Dr Janet C Rutledge, PhD

Dr. Janet C. Rutledge, PhD, is the Senior Associate Dean of the Graduate School and a faculty member in the Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Department at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), an honors university in Maryland.

Before coming to UMBC she served as the Programme Director for the Graduate Research Fellowship Program at the US National Science Foundation (NSF). Prior positions at NSF include Programme Director in the Division of Engineering Education and Centers, and in the Division of Undergraduate Education.

Formerly she was a faculty member in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Northwestern University outside Chicago, Illinois. Her primary research area is modeling and compensating for the effects of sensorineural hearing loss and other communication disorders. She is the author of numerous journal and conference publications, and holds a patent. She is a co-author of the textbook Communication Systems: An Introduction to Signals and Noise in Electrical Communication.

At UMBC Dr Rutledge is a co-principal investigator for two grants funded by the National Science Foundation and one from the US Council of Graduate Schools. PROMISE: Maryland’s Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (NSF AGEP) is dedicated to the increasing the number and diversity of PhD graduates in the sciences and engineering that go on to academic careers. The NSF ADVANCE grant is for increasing the representation and advancement of women in the academic sciences and engineering careers. UMBC is one of 22 universities participating in the Council of Graduate Schools PhD Completion Project. This project is designed to gather data and evaluate the impact of various intervention strategies toward improving graduation and retention rates.

Dr Rutledge received the BS degree in electrical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Troy, New York) in 1983. She received the MS and PhD in electrical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta, Georgia) in 1984 and 1990, respectively. Dr Rutledge has held leadership positions in several professional societies, including the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and the Acoustical Society of America.

She served on the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) Ad Hoc Committee on Hearing Aid Research (1993-96). She was also a member of the Northwestern University McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science Advisory Council (2000-2003) and the Georgia Tech College of Engineering Advisory Board (1999-2005), and is currently a member of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Board of Trustees (1993-present).