, be helpful and, if you are extroverted, find ways to pull the introverts into class in a caring manner. There are many ways to “be there” for everyone. It is understood that things are complicated for people.
Students will be asked to lead/moderate group discussion sessions based on a curated selection of readings (Student Panel Discussion). It is important to find ways to participate meaningfully in your group, even if asynchronous.
Participation in playing The Brain Architecture game is required, and if students cannot make it to that class, they are required to find two people who can play the game with them outside of class during a time convenient to the instructor.
Your instructor is fully prepared and open to pivot, adapt, and sometimes pause completely if the moment calls for it.
WRITTEN ASSIGNMENT(S)
The goal of written assignment(s) is to deliver either two drafts of a single document (the Take Home Exam) OR two separate documents (Take Home Exam + Final Written Assignment).
After the Peer Review experience, students can decide what to do with their Take Home Exam and post the decision in Slack. They can:
Revise the Take Home Exam and submit it as the Final Written Assignment.
Abandon the Take Home Exam and submit a first draft of something new as Final Written Assignment.
Revise the Take Home Exam for an upcoming conference or journal or competition (or something official) and submit it as a Final Written Assignment.
Prepare a new manuscript for an upcoming conference or journal or competition (or something official) and submit it as a Final Written Assignment.
Propose something else.
All options are subject to instructor approval.
TAKE-HOME EXAM
Students will be assigned questions and short essay topics in the form of challenges, which will be announced at least three weeks before the exam is due. Challenge topics are chosen based on the student interests survey given at the beginning of the semester.
In order to respond to the exam, students will have to have reviewed relevant readings and media and are expected to do some additional research on their own. The exam requires a written narrative with links to supplemental materials to illustrate their response to the challenge, such as videos, games, art, and any other media. Students will be able to choose between multiple challenges and can work together to review works, but each one must make and document their unique contribution in their own exam.
The exam is expected to stimulate a deeper review and reflection of the chosen challenge area, allowing students to exercise their creative, critical, analytical, and synthesis skills on demand. Students will not be judged on their mastery of concepts as much as their ability to pull things together and guide the reader to see something in a completely new way. The reader must be persuaded on what is interesting, what is valuable, and/or what is worth knowing using both evidence and opinion.
There is an interim period before the due date of the exam to post an abstract, preliminary references, and questions you may have about the assignment. Students who receive at least a B- grade on their Take Home Exam may be provided comments toward a rewrite of their exam. Students who receive less than a B- on their exam can choose another challenging topic and submit it as a Final Written Assignment. A mediocre paper may not have enough love in it for you to keep working on it and/or for the instructor to keep editing it. Throwing it away could be merciful for both parties.
The exam response should be between 900-1500 words, not counting figures, tables, and references. Use your preferred scholarly format for structuring the paper per your discipline.
Sample challenge topics from Spring 2021 and Spring 2022:
Create a speculative game design concept toward a particular health-related topic using a provided template. Include references that you used to develop the concept.
How can the concept of empathy be used in games and virtual reality? What are the best practices and pitfalls to consider?
Propose design strategies and policies that could be used to mitigate the effects of toxic behavior in game communities in real-time, short-term, or long-term. Also, think about the unintended consequences of such policies.
Perform a scoping review on a topic related to entertainment media, public health, neuroscience or healthcare practice.
What is the gap between how the press represents the impact of games and what the actual impact is? Use examples from popular media and juxtapose it with quality evidence from science. Write a media analysis report of 5 major articles.
What are the major upcoming ethical challenges that will be faced by designers of VR and games? E.g., AI, metaverse, healthcare, and education. Write a perspective/opinion/commentary paper.
Write a 15-minute position speech to policymakers about the potential impact of games and XR in society (focused on one sector), citing evidence or lack thereof.
Summarize gamification trends, challenges, and opportunities, and critique with a narrative review.
How can game narratives be used to develop perspective-taking/mentalization/empathy/compassion skills? Write a perspective/opinion/commentary paper.
