Every family has traditions passed down through generations. For the late Amy Dundon-Berchtold ’72 and her husband Jim, one of those traditions was giving back to USC—a practice that began with Amy’s mother, Joyce King Stoops, and her stepfather, Emery Stoops.
The Stoops met at USC in the 1960s and became revered professors at the USC Rossier School of Education; Joyce King Stoops also served as the school’s assistant dean for student life. Longtime supporters of USC, they established the Emery Stoops and Joyce Stoops Education Library, the Emery Stoops and Joyce King Stoops Dean’s Chair in Education, and 25 scholarships for USC Rossier students.
Inspired by her parents’ legacy, Amy made a $6 million combined outright and planned gift in 2016 to endow the USC University Club. Her gift was far from random—the club is located in King Stoops Hall, which her parents endowed in 1983. The renamed USC Amy King Dundon-Berchtold University Club displays a wide array of her family’s mementos, ranging from photographs to books, on its walls and bookshelves.
After Amy passed away in 2020, it was announced that she and Jim had made a multi-million-dollar legacy gift to support her alma mater, the USC Rossier School of Education, as well as the Keck School of Medicine of USC and the USC Caruso Catholic Center.
USC Rossier will receive a portion of the gift to prepare leaders to advance educational equity through practice, research and policy. Some of these funds will go toward recruiting and promoting faculty to lead in these areas, while the remaining funds will be used to create a new scholarship and augment existing ones set up by the family.
The Keck School of Medicine will get another portion of the gift to support research and endow a chair in orthopedic surgery. In addition, the funds will help build a registry of clinical data and blood samples of patients with Evans Syndrome, an autoimmune disorder, so that researchers can develop more effective treatments. Parkinson’s disease research also received funding, as did a new scholarship fund to ensure excellence in educating the next generation of academic clinicians and basic scientists.
The remaining portion of the gift will go to the USC Caruso Catholic Center’s ministry and scholarship funds. The ministry fund supports a wide range of the center’s goals, from community building to justice work to ethical leadership.
For Amy, it was a source of pride to follow her family’s tradition of giving back to USC. It’s a commitment that Jim shares—and wants to continue.
“We both believed that planned giving can make a lasting difference,” Jim says. “I can think of no better tribute to my wife and her family than supporting USC.”
And, thanks to the couple’s extraordinary generosity, their impact will be felt for decades to come.