When Pete Carroll took a year off from coaching and made a concerted effort to define his philosophy, a key component to that philosophy was the idea of helping people be the best they can be.

And because Carroll is a football coach, it can be easy to think of that as helping football players be the best players they can be, but for Carroll the goal has always been to help the entire person reach his potential, which in turn will lead to better results on the field.

With that in mind, the Seahawks coach is branching out from football and into academia. Along with Dr. Michael Gervais, a high performance psychologist who works closely with the Seahawks, and David Belasco, the director of USC's Entrepreneur Program, Carroll is a co-creator of the new Performance Science Institute at USC. The program, which is part of USC's Marshall School of Business, recently launched with a performance science minor, which includes a new science of high performance course that is already the second most in-demand elective in the Marshall School, Belasco said.

The idea behind the Performance Science Institute dates back to Carroll's time coaching at USC when Belasco, as he put it, "stalked Pete to speak in my classroom." Carroll's talks in Belasco's classes led to the creating of a class called Taking the Leap, and those two found a mutual interest in teaching mindset. What Belasco recognized in his early interactions with Carroll was that the coach's methods went well beyond football applications.

"He expressed an interest in teaching this philosophy, so he, Michael Gervais jointly came up with a program to teach the science and best practice of high performance in any field," Belasco said in a phone interview.

When Belasco sent an email to Carroll last fall outlining the ideas of the program, Carroll replied that he was "all in." Long-term, the goal is a Performance Science Institute that can "Teach, train and publish on the science and best practices of high performance," Belasco explained. "That includes grit, it includes resilience, it includes psychology, neuroscience, physiology, nutrition, recovery—a lot of the things he incorporates with the Seahawks and also in his (Win Forever) consulting practice with Michael, but it's an academic approach to it with the practical side instilled through Michael, Pete and other experts."