Proper authorship and attribution of creative works is required, including students’ own original work. Students are strongly encouraged to use reference management software, such as Endnote, RefWorks, or Zotero and to adhere to a recognized style, such as APA, IEEE, MLA, Chicago, or AMA.
50% for intellectual merit
How are sources synthesized and understood? Are there quotes without analysis or reflection?
Does the paper speak to a broader impact and explain what that could be?
Does the student demonstrate epistemological (disciplinary) comfort with included theory, methods, and applications? (I don’t expect mastery, but comfort means you have read ‘enough’ to get your two feet on the ground)
50% for clarity, style, and organization
Is the main argument clear and well supported by evidence?
Is the formatting consistent? Are the references correct?
Is the flow of the paper appropriate?
FINAL WRITTEN ASSIGNMENT
The purpose of the written long-form products in this class is to exercise existing knowledge and skills and incorporate interpretations of readings and experiences. These assignments aim sharpen their critical, analytical, integrative, and perspective-taking skills. The types of written assignments represent common types of written documents students will need to prepare for team science, such as sections in grant proposals, internal communications, results report preparation, speculative game design documents, scholarly publications, research protocols, and essential documents for research that involves human subjects. Such documents involve basic science writing, technical writing, or translation to lay audience language. Writing happens in drafts, and sometimes, we throw things out completely and start from scratch.
As with the Take Home Exam, proper authorship and attribution of creative works are required, including students’ own original work. Students are strongly encouraged to use reference management software, such as Endnote, RefWorks, or Zotero, and to adhere to a recognized style, such as APA, IEEE, MLA, Chicago, or AMA.
The Final Written Assignment can be as long as 3,000 words or adhere to submission guidelines for a venue of your choice.
LEVERAGING YOUR WRITING PRODUCTS
Students in the past have used the course's written assignments to put together proposals, or manuscripts for other courses, for thesis or dissertation preparation, proposal pitch for funding, conference presentations, or for publication. You are highly encouraged to find ways to make the most of the writing assignment based on your discipline. Writing is not meant to be busy work, and if you are happy with what you put together, we can keep working on it during or after the semester is over so you can publish a paper or poster or submit a proposal. I can also help you identify a venue for the presentation or publication of your paper. Your Take Home Exam and FinalWritten Assignment may be combined into one paper at the end of the semester. Suggested venues:
Festival competitions and conference demos (e.g., CHI, FDG, CHI, ACM, IEEE)
Professional association conference submissions (e.g., CHI, IEEE, APA or whatever your discipline values)
Journals (see readings)
Other calls for papers — including USC intramural conferences (timely calls for papers)
Calls for proposals and competitions
Qualifying exams
Thesis or dissertation sections
Study protocols
SCHOLARLY JOURNAL
One cannot learn to write for a multidisciplinary audience if they do not read from diverse authors. There is no way to acquire the ability to meet others more than 50% into their discipline without reading and experiencing their scholarship. The instructor has curated a collection of readings and media resources from various disciplines to help with this immersion in theReadings & Resources Libraryand in ARES. Start there. Some of the readings/media may intimidate or confuse, but that should not stop you from trying to read, listen, and ask questions. You are required to keep a Scholarly Journal in the medium of your preference, including paper if that is your preferred note-taking mode.
In this journal, you will be asked to keep track of your readings (including syllabus bibliography), prior art reflections, media resource impressions, and anything new that you find of interest. Use Slack to share anything you find that may interest others, and let us know what you think about that resource. You will be asked to submit the scholarly journal for grading at the end of the semester. For self-accountability, you can place these weekly or as they accumulate in your Google Drive folder. You will not be graded for “regularity.” How much should you read? As much as you can. If you manage three items from every section, you will come ahead of the game. Also, use these resources as citations in your papers if relevant. In many cases, you can write a full paper by reading only what is in the Library.
If you make notes regularly, your practice will improve with time, so when you start, do not obsess with perfection. Obsess with practice!
You will be asked to curate a collection based on your interests in the first two weeks of the semester and make a schedule that works for you. A minimum goal to aim for would be 15 items from the class Readings & Resources (including media). You should also be adding a note about class screenings and other class experiences and your research toward your paper and panel.
