USC cuts 65 workers at Viterbi School of Engineering

The University of Southern California said it will lay off 65 workers in its Viterbi School of Engineering as it restructures amid budget cuts.

The school is “restructuring its information technology operations” due to “necessary budget reductions,” wrote Melissa Gerdes-Leonard, associate vice president of client services with USC’s human resources department, in a Sept. 1 letter filed with the state’s Employment Development Department.

Notifications began the week of Aug. 31 with layoffs happening between Nov. 4 and Dec. 3.

A USC spokesperson was not immediately available for comment.

The EDD filing was made as part of the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act — commonly referred to as WARN, which is required when an employer lays off more than 50 employees.

The layoffs mentioned in Gerdes-Leonard’s letter include programmer analysts, software engineers, program directors, web developers, computer services consultants, network engineers and distance education operations engineers.

USC has had fiscal challenges in the past year. The most recent layoffs in fall 2025 cut 259 jobs during an operating deficit of more than $230 million.

In February, USC President Beong-Soo Kim told a crowd at the Health Sciences Campus that the university was on track to generate a roughly $30 million operating surplus for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2026, according to the Daily Trojan student newspaper at USC.

Last year, USC laid off nearly 1,000 people throughout the university system. It currently has 23,942 faculty and staff — about 500 less than last year’s count. That tally doesn’t include 9,632 student workers.

In last year’s round of job cuts, Viterbi laid off 55 professors, academic program directors, adjunct and clinical instructors and student services advisers.