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USC Academic Senate Executive Board Elections 2025
Thank you for participating in this election.
You are voting this year to fill three roles in the Senate leadership:
- Academic Vice-President: this person serves a three-year term, first as the Academic Vice- President, then as the President, and finally as the Past-President. The Academic Vice-President works closely with the Senate President to address school-specific and university-wide issues, serves on numerous university-wide committees, and communicates directly with USC’s senior leaders.
- Administrative Vice-President: this person serves a two-year term, and is responsible for staffing and communicating with Senate committees.
- At-Large: each year we elect four At-Large members for one-year terms to serve as part of the leadership team and as liaisons to various Senate and joint Senate-Provost committees.
On each of the following three screens, you will see a list of the candidates for one of those roles to be filled, along with
- a short bio,
- a link to a short video by each candidate, and
- a more detailed candidate information sheet.
To vote on a desktop or laptop, click on the button beside the candidate’s bio (small circle or square). On a phone, click on the text associated with the candidate of your choice.
You can peruse the three pages and cast your votes in any order. You can also interrupt your voting and come back at another time. You have until 5pm PST on Monday, May 5th to finalize your vote.If you have any questions, please email us at acsenate@usc.edu and we will get back to you as soon as possible.By way of background, the members of the Executive Board returning next year will be:
- Lorraine Turcotte (Dornslife), who will serve as President
- Rima Jubran (Keck), who will serve as Past President
- Clifford Neuman (Viterbi), who will continue as Secretary General
Candidates for Academic Vice-President: Pick One
Christine El Haddad, MBA, PhD is the current Administrative Vice President of the USC Academic Senate and Associate Professor of Clinical Management at the Marshall School of Business. She specializes in Negotiations, Decision-Making, and Strategy and has taught these topics at the graduate and undergraduate levels. She has a passion for teaching and has been recognized with a total of fourteen teaching excellence awards and recognitions including the Marshall School’s prestigious Golden Apple Award (four-time winner) and the Douglas Basil Award for Exemplary Contributions to Teaching.
As Senate Vice President, Christine oversees fifteen Senate and Joint/Provost Senate committees with different roles and responsibilities. She and the Executive Board also advise the Provost and senior administrators on USC’s strategy and finances, academic and faculty affairs and the implementation of university-wide initiatives. Over the past two years, she has also served on two Board of Trustees committees as a faculty representative.
As an Executive Officer of the Senate, she has advocated for a variety of issues including strengthening shared governance at the university; open and transparent communication by the Senior Administration; competitive and equitable salaries for all faculty; rewarding excellence in research and teaching; greater job security for RTPC faculty; and improving faculty mentoring.
In addition to her role in the Senate, Christine actively consults with businesses and non-profits in LA. She recently helped raise funds for LA Conservation Corps, a non-profit focused on youth education and employment. She also helped launch a non-profit that seeks to address food insecurity in LA in partnership with the LA Regional Food Bank. She is the recipient of multiple leadership and service awards including the Top 50 Women in LA award by Women We Admire for her leadership and service in higher education and in her community.
Eva Kanso is a professor and the Z.H. Kaprielian Fellow in the department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering of the Viterbi School of Engineering at the University of Southern California, with courtesy appointment in the department of Physics and Astronomy of the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. Prior to joining USC in 2005, Kanso held a two-year postdoctoral position in Computing and Mathematical Sciences at Caltech.
She received a Ph.D. degree in 2003 and an M.S. degree in 1999 in Mechanical Engineering, as well as an M.A. degree in 2002 in Mathematics, all from the University of California at Berkeley. She obtained her Bachelor of Engineering degree from the American University of Beirut with distinction. Kanso held a rotating position as a program director at the National Science Foundation (2021-2023), and visiting positions at Princeton University (2024-2025), the Institut de Recherche sur les Phénomènes Hors Equilibre, IRPHE, Marseille (2024), the Ecole Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles, ESPCI, Paris (2021), the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York (2016-2017), the Flatiron Institute at the Simons Foundation, New York (2016- 2017), and the Laboratoire LadHyX at the Ecole Polytechnique, Palaiseau (2015). Her research interests concern fundamental problems in the biophysics of cellular and subcellular processes and the physics of animal behavior, both at the individual and collective levels. A central theme in her work is the role of the mechanical environment, specifically the fluid medium and fluid-structure interactions, in shaping and driving biological functions.
