Last updated 10/13/2021
Since retiring in 2004 after twenty-nine years on the USC faculty, Bob Stallings expected to finally have time to finish several manuscripts that were in various stages of completion. Instead, he discovered interests in things that he had never done before (handling investments) as well as things that he had not had time to pursue while still on the faculty (working on Web sites). After joining the board of the Retired Faculty Association, he has taken a hand in helping to maintain the Web sites of the USC Emeriti Center, the Emeriti College, and the Staff Retirement Association as well as the RFA. This in turn has allowed him to acquire new skills such as learning new languages for creating Web pages, how to create and distribute podcasts (audio recordings) via the Internet, and blogging (Web logs that provide instruction for retirees on common computer-related tasks). Most recently he has played a lead role in organizing the USC retiree computer Help Squad, a group of retirees and pre-retirees available to try to assist USC retirees in solving computer- and Internet-related problems.
Robert A. Stallings (Professor Emeritus of Policy, Planning, and Development) joined the USC faculty in 1975 as a member of what was then the School of Public Administration. Holder of a Ph.D. in sociology, Bob enjoyed the courtesy of a joint appointment with the USC Department of Sociology. He served as president of the International Sociological Association’s Research Committee on Disasters from 2002 to 2006, was editor of the International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters from 1997 to 2002. He is the author of Promoting Risk: Constructing the Earthquake Threat (1995) and editor of Methods of Disaster Research (2002). Bob and his wife, Carole, still live in Covina within reasonable distance of two children and seven grandchildren.
“Be prepared to be busier than you were before you ‘retired’.” Robert A. Stallings, 2006