Point Allocation for Scholarly Journal
50% for note-taking quality
Do the notes improve over time? Are they already fairly good in quality?
Is there variety in the note-taking style? (reflective, critical, and/or reactive)
Are there takeaways?
50% for content diversity
Did the student look at multiple thematic areas?
Did the student read/view beyond their discipline/interest area?
Students will prepare a panel presentation together on an assigned topic. They will be asked to self and peer-assess this experience with a checklist survey. More details will be announced in Slack.
Peer Review
Students will participate in a peer review in groups of the Take Home Exam. They will be asked to self and peer-assess this experience with a checklist survey. More details will be announced in Slack.
Speculative Design Workshop
Students will workshop an idea for a cognitive-motor rehabilitation game experience based on a design brief of modular requirements. This is not a graded workshop, but it is meant to build specific skills and expose the students to a state-of-the-art methodology.
Collaboration Skills
Being a good collaborator requires a lot of different skills. While not all team experiences exercise these skills equally, here is an example of a checklist students might receive for self-assessment of the class.
CHECKLIST FOR SELF-ASSESSMENT OF STUDENTS’ COLLABORATIVE SKILLS (adopted)
(Applies to: the student individually, yes/no statements)
I know exactly what my tasks in this group are.
When I faced difficulties, I looked for help both inside and outside of the group.
I presented to the group sources or documents relating to the subject (e.g. books, texts, web sites, videos).
I have put forward to the group the issues which are relevant to our work.
I helped my colleagues when they asked me for help.
I helped my colleagues when I realized that they had problems, even without them asking me for help.
I know perfectly well what are the roles and tasks of each colleague in my group.
Usually I express my views and opinions clearly to my group.
I feel able to assess the contributions of my peers’ in the work done by our group.
I believe I would not be able to do a better job myself than what was achieved by my group.
CHECKLIST FOR PEER ASSESSMENT OF STUDENTS’ COLLABORATIVE SKILLS (adopted)
(Applies to: the team/group, yes/no statements)
All group members actively contributed to the final product.
Group members gave each other support and feedback.
When the group was having trouble, other groups spontaneously helped.
When the group asked for help, other groups helped them immediately.
In the end, everyone seemed satisfied with their group’s work.
Group members exchanged and negotiated between them their ideas, strategies, tools and/or resources to carry out the activity.
The group defined the tasks and the role of each member early on.
The group asked the opinion and suggestions of other groups.
The group assisted and gave advice to other groups.
The group requested comments to other groups before finishing the activity.
The group accepted critical comments from other groups.
ChatGPT & ΑΙ Use Policy
The future is upon us, and we cannot stop it. You should use AI to help yourself, especially for improving your writing skills or learning how to structure writing. As you may know, AI is not great with facts and not great with the level of detail and originality a graduate course requires. Moreover, you are not expert enough in some areas to properly use it. If your language skills are not very high, it can be hard to know if the recommendations made are any good. Regardless, these are tools you must use, and you should also disclose how you used them and cite them.
AI can be a great starting point and time-saving tool, but it will not truly do your homework in helping you develop the skills you need to thrive. For example, you can use AI to read papers for you and summarize them. That can help if you are doing a first pass or cut on papers you want to decide to read in-depth or maybe even a thematic analysis, but at some point, you have to get your hands dirty and read and make decisions, analyze, and reflect.
Delegating everything to AI will deprive you of the brain skills you need to be employable. So leverage the tools, but do not cheat yourself of core aspects of an education. You don’t need to suffer to learn, but you need to spend some time actually challenging yourself: those neural synapses do not wire together without experiences :)
Grammarly Premium helps me edit everything, for example, including this syllabus, but I surely don’t agree with all its suggestions…
Diversity of Human Experience
The definition of health and happiness varies greatly from individual to individual, family to family, and community to community. While considering media and the design and evaluation of interventions, you will be asked to consider many factors of the diversity of the human condition and human experience. This may mean age, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, race, socioeconomic status, location, literacy, ability/disability, health status, access to services, and other variables. While proposing and critiquing scholarship, interventions, and evaluations, consider how these variables may affect the experience and impact.