John G. Matsusaka – Charles F. Sexton Chair in American Enterprise, and Professor of Finance and Business Economics in the Marshall School of Business; Professor of Business and Law in the Gould School of Law; Professor of Political Science in the Department of Political Science and International Relations; and Executive Director of the Initiative & Referendum Institute at USC.
John Matsusaka has been a USC faculty member for 35 years. His research focuses on democracy and governance, in the public sector and in corporations. He has taught at the undergraduate, masters, and doctoral levels, and received the Provost Mentoring Award. Matsusaka served as interim vice provost for faculty affairs, and vice dean in the Marshall School, where he oversaw faculty, undergraduate, and doctoral programs, launched the World Bachelor in Business and Marshall’s Online MBA. He has co-chaired UCAPT, the Faculty Handbook Committee, and currently the Academic Freedom and Professional Responsibility task force. He has served as an at-large member of the senate’s executive board since 2022.
Candidates for Administrative Vice President: Pick One
Rob Filback – Professor of Clinical Education in the Rossier School of Education. My current roles include master’s program chair, higher education concentration co-chair, co-chair of the Rossier Democracy Project, and member of this year’s Senate Rules Committee in the Academic Senate. My service over 17 years at USC spans school and university committees, with a sustained focus on finding ways to strengthen faculty governance.
Jessica Parr, PhD – I started as Lecturer in the Chemistry Department in Dornsife in the fall of 2007, after completing my PhD in Chemistry at USC. I have served as co-chair of the Faculty Handbook committee, chair of the Senate Rules committee, and other service. Recently, I was appointed to the Student Success Team hosted by the Provosts office for my commitment to undergraduate education. I spend the majority of my time teaching General Chemistry.
Tanvi Patel is an Associate Professor (Teaching) in the Writing Program at the USC. Dr. Patel has served on various committees in the Writing Program, including Mentoring, Personnel, and co-founding and co-chairing the new Global Experiential Learning Committee. At the University level, she has served on the Dornsife Faculty Council (member and Secretary), Academic Senate committees (CTAL, DEI, and Representative), and various caucuses. Her professional and pedagogical work centers on experiential learning and global studies in Composition and Rhetoric. Her academic research also includes food studies, international crime fiction, and post-colonial studies. She has earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in Poetry from San Diego State University, and an MA/PhD in English literature from the University of Washington, Seattle.
Candidates for At-Large Positions: Pick up to Four
Sylvain Barbot – is an Associate Professor at the Department of Earth Sciences at USC Dornsife. Dr. Barbot studied geophysics at the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California at San Diego, and at the California Institute of Technology. Dr. Barbot was an Nanyang Assistant Professor and National Research Fellow at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Since joining USC in 2018, Dr. Barbot served leadership roles in the Dornsife Faculty Council, chaired executive committees for the American Geophysical Union, and served as editor for a Nature journal. Dr. Barbot is the author of over 100 articles on earthquake physics and tectonic geodesy.
Chris Bresnahan is an Associate Clinical Professor in the Management and Organizations Department at the Marshall School of Business. Dr. Bresnahan teaches leadership, sustainability, and power at the Undergraduate and MBA level. He is the founding director of the Hayes Barnard Sustainability Fellowship, and the Director for the Warren Bennis Scholars, both undergraduate curriculum-based
Kristian Carlson is a Professor of Clinical Medical Education in the Keck School of Medicine. He is RTPC faculty, arriving at USC in 2016 from the faculty of the University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg, South Africa). He has an active research program in musculoskeletal form and function, teaches/mentors undergraduate, medical, and postgraduate students, and serves the USC community in several roles. He is active in the Academic Senate and has been an enthusiastic member of the KSOM Faculty Council, serving as immediate past-President of the latter in 2024-25. He would be honored to continue advocating for KSOM faculty through an at-large position on the Academic Senate Executive Board.
