When the University of Southern California opened its new Iovine and Young Academy in August, students zeroed in on a problem — no skateboard stand. So they got together to create a cardboard prototype, then went into the academy’s woodshop to build one.
“These are not kids who are going to sit back and say, ‘I don’t know how to do that,’ ” says Susan Metros, associate dean of the USC Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy for Arts, Technology and the Business of Innovation (a program of the USC Roski School of Art and Design) and interim CIO of USC’s Marshall School of Business. “They’re always thinking about how to make things happen, and nothing seems to stop them.”
That was just the idea Beats Electronics founders Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young — aka Dr. Dre — had in mind when they established the academy: Create a program that fuses engineering, business…