Instructor’s Personal Statement on Safe/Brave Spaces
The spirit of a successful interventionist requires cognitive flexibility, imagination, curiosity, rigor, openness, compassion, honesty, and courage. This class will encounter and discuss topics and themes that encompass the entire spectrum of the human experience, from life to death and everything in between. You may be challenged emotionally by some of the content by design: the class is meant to push you beyond what is typically comfortable. This class is a safe space for discussion and expression but is not a safe space from growth. The term ‘brave space’ is also used in community and academic circles.
There is no potential for transformative experiences if you are not personally pushed a bit past what you can tolerate, from boredom to excitement. You should feel free to express dissent in a civil manner and express your entire range of emotions in a controlled way. It is not unusual to cry at some screenings. Let it happen! If at any point you need to walk away momentarily from the class, you may do so without penalty from the instructor. Try not to fight rhetorical or emotional battles you are unprepared to lose in class. We are all here to learn from each other, and the class can always benefit from being more inclusive. I am relying on you to point out the holes in the system. Be brave so we can all be safe. We will make mistakes and recover.
If something happened in class was deeply upsetting, bring it up to the instructor privately. We can all be fragile or imperfect at times, but resilience is a commitment to finding ways to move forward together. That is all that I ask of everyone. This class has run since 2015 with very positive feedback on growth potential, but I am always open to changes. I revise the syllabus and resources based on feedback. I am not intrasingent. I have blind spots. During the pandemic, we stopped screening the CODE BLACK documentary, for example, because we’re all still raw about what is happening with the surge crisis at Los Angeles County Hospital and beyond. The class has survived a lot of crises at USC and the world: the sexual abuse scandals, the financial scandals, a divided political climate, surges in activism for marriage equality, and of course, the Black Lives Matter movement.
On a “casual” day in a class of 10, there are at least 2-3 people who have experienced sexual trauma and 3-4 people with a history of adverse childhood experiences. Your instructor is no exception. This class is not here to replace clinical therapy: a person who aspires to become an interventionist should aspire to tend to their own traumas and understand how to self-care. You may discover some loose ends in this class. Don’t stop at discovery: healing is the ultimate act of defiance in an unjust world.
COMPLEMENTARY PERSPECTIVES ON SAFE SPACES
Byron, K. (2017). From infantilizing to world making: Safe spaces and trigger warnings on campus. Family Relations, 66(1), 116–125. https://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12233
Sanson, M., Strange, D., & Garry, M. (2019). Trigger warnings are trivially helpful at reducing negative affect, intrusive thoughts, and avoidance. Clinical Psychological Science, 7(4), 778–793. https://doi.org/10.1177/2167702619827018
Jones, P. J., Bellet, B. W., & McNally, R. J. (2020). Helping or harming? The effect of trigger warnings on individuals with trauma histories. Clinical Psychological Science, 8(5), 905–917. https://doi.org/10.1177/2167702620921341
RECOMMENDED SELF-CARE & PSYCHOLOGICAL FIRST AID COURSES (FREE)
Mental Health Self-Care: This presentation discusses the different types of stress and their sources. The speaker also provides seven methods for reducing stress.
Psychological First Aid (PFA): A full-scale public health response to disasters must attend to both the physical and mental health needs of affected groups. The latter set of needs is especially important because most authorities agree that far more individuals will report psychologically-related complaints than will report physical symptoms directly stemming from the injury-causing agent or event. Because a large-scale emergency will overwhelm existing mental health response resources, psychological first aid—the provision of basic psychological care in the short-term aftermath of a traumatic event—is an important skill set that all public health workers should possess.
The University of Southern California is a learning community committed to developing successful scholars and researchers dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge and the dissemination of ideas. Academic misconduct, which includes any act of dishonesty in the production or submission of academic work, comprises the integrity of the person who commits the act and can impugn the perceived integrity of the entire university community. It stands in opposition to the university’s mission to research, educate, and contribute productively to our community and the world.
