Steven B. Sample

Steven Sample is the tenth president of the University of Southern California (USC). He became president in 1991. Sample came to USC from the State University of New York at Buffalo, where he had served as president since 1982.

Dr. Sample is an electrical engineer, a musician, an outdoorsman, an author, and an inventor. In February 1998 he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering for his contributions to consumer electronics and leadership in interdisciplinary research and education. In 2003 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in recognition of his accomplishments as a university president.

He remains an active member of USC’s faculty, co-teaching with management expert Warren Bennis a popular spring-semester course for juniors and seniors entitled “The Art and Adventure of Leadership.” His book, The Contrarian’s Guide to Leadership, released in October 2001 by Jossey-Bass, has been a Los Angeles Times best-seller, was chosen by the Toronto Globe as one of the ten best business books of 2001, and has been translated into five languages.

Under Sample's leadership, USC has become world-renowned in the fields of communication and multimedia technologies, received national acclaim for its innovative community partnerships and solidified its status as one of the nation's leading research universities.

Sample has authored numerous journal articles and published papers in science and engineering and higher education. His patents in the field of digital appliance controls have been licensed to practically every major manufacturer of appliance controls and microwave ovens in the world. Over 300 million home appliances have been built using his inventions.

Sample has chaired a number of statewide and national groups examining the state of elementary, secondary, and higher education. In 1994 he convened a group of Los Angeles leaders that won an historic $53 million challenge grant from the Annenberg Foundation to accelerate reforms in local public schools. Sample co-founded the Association of Pacific Rim Universities (APRU), a consortium of 34 premier Pacific Rim research universities located in fifteen countries. Currently a member of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, he is a past chairman of the Association of American Universities (AAU), a consortium of the 63 leading North American research universities. He chaired a special AAU committee on postdoctoral education, and currently co-chairs an AAU task force on increasing protection for human subjects in university-based research.

Dr. Sample earned B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He and his wife Kathryn live in San Marino, California. They have two daughters and two grandchildren.