A Message to the USC Community
June 1, 2015
I am pleased to announce the following changes in the Office of the Provost.
Effective July 1, Professor Elizabeth Graddy will join the office as vice provost for academic and faculty affairs. Reporting to Dr. Graddy will be the offices of Faculty Affairs, Academic Affairs, Undergraduate Programs, and the Graduate School. She will advise me on faculty appointments, promotions, development, tenure, salaries, and policies. She will also be responsible for advancing excellence and innovation in the undergraduate curriculum and enhancing the vibrancy of the undergraduate experience, accelerating our progress on the path to greater distinction in the Ph.D. programs and our flagship graduate professional degrees, and increasing the stature of our online programs and postdoctoral programs. Dr. Graddy will serve as the Provost’s representative on the University Committee on Academic Review and then work with deans, chairs, and faculty to advance programs appropriately informed by the resulting recommendations.
Mark Todd will serve as vice provost for academic operations, effective today. Dr. Todd will oversee the finance and business functions for the Office of the Provost, capital projects and space management for the university, organizational reviews for academic support operations, and the coordination of strategic planning and resource allocation modeling. He will serve on the USC University Hospital and Norris Cancer Hospital Governing Boards and the USC Care Board and will advise me on clinical operations and budgeting related to Keck Medicine of USC.
In addition, I have created three new positions in my cabinet to work on strategic priorities of the university. These include initiatives related to faculty and student access and opportunity, educational value and affordability, wicked problems, and global impact. Effective July 1, Professor Daniela Bleichmar will serve as associate provost for faculty and student initiatives in the arts and humanities, Professor Camille Rich will serve as associate provost for faculty and student initiatives in the social sciences, and Professor Larissa Rodríguez will serve as associate provost for faculty and student initiatives in health and STEM.
Please join me in welcoming Elizabeth, Mark, Daniela, Camille, and Larissa to the Office of the Provost and thanking them for taking on these important roles. Brief biographies of the new members of my cabinet can be found at the end of this memo.
I also want to let you know that Rob Cooper has decided to step down from his position as vice provost for academic operations and strategy, effective June 30. He will, however, continue to serve the university in his new role as special advisor to me.
Dr. Cooper has dedicated his career to the university for over 30 years. Before he joined the Office of the Provost, he served as the university’s budget director and associate senior vice president and as an associate comptroller. In these capacities he provided leadership in resource planning, financial management, and reporting. It is hard to overstate the impact Dr. Cooper has had on the university, and I am pleased to know that he will continue to help make this university the best it can be.
Beth Meyerowitz has also shared her decision to step down from running the Office of Faculty Affairs, effective June 30. She has decided to recommit to her work as a professor of psychology and a leading researcher on trauma.
Dr. Meyerowitz has been a vital part of the Office of the Provost serving as vice provost for faculty affairs and vice provost for faculty and programmatic development. In these roles, she oversaw tenure and promotion, implemented a new faculty retirement navigation program, and worked to ensure that faculty were appropriately recognized by their disciplines and professions for their influential scholarly and creative work. She also worked with the deans and faculty to ensure that recommendations from the University Committee on Academic Review were implemented to advance the stature of our Ph.D. and professional graduate programs.
Please join me in thanking Beth and Rob for their hard work and unwavering dedication as key members of the provost’s leadership team.
I would like to recognize the continuing members of my cabinet: Anthony Bailey, vice provost for global initiatives; Ainsley Carry, vice provost for student affairs; Randolph Hall, vice president of research; Katharine Harrington, vice president of admissions and planning; Marty Levine, vice provost and senior advisor to the provost; and Douglas Shook, interim vice provost for information technology services and chief information officer.
I would also like to acknowledge the other members of the Office of the Provost who will be continuing in their present roles: Hortensia Amaro, associate vice provost for community research initiatives; Gene Bickers, vice provost for undergraduate programs; Scott Fraser, director of science initiatives; Sally Pratt, vice provost for graduate programs; Robin Romans, associate vice provost; and Varun Soni, dean of religious life.
