Judith Olson receives honorary Doctor of Science from Northwestern University

Judith Olson, emerita professor at University of Michigan School of Information (UMSI), received an honorary doctorate at the 2022 commencement ceremony at Northwestern University. 

Olson graduated from Northwestern in 1965 with an undergraduate degree in experimental psychology. She earned master’s and doctorate degrees in cognitive psychology from the University of Michigan in 1969. 

In 1970, Olson joined the U-M faculty. She held academic appointments in the department of psychology and at the business school before becoming a charter faculty member of the School of Information in 1996. While at UMSI, she also served as associate dean of academic affairs. 

In 2008, she left UMSI for a position in the Informatics department at the University of California, Irvine. 

She is a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and holds a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Special Interest Group in Computer Human Interaction, along with her husband Gary Olson. In 2011 she received the ACM Athena Lecturer Award, the equivalent of Woman of the Year in Computer Science.

Olson was also elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2018. She was recognized for her leadership, technical innovations and development of systems that support collaborative work at a distance.

— Sarah Derouin, UMSI public relations specialist

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