New building fosters collaboration

Verna and Peter Dauterive Hall, USC’s first interdisciplinary social sciences building, opened for the first day of classes on Monday.

Dauterive Hall, which was spearheaded by the Provosts’ office rather than an individual school, will have a special emphasis on collaboration and interdisciplinary studies.

“The donor, Verna Dauterive, had a vision for the building that it be a space activated with students, and focused on collaboration,” said Rob Cooper, vice provost for academic operations and strategy.

Dauterive, an honorary USC Trustee, pledged $30 million for the six-story, 110,000-square-foot building in 2008, in memory of her late husband Peter Dauterive. Construction began in fall 2012, and the building was completed on-time and on-budget at the end of June 2014.

Classrooms located on the ground level of the building will host undergraduate and graduate courses across a variety of subjects in the David and Dana Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, the Marshall School of Business, the Gould School of Law and the Sol Price School of Public Policy, among others.

The centerpiece of the building is a five-story atrium that will house several research institutes including the Center for Economic and Social Research, Center for Mind and Society, Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics, Schwarzenegger Institute for State and Global Policy and the Sol Price Center for Social Innovation.

“We chose an architect that could help us create our vision of collaborative space and what it meant to researchers,” Cooper said. “The atrium building will allow collaboration to be based in the center of the [hall].”

Provost Professor of Psychology and Marketing Norbert Schwarz and Dean’s Professor of Psychology Daphna Oyserman brought the USC Dornsife Mind and Society Center to the university from the University of Michigan last year. They look forward to utilizing the building.

“The building has excellent research space,” Schwarz said. “The whole lower level is research space for interviews, laboratories and space for representative panels for surveys, so there’s great infrastructure.”

Though much of the space will be used for research, undergraduate students are also looking to capitalize on the collaborative nature of the building.

Dauterive Hall will also be looking to add more research institutes to the building. Only two of five atrium floors are currently occupied. Administrators and faculty look forward to using the remaining areas as a collaborative space.

“Collaboration is always important, and is one of the hallmarks in what USC believes in for students, faculty and research centers,” said Bonnie Reiss, global director of the Schwarzenegger Institute for State and Global Policy.