Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School
Janet C. Rutledge is currently serving as the Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). She is also a faculty member in the Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Department. Prior positions in the Graduate School include Associate Dean, Senior Associate Dean and Interim Vice Provost for Graduate Education. Before coming to UMBC she was the program director for the Graduate Research Fellowships Program at the National Science Foundation (NSF). In her prior positions at NSF she served as a program director in the Division of Engineering Education and Centers and the Division of Undergraduate Education. She also chaired the NSF-wide coordinating committee for the Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program. Formerly she was on the faculty in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at Northwestern University with an affiliate appointment in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders.
Under Dr. Rutledge’s leadership, the Graduate School at UMBC manages the full “lifecycle” of a graduate student from recruitment and admissions to progressions and graduation. The Graduate School has transitioned to a nearly paperless system for processing admissions applications, and they are in the process of transitioning their progressions and graduation systems. During her tenure she created the graduate student development unit that manages their diversity, retention, and completion activities. Their activities have been supported by external grants such as the NSF Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) and LSAMP Bridge to the Doctorate, both phases of the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) PhD Completion Project, the CGS Doctoral Initiative on Minority Attrition and Completion, and the TIAA-CREF/CGS Enhancing Student Financial Education project. She was instrumental in UMBC’s receiving recognition by the CGS and Peterson’s for “Innovation in Promoting an Inclusive Graduate Community.” The graduate student development unit has recently expanded to include postdoctoral affairs.
Dr. Rutledge received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She received the M.S. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology. 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, an undergraduate textbook, and holds a patent. She has served as principal investigator or co-principal investigator on over $20 million dollars in grant funding in support of research and graduate education, mostly from federal agencies and private foundations. In addition to grants previously mentioned, she also served as a co-PI for the NSF ADVANCE Institutional Transformation grant and for the I3 grant on Evaluation, Integration and Institutionalization of Initiatives to Enhance STEM Student Success. Among her honors and accomplishments, Rutledge has served as a Trustee of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute for more than 25 years, and as an ABET engineering program evaluator for the IEEE and the Biomedical Engineering Society. Rutledge serves on the Council of Graduate Schools Board of Directors, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Minority Ph.D. Program Advisory Committee, and is chair-elect of the GRE Board. She is Chair of the Board of Trustees at the Barrie School, (an independent school serving grades PK-12).