All faculty (full-time, adjunct, part-time, and retired) will receive an individualized email link to the electronic ballot on April 28 and have until 5:00pm PDT on May 5 to cast their ballot electronically. On the ballot and below, you will find links to candidate information, including each candidate’s short bio, brief self-presentation video, and an information sheet with more detail on the candidate’s background, roles, service, and goals.
The current members of the Executive Board returning next year are:
- President: Margo Apostolos (Glorya Kaufman School of Dance)
- Past-President: Dan Pecchenino (Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences)
- Secretary-General: Christal Young (USC Libraries)
The candidates standing for election are listed below, alphabetically.
Academic Vice-President (goes on to serve as President and then Past-President; choose one)
Rima Jubran – MD, MPH, MAcM is the Designated Institutional Official and Director of Graduate Medial Education at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. In this role she oversees all the physician training programs at CHLA. In addition she is a practicing pediatric oncologist in the Cancer and Blood Diseases Institute. Her clinical and research areas of focus are patients with retinoblastoma and the histiocytic diseases of childhood. She received her medical degree from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, Cleveland, Ohio, master’s in public health degree at George Washington University, Washington, D.C and master’s in academic medicine at the University of Southern California. Following her residency at Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital in Cleveland, she completed a fellowship in pediatric hematology/oncology at Children’s National Medical Center, Washington, D.C. Dr. Jubran is a member of the Retinoblastoma committee of the national Children’s Oncology Group and the Steering committee on Langerhan’s Cell Histiocytosis of the Histiocyte Society. She has been the principal investigator on multiple clinical trials targeting these diseases. Dr. Jubran serves on many committees at CHLA and USC and currently serves as a Member-at-Large on the Executive Board of the Academic Senate. Dr. Jubran enjoys teaching and mentoring students and physicians in training. She has received multiple teaching and mentoring awards including the USC Mentoring Award for Faculty Mentoring Faculty and Graduate Students, the Walter Laug Award for Teaching and Mentorship (awarded by the Pediatric hematology/oncology fellows at CHLA) and the Outstanding Teaching in Professionalism in the Practice of Medicine award (awarded by the Keck medical students). A life-long learner, she most recently completed the Executive Leadership Program in Academic Medicine Program (Drexel University) in July 2021.
Oliver Mayer is a playwright, poet, librettist, and essayist. Since 2003, he has been a professor at USC’s School of Dramatic Arts, where he also serves as Associate Dean for Faculty and of Strategic Initiatives. He is also Director of the MFA program in Dramatic Writing. Having previously served on the Academic Senate’s Executive Board, Oliver is glad to return to university governance.
Administrative Vice-President (two-year term; choose one)
Christine E. Haddad is a Clinical Associate Professor at the Marshall School of Business. She specializes in Negotiations, Decision-Making, and Strategy and has taught these topics at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. She is the recipient of Marshall’s prestigious Douglas Basil Award for exemplary contributions to teaching and is a three-time winner of Marshall’s Golden Apple Award and a two-time winner of the Management Department’s Teaching Excellence Award.
As Co-Chair of the Provost/Senate Committee on Teaching and Learning, she has advocated for a variety of issues including rewarding excellent teaching and faculty salary equity. She also serves on the University Committee on Curriculum and chairs the Management undergraduate curriculum committee where she helped launch a new business degree, a new management minor and seven new electives. She is the recipient of multiple service awards.
Her research has focused on the role of trust and learning in deal-making. As a management consultant, she has advised various businesses and leading nonprofits including Habitat for Humanity.
LaVonna Blair Lewis joined the USC faculty in 1996 from Rice University where she received her PhD in Political Science. Dr. Lewis’s areas of research and professional interests consistently focus on cultural competency and health equity, both targeting the health status and health care needs of underrepresented groups. In all arenas, she is concerned with lifting up authentic voices as a means to generate honest dialogue and engagement as catalysts for change.
At-Large Member (one-year term; choose up to four)
Sofia Gruskin directs the USC Institute on Inequalities in Global Health (IIGH). Professor Gruskin is Chief of the Disease Prevention, Policy and Global Health Division at the Keck School of Medicine, and Professor of Law and Preventive Medicine at the Gould School of Law. She is highly engaged in university service, and serves as a member of the USC Academic Senate Executive Board, and primary convener of the USC Law & Global Health Collaboration. She has published extensively, including several books, and more than 200 articles and chapters covering a wide range of topics.
Michael Hurlburt is an Associate Professor and the Director of Doctoral Programs and Chair of PhD Program at the Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work. Dr. Hurlburt’s scholarship aims to improve the relationships and emotional health of children and families. Michael has held numerous organizational leadership positions, including as an IRB chair, and treasurer and president of non-profits focused on social work education, and children and families. Michael recently co-chaired a joint Academic Senate/Provost Office task force on enhancing PhD education at USC. He also just concluded six years as Director of Doctoral Programs in Social Work and contributes to doctoral education at a national level.