Monalisa Chatterjee is an interdisciplinary scientist with expertise in climate change risk, impacts, and vulnerability; constraints and barriers to climate adaptation policies; quantitative and qualitative social science research methods; and evaluation of economic and environmental policies for sustainable development. Monalisa’s professional experiences include working as an adaptation specialist in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Technical Support Unit and as a policy analyst with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).
Jennifer Dinalo, Ph.D., is the Health Sciences Research and Data Librarian at Norris Medical Library at USC and Adjunct Associate Professor in the USC Bovard College Master of Management in Library and Information Science program. As a librarian, she focuses on developing services and programming for the research community related to data science and scholarly impact and supporting the Physician Assistant Program and other programs in KSOM.. She has been at the Norris Medical Library since 2015. Before becoming a librarian, Jennifer earned her PhD from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Molecular Microbiology and was a postdoc at Stanford University studying the effects of antibiotics on the normal human microbiome using biochemical and bioinformatics approaches. In her spare time, Jennifer enjoys hiking with her dog, reading, movies, and karaoke.
Julianna Kirschner, Ph.D. Dr. Julianna Kirschner’s courses and research publications are focused on improving communication outcomes in digital contexts. Dr. Kirschner’s PhD award-winning dissertation critically assessed social media posts that contributed to trending topics on Twitter. Her first book is in progress. Dr. Kirschner has served on many USC Academic Senate committees, most recently as co-chair of the Senate Faculty A[airs Committee and as a member of the Senate Rules Committee. Previously, she served on Annenberg’s Faculty Council.
Courtney Malloy is Professor of Clinical Education at the USC Rossier School of Education. She chairs the Organizational Change and Leadership program at USC Rossier and teaches courses focused on research and evaluation methods, data analysis, learning and motivation, and improving organizational performance. Within her school, she has served on several committees, including Faculty Council, EdD Governance committees, and the Salary, Promotion and Tenure committee. At the University level, she has served on UCOC (Social Sciences), the RTPC Faculty Affairs Committee, and the Mentoring Committee.
Melissa Miller, Ed.D. is Associate University Librarian and Adjunct Associate Professor at USC, with a decade of experience in faculty governance and academic leadership. She oversees operations and strategic planning at the Hoose Library of Philosophy, designs and teaches graduate-level courses, and chairs multiple review and policy committees. Her leadership spans instructional design, administrative strategy, and faculty development. Dr. Miller is committed to strengthening shared governance and advancing institutional excellence across academic units.
James E. Moore, II – Prior to retirement in 2022, I specialized in engineering and planning for transportation and other infrastructure systems. My primary research focus was spatial economic impact analysis by income group, and evaluation of infrastructure investment. I eventually concluded all public sector decisions are political outcomes immune to analysis, so I stopped analyzing them and retired. My current focus is the role of equal opportunity, free speech, and academic freedom in U.S. universities. I write for the unrefereed literature.
Artineh Samkian is a Professor of Clinical Education in the Rossier School of Education and most recently served as the Rossier Faculty Council Chair. Her expertise is in applied research methodology, teaching and learning of adults (andragogy), and foundations of education. She received the USC Associates Award for Excellence in Teaching and recently participated in the Big 10 Academic Leadership Program. As RTPC faculty, Artineh is committed to ensuring all faculty have a voice in School and University-wide governance.
Myra ‘Miki’ Turner, winner of the 2023 USC Black Alumni Assoc. Faculty and Staff award, and the 2022 National Association of Black Journalists Educator of the Year, is currently a Professor of Professional Practice at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. An award-winning photojournalist, Turner spent more than 30 years working in the media industry specializing in print, television, radio and web production. She is the author of two books—the best-selling journey to the woman i’ve come to love and tomorrow. She is currently on the board of directors of Black Students of California United.