May 6, 2025
The light shines on Danielle Hammer, an instructor in SOU's First Year Seminar program, in the latest episode of the Faculty & Staff Spotlight podcast.
Hammer talks about her upbringing – raised by a single mother and unhoused at times – and then finding her footing in community college before transferring to SOU and earning bachelor's degrees in English and Anthropology. She was a McNair Scholar at SOU, which set the stage for graduate studies, then she returned to teach at SOU after earning her Ph.D. in Literature at University of California, San Diego.
She teaches writing courses and is coordinator of SOU's Bridge Program, which serves first-year students from under-represented populations. Her academic fascination is the representations of madness and haunting in Irish literature – a theme that she continues in her Purposeful Learning Seminar course, Unsolved Mysteries.
Hammer says she learned to trust and rely upon faculty members and her peers when researching topics as an undergrad, "before 'Googling' was a verb."
Hammer is interviewed in this 11th installment of "Faculty & Staff Spotlight," an SOU News podcast series in which a student multi-media host in SOU's Office of Communications shines a light on SOU faculty and staff members who make an impact on students and their campus community. This year's podcast host is SOU freshman Hailey Demarest, of Wolf Creek, Oregon.