2025 Graduate Placements
While many academic departments witnessed one of the worst years on record for graduate placements, the ASE department had a phenomenal year for completions and placements. Of the six students finishing their sixth year of Ph.D. work, five completed their dissertations and all achieved academic placements. Receiving their doctorates were Layla Zbinden, who will be a two-year Wallin Postdoctoral Fellow in Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Macalester College; Ana Briz, who obtained a position as Assistant Director and Curator of Exhibitions at the University of California Santa Barbara Art Museum; Cathleen Mejico (Calderon), who will become a USC Research Associate funded by the Mellon Foundation; Nicholas Derda, who has accepted a postdoctoral position with Rice University; and Rachel Klein, who will be a two year Kay Postdoctoral Fellow in Carceral Studies at Brandeis University. In addition, one student, Ngoc “Ann” Tran, completed her Ph.D. in her fifth year, and received a postdoctoral fellowship at UCLA, to be followed by a postdoctoral fellowship and tenure-track assistant professor position in American Studies at the University of Minnesota.
This phenomenal year of graduate completion and placement continues a tradition that gives the ASE department the highest placement record of any department in USC Dornsife College and among the most successful American Studies or Ethnic Studies departments or programs nationally. Our last full analysis of Ph.D. placements in 2019 indicated that 41 of our 74 graduate alumni were tenure-track faculty, a 55.4% placement rate in tenure-track faculty positions. This included 12 alumni from ASE that had been advanced to tenured and/or Associate Professor positions. Another 16 had landed other academic positions, including postdoctoral positions, one provost, one dean, one artist-in-residence, and others working on campuses in prison education, faculty engagement, graduate writing, research, and humanities. This meant that 77% of our ASE graduates were in academia, with the majority in the tenure-track. The ASE graduate alumni of 2025 are keeping up that stellar tradition with their accomplishments!