On behalf of the entire team in the Office of the Provost, I commit to redoubling our efforts to create a vibrant intellectual environment that will allow our faculty and students to thrive.
cc: C. L. Max Nikias
Robert Abeles
Al Checcio
Todd Dickey
Tom Jackiewicz
Tom Sayles
Carol Mauch Amir
John Silvester
Ginger Clark
Elizabeth Graddy
Elizabeth Graddy holds the Jeffrey J. Miller Chair in Government, Business, and the Economy and is Professor of Public Policy in the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy. Since 2010, she has served as the Vice Dean of the Price School, and before that as the Senior Associate Dean of Faculty and Academic Affairs. Dr. Graddy received her Ph.D. in Public Policy Analysis from Carnegie-Mellon University. Her expertise is in institutional economics, public and nonprofit organizations, and public policy analysis. Her research focuses on the role of private organizations in serving the public interest, how industry and organizational structure affect performance, and how information asymmetry and uncertainty affect institutional design and effectiveness. This work has led to over 50 scholarly publications. Her current work is addressing public-private service delivery outcomes and the development of Asian foundations. She is currently a co-editor of the Journal of Policy Analysis & Management and on the editorial board of the Policy Studies Journal. She is a past public member of the California State Board of Podiatric Medicine. Dr. Graddy is the recipient of several teaching awards at USC.
Mark Todd
Mark Todd has served as associate provost for academic affairs for the past four years. In this role, he oversaw online programs, the USC summer high school program, and graduate program reviews. He provided leadership integral to creating new programs for veterans and their families and establishing an Office of Postdoctoral Affairs. He also served as the Provost’s liaison to the University Committee on Curriculum and the Provost’s Oversight Committee on Athletic Academic Affairs. Before becoming associate provost, Mark worked in the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences as associate dean for graduate programs, and as assistant dean for student services in the USC Graduate School. Mark received his Ph.D. in Kinesiology from USC.
Daniela Bleichmar
Daniela Bleichmar is Associate Professor of Art History and History, director of the Visual Studies Graduate Certificate program, and a member of the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute (EMSI) and Visual Studies Research Institute (VSRI). She received a B.A. from Harvard University and a Ph.D. from Princeton University, and has held fellowships from the Mellon Foundation, the Getty Foundation, and the Getty Research Institute. Her research and teaching address the history of science and visual culture in colonial Latin America and early modern Europe, focusing particularly on the histories of knowledge production, cultural contact and exchange, collecting and display, and books and prints. She is the author of the prize-winning monograph Visible Empire: Botanical Expeditions and Visual Culture in the Hispanic Enlightenment (2012) and an editor of Collecting Across Cultures: Material Exchanges in the Early Modern Atlantic World (2011), Science in the Spanish and Portuguese Empires, 1500–1800 (2009), and Objects in Motion in the Early Modern World (2015). She is currently writing a book entitled The Itinerant Lives of Painted Books: Mexican Codices and Transatlantic Knowledge in the Early Modern World, and co-curating an exhibition, Visual Voyages: Images of Latin American Nature from Columbus to Darwin, which will open at The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens in 2017.
Camille Rich
Camille Rich joined the USC Gould School of Law faculty in the fall of 2007 following five years of private practice where she worked primarily on general commercial litigation and internal investigations. Her research and teaching interests include constitutional law, feminist legal theory, legal ethics, employment discrimination, and children and the law. Prior to entering private practice, Professor Rich clerked in the Southern District of New York for District Judge Robert L. Carter and on the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals for Circuit Judge Rosemary Barkett. Professor Rich has also worked on various pro bono matters involving Title VII retaliation claims and disability rights and was awarded the Legal Aid Society Pro Bono Award in recognition of her work on female prisoners’ rights. Professor Rich graduated from Yale Law School and was a senior editor on the Yale Law Journal and the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism. She was awarded a postgraduate research fellowship at Yale Law School, during which she began her research on ways that antidiscrimination laws can better accommodate the shifting contingent nature of racial and ethnic identity.
Larissa Rodríguez
Dr. Larissa Rodríguez is a Professor of Urology and the director of Female Pelvic Medicine and Reconstructive Surgery (FPMRS) at the Keck Medicine of USC-Beverly Hills clinic. She is also vice chair of academics for the USC Institute of Urology and director of the FPMRS Fellowship at the Keck School of Medicine. Dr. Rodríguez is an established surgeon-scientist with extensive expertise in the field of female pelvic and reconstructive surgery in urology. An awarded researcher, she is nationally and internationally recognized for her work in the field of stem cell research and tissue engineering of the urinary tract and in animal models of lower urinary tract dysfunction. She has focused some of her clinical and outcomes research on the etiology and treatment of urinary incontinence and vaginal prolapse, and has developed patented techniques and innovative surgical strategies to provide treatment in areas such as stress incontinence and reconstruction of the bladder and lower urinary tract. She has served on numerous NIH study sections and national and international organizations. She earned a B.S. in Mathematics from MIT and her M.D. from Stanford University School of Medicine.