Danielle Mihram
Danielle Mihram (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania) is on the Faculty of the University of Southern California’s [USC] Libraries and of USC College’s Department of French and Italian. She was the Director of USC’s Center for Excellence in Teaching [CET] (1996-2007) and she remains a member of CET as one of its Distinguished Faculty Fellows. She holds advanced degrees from both France and the United States, and, prior to USC, she was a member on the Faculty of several academic institutions, including New York University, the University of Pennsylvania, Swarthmore College, Haverford College, and the University of Sydney (Australia).
Under her leadership at CET, the scope and breadth of CET’s programs gained national prominence and recognition. In 2003 Dr. Mihram, together with Dr. Bruce Zuckerman (one among CET’s Faculty Fellows), successfully competed for a sizeable grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to foster the growth and development of new and innovative mentoring at USC thus setting the foundations for a university-wide culture of academic mentoring.
Dr. Mihram's research interests are multidisciplinary and have led to over a hundred publications and presentations in the fields of French literature, General Systems Theory, Information Science, and innovative approaches to teaching and learning. Her current research is supported by a research grant from the USC Advancing Scholarship in the Humanities and Social Sciences Initiative [ASHSS] for her multi-disciplinary project on "The Concept of the Garden" in French literature, visual arts, landscape & urban design, and culture. Her project spans four centuries (from the Renaissance through the nineteenth century). One very recent outcome of this research is the award (in Spring 2008) of a grant, the Summer Undergraduate Research Fund [SURF], to one of the undergraduate students working closely with Dr. Mihram on 17th century gardens in France.
Dr. Mihram is the recipient of several awards: The Outstanding Scholarly Achievement Award (2003), and the Innovation Award on Teaching and Research (2005), both from the International Institute for Advanced Studies in Systems Research and Cybernetics; the USC Mellon Award for Excellence in Mentoring (2005); and, the USC Academic Senate’s Distinguished Faculty Service Award (2008) “for your distinguished leadership of the Center for Excellence in Teaching, and for your furtherance of mentoring at the university”.