USC’s student-athletes are known for their spectacular feats on the field, track, court and pool, but some of their most rewarding experiences come outside of sporting events.
Every year, student-athletes participate in USC’s award-winning Trojan Outreach program. From reading to schoolchildren to refurbishing apartments for victims of domestic violence, the program allows student-athletes to give back to the community and identify causes they’re passionate about.
McCall Hall, the director of Trojan Outreach at USC Athletics, has been involved in community affairs in sports since 2006. She got into the field following the death of her father, a community activist who was passionate about giving back.
“Community affairs was something I wanted to get into just to ease my pain,” said Hall, who’s been at USC since 2016. “It was a coping mechanism because I wanted to focus on other people and not focus on myself, and it turned into a career.”
Hall has taken the Trojan Outreach program to new heights, earning the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics Community Service Award in 2018.
Each year, Trojan Outreach partners with the College Football Playoff’s Extra Yard for Teachers platform to donate money to educators making a difference in Los Angeles. This year, Trojan Outreach awarded Dr. Marcus Hughes, the Coordinator of School Transformation at the Partnership of Los Angeles Schools, with $5,000.
Hughes has worked in education ever since graduating from Morehouse College in 2002. In his current role, he mentors educators and supports school-wide and classroom culture.
The aftermath of George Floyd’s death in 2020 sparked Hughes to create programming intended to teach educators how to be anti-racist.
“I shared with them some of the historical scholars’ as well as our current thought leaders’ definitions of anti-racism,” Hughes explained. “Being anti-racist is an active process. You have to actively move against the system at a faster rate than what it’s currently going. If we really want to be anti-racist, we can’t sit on the sideline and sit back and see the same results happen for certain subgroups of kids.”
Hughes is particularly passionate about making the education system a more supportive place for students of color.
“The public school system was not created for Black and Latinx students,” Hughes said. “We have to transform it and build the systems around the students, instead of asking students to fit in our system. We lose a lot of our kids’ genius. They start off strong and then they lose the interest and confidence to excel within our public school system. We need to create the spaces for them to fall in love with learning. Because these kids are brilliant. It’s time for us to catch up with their genius and create spaces to amplify it in our schools.”
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