(Subscription required) Tolson will begin the position Monday, April 1, as the Carl Mason Franklin chair in law. She is the first African American dean at USC Gould and only the second female dean in the school’s 123-year history. Tolson has been at USC Law since 2017, serving for the last year as interim dean, and she also holds a courtesy faculty appointment in the political science and international relations department at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.