Loyola University Maryland welcomes two tenure-track faculty members whose positions are supported by a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation’s Clare Boothe Luce Program, which awarded Loyola $500,000 in 2010 to help create two professorships for women in the sciences. The grant, distributed over the course of five years, made it possible for Loyola to add one faculty member each in its computer science and engineering departments.
Raenita A. Fenner, Ph.D., assistant professor in the department of engineering, is currently teaching Linear Circuit Analysis and Linear Circuit Analysis Lab, and she’ll teach a Signal and Systems course and the Digital Logic Laboratory in spring 2012. Fenner received her M.S. and Ph.D. from Michigan State University after graduating from Morgan State University in 2005. Her research focus is in the area of electromagnetics, including self-structuring antennas and free space material characterization techniques.
Megan Olsen, Ph.D., assistant professor in the department of computer science, is currently teaching Computer Science I and Web Programming. Next semester she’ll teach a graduate-level course in Human Computer Interaction along with Computer Science I. Olsen received her M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst after graduating from Virginia Tech in 2005. Her research is inherently interdisciplinary, drawing upon both computational biology and artificial intelligence to develop novel computational models of complex biological systems and tackle artificial intelligence research questions by proposing new algorithms and techniques that are inspired by complex biological systems.
Established in 1989 by the Henry Luce Foundation, the Clare Boothe Luce Program is named for Time Inc. co-founder and editor-in-chief Henry R. Luce’s widow, a playwright, journalist, U.S. ambassador to Italy, and Connecticut’s first female U.S. Representative. Her bequest creating the program is intended to encourage women to enter, study, graduate, and teach in the sciences and engineering. Its grants support undergraduate scholarships, graduate and postdoctoral fellowships, and professorships. At least 50 percent of the awards go to Catholic colleges and universities.
Loyola College, the University’s school of arts and sciences, offers undergraduate majors in biology, chemistry, computer science, engineering, mathematical sciences, physics, and statistics, as well as master’s programs in computer science.
For more information or questions regarding this story, contact Media Relations Manager Nick Alexopulos at nalexopulos@loyola.edu or 410-617-5025.