USC Annenberg welcomes its spring 2008 admitted students as well as an award-winning and distinguished set of new instructors. The new scholars include:

Tim Page, the Pulitzer Prize-winning music critic for the Washington Post, joins the faculty as a visiting professor of journalism with a joint appointment in the Thornton School of Music. Professor Page has been the chief music critic and culture writer for The Washington Post since 1995 and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1997 for his "lucid and illuminating music criticism." He is the former chief classical music critic for Newsday and music writer/culture reporter for The New York Times. He is a widely published author whose books include What’s God Got to Do With It? Robert Ingersoll on Free Thought, Honest Talk and the Separation of Church and State, Tim Page on Music, Glenn Gould: A Life in Pictures, Dawn Powell: A Biography and the forthcoming Parallel Play, a memoir of living with Asperger’s Syndrome. He enjoyed an 11-year association with WNYC-FM, where he presented a daily program featuring interviews with top composers and musicians, including Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, Glenn Gould, Philip Glass, Steve Reich and Meredith Monk. He also founded and directed Catalyst, a record company devoted to new and unusual music, for BMG.

Award-winning broadcast journalist Sandy Tolan joins the faculty as a visiting professor of journalism. Professor Tolan has written for more than 40 publications and produced hundreds of public radio documentaries and features. A central focus of his work has been the intersection of land conflicts, racial and ethnic identity, natural resources and the global economy.  He is the author of Me and Hank, A Boy and His Hero 25 Years Later, an exploration of race and sports in America; and The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East, which was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle award. Professor Tolan has garnered more than 25 national and international journalism awards, including a duPont-Columbia Silver Baton, three Robert F. Kennedy awards, a United Nations Gold Medal award, and two honors from the Overseas Press Club. For the last eight years, he taught at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, where he coordinated international reporting programs, taught radio feature and documentary classes and served as an I.F. Stone Fellow.

Theodore "Teddy" Albiniak joins the faculty as assistant director of forensics and public debate. With Professor Gordon Stables, Professor Albiniak will be working to expand the role of public debate on the USC campus and in our local communities. As a student, he was an award-winning college debater who earned distinction as a NDT First Round recipient and quarterfinalist. He holds degrees from the University of Redlands and San Francisco State University. Last semester, he directed our honors internship program and will be teaching argumentation and debate this Spring.

Cory Ondrejka, the former chief technology officer and co-founder of the Linden Lab, the developer of the virtual world Second Life, joins USC Annenberg as a visiting scholar and lecturer. During his seven-year tenure at Linden Lab he wrote much of the original code for Second Life and designed the Linden Scripting Language. He will be teaching in our Charles Annenberg Weingarten Program in Online Communities and will also be leading a semester-long series of conversations with faculty and others focusing on the economic, technological, research and instructional impact of virtual worlds.

Daniel Puzo, a top communications official at the United States Department of Agriculture, will serve as the School of Journalism's Executive in Residence for the coming year. Puzo led Congressional and public affairs for USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service, the nation's largest food safety agency. He previously covered food safety for the Los Angeles Times and has received numerous awards for journalism excellence. He has also been editor-in-chief of Restaurants & Institutions magazine and  executive director of the Sonoma County Wineries Association. He holds an M.A. in journalism from USC Annenberg.

A distinguished diplomat and scholar, Geoffrey Wiseman, will serve as acting director of our Center on Public Diplomacy following the departure of Josh Fouts, who is on leave from the Center to focus on other projects. During 2006-07, Professor Wiseman served in the Executive Office of the UN Secretary-General, working on the non-proliferation and disarmament of weapons of mass destruction. He is a former Australian diplomat, serving in three diplomatic postings (Stockholm, Hanoi, and Brussels) and as private secretary to Foreign Minister Gareth Evans. He earned his doctorate in International Relations from Oxford University. His publications include Concepts of Non-Provocative Defence: Ideas and Practices in International Security and The Diplomatic Corps as an Institution of International Society. He also holds a faculty appointment as Professor of the Practice of International Relations and Public Diplomacy at USC College's School of International Relations.