Usher Launches Paid USC Fellowships Beyond The Stage

Usher‘s nonprofit is giving five USC students a year behind the scenes of live entertainment through paid fellowships that go beyond a single internship desk.

Usher’s New Look and the USC Thornton School of Music announced their Founding Fellows program Friday, October 23. The undergraduate students will learn from people working in touring, production, venues, artist management and the business of putting on major shows.

The five students were chosen through a competitive application process. Each receives a stipend, and the program also supports travel and a final individual project.

They began their work in September with a leadership session led by New Look co-founder Shawn H. Wilson. The students then visited the “R&B Tour” at SoFi Stadium, learning alongside interns already working within the touring operation.

Rather than train for one job at one company, the fellows will follow a personal question across several parts of the industry. They will use those experiences to figure out where their own skills fit.

The fellowship builds on New Look’s work connecting young adults with jobs beyond the stage. Earlier this year, its touring internship put students to work in audio, wardrobe and multimedia during Usher and Chris Brown’s stadium run.

New Look’s 2025 Entertainment Industry Club recap offers a look at its earlier training work.

The touring internship produced concrete results. UATL reported in August that it hired six interns after two and a half months of work at 18 tour stops. Their duties included running cables, preparing stage equipment and photographing fans. One participant, Mi’Cai Haywood, was already studying at USC Thornton.

The new fellowship creates a separate route for university students while bringing them together with young professionals from Atlanta and Detroit.

The program’s next stop is a visit to Los Angeles. Organizers are developing a November trip to Detroit around the Motown Museum, Michigan Central and Detroit Spark Lab, connecting music history with present-day training and technology.

Organizers also plan a Las Vegas visit in early 2027 focused on Metallica, Live Nation and Sphere. That portion would explore the teams behind immersive live shows, from sound and images to production and venue operations.

The fellows will finish in spring 2027 with individual projects based on what they learned and how they plan to use it.