John Matsusaka is the 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 30+ years. His research focuses on democracy, finance, and governance. 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, launching the World Bachelor in Business and Marshall’s Online MBA. He chaired UCAPT, the Faculty Handbook Committee, and been a member of several other university committees. In 2022-2023 he served as an at-large member of the executive board of the academic senate.
James E. Moore, II – Prior to retirement, Jim specialized in engineering for transportation and other infrastructure systems, working at the interface of engineering and applied social science. My primary research interest was spatial economic impact analysis. My current focus is strengthening the role of merit, due process, equal opportunity, free speech, academic freedom, viewpoint diversity, classically liberal education, and the tenure system in U.S. universities; and supporting libertarianism, free markets, property rights, and limited government in American society.
Clifford Neuman is the Director of the USC Center for Computer Systems Security and faculty in Computer Science at the Viterbi School of Engineering. Dr. Neuman has been a scientist at USC’s Information Science Institute where his research includes Distributed Computer Systems, Computer Security, Critical Infrastructure Protection, Electronic Commerce, and the societal impact of computing. Dr. Neuman is known as the principal designer of the Kerberos authentication system, widely used for network login today.
Lee Olvera is an Associate Professor of Practice in Architecture. He teaches undergraduate and graduate level design studios, research seminars and visual media and color theory courses. He is currently Associate Director of Undergraduate Architecture Programs.
His academic and media studies research explore drawing types that examine landscape imagery as a combination of analytical, botanical and cartographic practices and blend them with experience-based narrative driven pictorial vistas.
His current teaching focuses on the issues of craft and making as an exploration of the return to the value placed on the how, the way and the why designed objects, spaces and buildings are crafted to transcend mere practical function.
Lorraine Turcotte is a Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences (Human and Evolutionary Biology section) in Dornsife College. She is also the Section Head for Human and Evolutionary Biology and the Director of the Metabolic Regulation Lab. She earned her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, her Master’s degree from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and her Bachelor’s degree from McGill University in Canada. Dr Turcotte spends a significant amount of time coordinating the research efforts of her lab which include determining the mechanisms by which inflammation regulates muscle health and performance, and how mitochondrial health impacts muscle performance. To answer these research questions, she has worked collaboratively with research teams at UCLA and at the Naval Health Research Center in San Diego. Work from her lab has been published in over 75 articles and book chapters. As Section Head of the Human and Evolutionary Biology section in Biological Sciences, she speaks for all faculty, staff and students in her section. She has received several awards for mentoring staff, faculty and students at all levels of professional development. Dr. Turcotte has also been in faculty governance via her participation in the development of several white papers for the Academic Senate and the Dornsife Faculty Council.
Miki Turner is the 2022 National Association of Black Journalists Educator of the Year, is currently an associate professor of professional practice at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. An award-winning photojournalist, Turner spent more than 40 years working in the media industry specializing in print, television, radio and web production.
As a sports columnist at the Oakland Tribune, where she became the first Black female to write a regularly featured sports column at a major daily newspaper, Turner made her mark by looking beyond the Xs and Os. After leaving the Bay Area, Turner covered pro tennis, the Pac-10 and Big West conferences and was also a Lakers and Clippers beat writer for The Orange County Register before transitioning to the intersection of pop culture and sports.
Turner has also worked at ESPN as a producer and writer, MSNBC as a columnist, AOL as an on-air personality, the NFL Network as a producer and as the West Coast senior writer for Jet magazine and Ebony.com.
Her work has been published in more than 100 magazines and newspapers and her photography has been exhibited in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Los Angeles and Hampton, Va.; and she has curated exhibitions at USC.
She is the author of two books—the best-selling journey to the woman i’ve come to love and tomorrow, and a 2015 prize winner in photography at Firenze Biennale in Florence, Italy. Most recently she was honored with the Black Women in Film Network Behind the Lens award for her work in journalism; and a 2021 USC faculty mentoring award.
Stefan Zweig received his DDS from the University of Southern California in 1986 and his Certificate in Endodontics from USC in 1992. Dr. Zweig has maintained various faculty positions at USC beginning in 1982. Dr. Zweig is a Past President of several professional organizations, including most recently the American Association of Endodontists. He has served on many committees and on the Board of Directors of the American Association of Endodontists and California Dental Association. Currently, following a 30-year career as a practicing endodontist, Dr. Zweig serves as an Associate Professor of Clinical Dentistry, Department of Endodontics and Periodontics, at the Herman Ostrow School of Dentistry of USC where he has also served as the President of the Dental Faculty Assembly and as a University Academic Senator.