The benefits of a small liberal arts college in the heart of one of the world’s finest research universities.

Thematic Option—or T.O., as it’s commonly referred to around campus—is the honors alternative to undergraduate general education at the University of Southern California. Founded in 1974 with a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, T.O. prizes interdisciplinarity, innovation, and experiential learning with an emphasis on reading, writing, and grappling with the so-called “big questions.” Through common coursework and a plethora of both co-curricular and extracurricular opportunities, T.O. fosters a small intellectual community that generates a free flow of ideas, debate, and conversation, helping highly-motivated students from all backgrounds find their peers and a sense of place at USC.

The Hallmarks of T.O.

    Interdisciplinarity

    The imagined boundaries between disciplines provide structure and allow for specialization within academia, but rarely map onto the real world so neatly. Instead, in our increasingly complex and globalized society, creative problem solvers must be able to draw on a wide variety of perspectives and knowledge systems in order to effect positive change. Accordingly, T.O.’s curriculum consists of honors-level interdisciplinary courses taught around distinct themes, through which our students satisfy USC’s general education requirements. In dialogue with faculty from across USC Dornsife, fellow T.O. students from each of USC’s 23 schools and academic units, and rich primary texts from a variety of voices, times, and epistemologies, our students learn to think without being constrained by the methods or central concepts of any one academic approach.

    Community

    Each year, a cohort of around 200 outstanding freshmen join T.O.. This small, self-selecting group, while not necessarily like-minded in terms of backgrounds, interests, or perspectives, shares a deep sense of curiosity and commitment to life-long learning. Through the cohort experience, an emphasis on collaboration over competition, and opportunities to connect both inside and outside the classroom, T.O. students often form bonds with one another that far outlast their time at USC. In these and other ways, T.O. provides a personal and supportive entry point to USC and the broader Trojan Family.

    Faculty Mentoring

    T.O. Professors are known for their commitment to students, record of scholarship, and excellence in teaching. Moreover, just like our students, they opt in to T.O. and are excited to support highly-motivated young scholars throughout their undergraduate journeys. Tasked with iterating variations on the CORE course themes, our faculty take academic risks in the development of classes that do not fit neatly into their home departments, or, indeed, anywhere else at the university. With an average of just 17 students, these classes facilitate personal interaction and the development of mentoring relationships between faculty and students that often continue well beyond the end of any particular semester.

    Personal Attention

    As polymaths in the making, T.O. students are often academically adventurous and ambitious. Accordingly, T.O. advisors help them conceptualize flexible, integrative academic plans that address all aspects of their intellectual identities. Such a task requires individualized, holistic advising that recognizes students as whole people and honors the interplay of academic, social, and personal domains. This means T.O. advisors support students from recruitment to graduation and beyond, leading small-group information sessions, hosting events and socials, chaperoning field trips, proctoring class evaluations, and providing walk-in and appointment-based advising. T.O. advisors, therefore, are present, approachable, and poised to forge significant connections with our students.

    Innovation

    As an expression of USC’s mission to produce knowledge and knowledgeable students, T.O. seeks to foster a culture of intellectual risk-taking on campus. To that end, T.O. serves as a sandbox for new and innovative approaches to teaching and learning, encouraging our faculty to expand on traditional methods through the integration of experiential learning opportunities like film screenings, guest speakers and performers, weekend retreats, field trips, research projects, and interactive multimedia and information technology. Additionally, T.O. offers new iterations of the themed CORE courses each fall and spring and regularly collaborates with both internal and external partners to develop Alternative Spring Breaks, May- and Julymesters, and other unique learning experiences for our students.

    Programming

    In addition to co-curricular opportunities tied to specific classes, each year, T.O. curates a slate of extracurricular programming open to our broader community that leverages Los Angeles as an extension of our academic environment. Through nature hikes and coastal exploration, live theatre and music, cultural festivals, museum exhibitions, behind-the-scenes tours, research conferences, and more, T.O. students experience embodied, real-world contexts for the ideas they study, grounding their learning in the rich milieu of arts, sciences, and public life that characterizes our city.

    Thematic Option has three broad learning objectives:

    Students learn to think across disciplines, to not be constrained by the methods and concepts of any one academic approach.

    The name “Thematic Option” stems from an interdisciplinary strategy for general education, which allows students to trace specific concepts, such as the self, family, or progress, trans-historically and to discover the web of interconnection between academic fields visible from a thematic perspective. For example, CORE 102: Culture and Values may weave together literature, classics, history, philosophy, politics, and biology to consider questions of personal identity and social responsibility.

    Students learn to deal with ambiguity.

    Many of the challenges and issues our students face do not have clear-cut responses or solutions. T.O. courses are not about providing answers, but asking questions, often the so-called big questions like:

    • What is truth?
    • What is justice?
    • What is love?
    • Who am I?
    • What responsibilities do I have to society?

    These are but a few of the grand questions with which T.O. students struggle as they become comfortable with the realm of uncertainty, an open space full of opportunities for exploration and debate within themselves and among each other.

    Students develop a love of language, an appreciation for the power of the written and spoken word.

    Through the CORE curriculum courses, students get a sense of the history of ideas, along with the ability to critically discuss and open to inquiry so-called traditional works. Students read primary texts rather than textbooks, which allows them to confront the canon on their own terms and form their own passionate points of view.

    T.O.’s writing seminars emphasize close reading and argumentation through which students learn to express complex ideas cogently and concisely as persuasive writers. Importantly, students learn to integrate their own ideas with those of others, establishing their authority while supporting their stances with outside sources. Students learn to assess broad rhetorical situations and respond confidently in ways that maintain the integrity of their own voices.

    The T.O. Pyramid

    Curriculum

    T.O. strives to equip students for life as critical and dialectical thinkers, to intelligently and confidently express themselves, and to engage in dialogue within their respective field(s) and across the various perspectives that make up the public sphere. To that end, the T.O. general education curriculum consists of interdisciplinary courses taught around distinct themes and grounded in historical context. These courses are augmented with writing seminars, individual writing tutorials, and an annual undergraduate research conference. Additionally, T.O. students are responsible for several regular G.E. courses which may overlap with their major(s) or minor(s) or be satisfied with outside exam credit.

    51 Years of T. O., 771 Current T.O. Students, 9:1 Student to Faculty Ratio, 17 Average Class Size

    Prospective Students

    Current Students