Danielle McElwain serves as the Research Development Manager for the University of South Carolina (USC), Office of Research and Health Sciences. Her primary responsibility is to facilitate and update the Gamecock Research Administrators Network and Training (GRANT) certificate training program which consists of 20 courses (11 required basic research administration competencies, and 9 elective advanced topics). Participant selection of any of two of elective GRANT courses allows tailoring the program to his/her specific research administration responsibilities. In addition, Danielle has added e-learning courses to the GRANT curriculum-- the first in January 2007.

Danielle also assists her research development colleagues in the facilitation of university-wide collaborative multi-million dollar multidisciplinary federal research proposals. In this role, she supports research teams' proposal development -related preliminary meetings, collaborator identification, partnership development, timeline creation, section organization, submission coordination, and sponsor interaction.

During her tenure at USC, Danielle has earned her national Certified Research Administrator Certification (CRA) from the Research Administrators Certificate Council and presented at several national and regional National Council of University Research Administrators (NCURA) conferences. She has also served on the Planning Committee for the 2009 Region III NCURA meeting and is currently a member of the Evaluation Subcommittee of the Professional Development Committee for NCURA

Before joining USC, Danielle was employed with Murray State University in Murray, Kentucky where she also earned a Bachelor of Science in Finance and a Masters in Business Administration. During her five-year tenure there in Sponsored Programs, she managed electronic information and databases, searched for funding opportunities, performed pre-award proposal reviews and post award grants management, and held departmental administration responsibilities.