USC Alums Start Student Fund

Video game industry vets and USC alums Kevin Bachus and Chanel Summers have made a donation to the USC School of Cinematic Arts' interactive media & games division to establish The Bachus-Summers Fund for Innovation in Interactive Entertainment.

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The fund will be used to support students showing initiative in the fields of interactive and immersive media, according School of Cinematic Arts’ Dean Elizabeth M. Daley.

Bachus explained that the fund is "meant to recognize and reward the most innovative work by a student in the interactive media & games division and to encourage that student to build their own future, for themselves and for others, after leaving school.”

“When thinking about this fund, it was critical to us that it be used directly to support the efforts of tomorrow’s creative and entrepreneurial leaders," Summers added.

Bachus is credited as one of the original group of four individuals at Microsoft who came up with the idea for the Xbox, an initiative that grew in part out of his role as group product manager for the DirectX family of Windows technologies. Bachus currently serves as senior vp, entertainment & games strategy, for Dave & Buster’s.

Summers supervised the release of Microsoft’s first multiplayer internet game, Fighter Ace, and was then selected to become that company’s first audio technical evangelist. With the inception of Xbox, she helped design the audio capabilities of the new system and created a support team for content creators.