The School of Cinematic Arts’ Council on Diversity & Inclusion held its 2nd annual Awards Ceremony for Outstanding Work in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion on April 29th at USC. The event honored students from the School’s seven divisions and Expanded Animation program for their groundbreaking contributions to empowering diverse voices and perspectives.

Each recipient of the certificate was recognized for their dedication to fostering a culture of respect and tolerance for differences, both within the campus community and beyond. Chosen by faculty members, the Certificate for Outstanding Work acknowledges students who have demonstrated exceptional commitment to diversity and inclusion initiatives.

This year’s recipients are:

Kimberly Joseph, Peter Stark Producing Program

Joseph was recognized for her work in programming, curating, and producing the 2024 F.R.O. (Films Reflecting Ourselves) Fest in partnership with the USC Center for Black Cultural and Student Affairs (CBCSA), the Fisher Museum, and the African American Cinema Society.

Rosemary Jingtong Wu, John C. Hench Division of Animation + Digital Arts

Wu’s 4-minute senior capstone project is about the stigma of being called “shengnu”, or “leftover women”, a term popularized by Chinese state media, for remaining unmarried in a country where men outnumber women by 20%. It is about a young Chinese woman who is dealing with the tension of getting married under family pressure (led by her mother) to enter into an unwanted marriage and her decision to ultimately breakaway from cultural and familial norms.

Delonix Huynh, Division of Cinema and Media Studies

Hunyh was recognized for her work with the Council on Diversity & Inclusion, primarily her role in planning and curating the SCA Resource Guide, which collates all the resources available across campus for diverse student populations.

Lizby Dingus, Interactive Media & Games

Dingus’ MFA thesis, The Glitch Witch, aims to broaden media representations of women by contextualizing STEM-inspired puzzles within community-focused narrative gameplay. Through gameplay it challenges myths about women in STEM fields, including the portrayal in popular media of “scientifically-minded” women aren’t popular or embody feminine traits.

Sarah Ciston, Media Arts + Practice

Ciston’s work explores artificial intelligence and how best to use it ethically. She employs queer, feminist, and anti-racist theories, ethics, and tactics to investigate how to make AI more intersectional. This work is core to her PhD dissertation, as well as a variety of other projects she has created such as: The Intersectional AI Toolkit; the Critical Field Guide for Working with Machine Learning Datasets; and the library resource titled Inclusive and Responsible Dataset Usage, which offers information on working with data in an inclusive matter.

Taylor Robison, John Wells Division of Writing for Screen & Television

Robison’s television pilot Leaving Clarksdale is about an African American family in the 1940's leaving their longtime home in rural Mississippi for a better life in Chicago. It has the feel of a family saga, which is both historical in terms of the migration of southern families after WW II, but also a varied character piece that feels authentic to its time and place.

Sherean Jones, Film & Television Production

Jones has always been steadfast in her advocacy for diversity and inclusion in her creative projects. Her directorial work on her USC project The Pillow showcased her commitment to telling universal stories through black characters, exploring themes of grief and loss through levity. In her intermediate directing class, she cast actors of different races for a scene from Crazy.Stupid.Love, emphasizing the story's universal themes.

Brittaney M. Smothers, Expanded Animation Research + Practice Program

Smothers’ work focuses on representing minority groups and allowing their voices and experiences to be heard. She makes it a point to have people of color as her main characters, while employing actors, producers, and cinematographers of color to ensure that every aspect of her film has someone who can relate to the experience of being a minority. Brittaney touches upon topics that both people of color and those who do not identify as such, can relate to, such as mental health, disability and class inequality.