All students are expected to submit assignments that represent their own original work, and that have been prepared specifically for the course or section for which they have been submitted. You may not submit work written by others or “recycle” work prepared for other courses without obtaining written permission from the instructor(s).
Other violations of academic integrity include, but are not limited to, cheating, plagiarism, fabrication (e.g., falsifying data), collusion, knowingly assisting others in acts of academic dishonesty, and any act that gains or is intended to gain an unfair academic advantage.
The impact of academic dishonesty is far-reaching and is considered a serious offense against the university. All incidences of academic misconduct will be reported to the Office of Academic Integrity and could result in outcomes such as failure on the assignment, failure in the course, suspension, or even expulsion from the university.
Please ask your instructor if you are unsure what constitutes unauthorized assistance on an exam or assignment, or what information requires citation and/or attribution.
Course Content Distribution and Synchronous Session Recordings Policies
USC has policies that prohibit recording and distribution of any synchronous and asynchronous course content outside of the learning environment.
Recording a university class without the express permission of the instructor and announcement to the class, or unless conducted pursuant to an Office of Student Accessibility Services (OSAS) accommodation. Recording can inhibit free discussion in the future, and thus infringe on the academic freedom of other students as well as the instructor. (Living our Unifying Values: The USC Student Handbook, page 13).
Distribution or use of notes, recordings, exams, or other intellectual property, based on university classes or lectures without the express permission of the instructor for purposes other than individual or group study. This includes but is not limited to providing materials for distribution by services publishing course materials. This restriction on unauthorized use also applies to all information, which had been distributed to students or in any way had been displayed for use in relationship to the class, whether obtained in class, via email, on the internet, or via any other media. (Living our Unifying Values: The USC Student Handbook, page 13).
Students and Disability Accommodations
USC welcomes students with disabilities into all of the University’s educational programs. The Office of Student Accessibility Services (OSAS) is responsible for the determination of appropriate accommodations for students who encounter disability-related barriers. Once a student has completed the OSAS process (registration, initial appointment, and submitted documentation) and accommodations are determined to be reasonable and appropriate, a Letter of Accommodation (LOA) will be available to generate for each course. The LOA must be given to each course instructor by the student and followed up with a discussion. This should be done as early in the semester as possible as accommodations are not retroactive. More information can be found at osas.usc.edu. You may contact OSAS at (213) 740-0776 or via email at [email protected].
Free and confidential mental health treatment for students, including short-term psychotherapy, group counseling, stress fitness workshops, and crisis intervention.
The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline (formerly known as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline) provides free and confidential emotional support to people in suicidal crisis or emotional distress 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, across the United States. The Lifeline is comprised of a national network of over 200 local crisis centers, combining custom local care and resources with national standards and best practices. The new, shorter phone number makes it easier for people to remember and access mental health crisis services (though the previous 1 (800) 273-8255 number will continue to function indefinitely) and represents a continued commitment to those in crisis.
Free and confidential therapy services, workshops, and training for situations related to gender- and power-based harm (including sexual assault, intimate partner violence, and stalking).
Information about how to get help or help someone affected by harassment or discrimination, rights of protected classes, reporting options, and additional resources for students, faculty, staff, visitors, and applicants.
Avenue to report incidents of bias, hate crimes, and microaggressions to the Office for Equity, Equal Opportunity, and Title for appropriate investigation, supportive measures, and response.
OSAS ensures equal access for students with disabilities through providing academic accommodations and auxiliary aids in accordance with federal laws and university policy.
Information on events, programs and training, the Provost’s Diversity and Inclusion Council, Diversity Liaisons for each academic school, chronology, participation, and various resources for students.
Emergency assistance and avenue to report a crime. Latest updates regarding safety, including ways in which instruction will be continued if an officially declared emergency makes travel to campus infeasible.
A safe and confidential place to share your USC-related issues with a University Ombuds who will work with you to explore options or paths to manage your concern.
Confidential Lifestyle Redesign services for USC students to support health promoting habits and routines that enhance quality of life and academic performance.
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0)
