Danielle Mihram
She holds a B.A. Honors from the University of Sydney; a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania; and a Master of Library Science (MLS) from Rutgers University. Since her arrival at USC Libraries, she has held several administrative positions, including her most recent appointment: Associate Dean (STEM and Health Sciences Libraries). During Fall 2020 through Spring 2022 she was a faculty member in the online Marshall School of Business Program’s Master of Management in Library and Information Science (M.M.L.I.S.), where she taught a Research and Professional Applications two-unit course, focusing on the understanding of the theoretical and research concepts needed to address successfully all aspects of management and leadership in libraries.
Danielle is the Subject Specialist (Collections and Research) and liaison to the USC Dornsife College’s Department of French and Italian, and she offers field-specific research consultations in French and Italian language and literature. For well over a decade (1997-2013), she taught, in that Department, upper division undergraduate courses, (with a strong multimedia component).
Her many years of teaching and mentoring experience, as well as her knowledge of information science, led to her appointment as the first full-time Director of USC’s Center for Excellence in Teaching [CET] (Provost Office; from 1996 to 2007), and she remains a member of CET as one of its Distinguished Faculty Fellows. Under her leadership at CET, the scope and breadth of CET’s programs gained national prominence and recognition.
Danielle'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 interests include: the digital humanities, in particular: the preservation of cultural heritage artifacts, as well as the contributions of the digital humanities to the advancement of human knowledge. Her overarching research interests encompass medieval history and culture; French history and culture in the 17th and 18th centuries; General Education and Information Literacy; and the assessment of student learning in both curricular and extra-curricular settings.
She was awarded several USC grants in support of her work: a research grant from the USC Advancing Scholarship in the Humanities and Social Sciences Initiative, (during its inaugural year 2007-2008); one USC Provost’s Undergraduate Research Fellowships (2018-2019, to support and oversee competitive undergraduate students research projects) and one USC Provost Arts and Humanities grant (2018-2019, to co-organize the event, Emotionally Intelligent Robots: More Human Than Human?, co-authored and collaboratively developed). This grant supports the USC Visions and Voices initiative which features an array of events highlighting USC’s excellence in the arts and humanities. One outcome of this event (offered in October 2019) led to a full-day symposium, Technology, Agency, and Values: A Polymathic Exploration of Autonomy in Humans and Machines with the USC Ahmanson Lab, Sidney Harman Academy for Polymathic Study (February 2020).
Danielle is the recipient of two USC Libraries’ Research Funds (2018, 2021-2022), as well as three innovative USC Libraries Dean’s Challenge grants (2012-2013; 2016-2017; and 2019-2020). These grants have resulted in her leading two Digital Humanities Projects: USC Digital Voltaire (2017) and the USC Illuminated Medieval Manuscripts (a work in progress).
She is also 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 (Baden-Baden, Germany); 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”.
Danielle academic career stems from her enthusiasm for the French Enlightenment (Le Siècle des Lumières), an interest which goes back to her undergraduate years (funded by a Commonwealth Scholarship) at the University of Sydney (Australia), when she learned to appreciate the richness and the multiple, profound nuances of Voltaire’s writings. A keen reader, a passionate gardener, and an insatiable researcher, she has internalized Voltaire’s Candide’s polysemic aphorism: Il faut cultiver notre jardin, which she interprets as follows, “Let us cultivate our mind to harvest the knowledge that sustains and enriches us.”