Dawn Rhodes, chief business and finance officer and senior vice president at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, has been awarded the 2026 Distinguished Business Officer Award from the National Association of College and University Business Officers. The award is the organization’s highest annual honor.
Dr. Rhodes’ experience in higher education spans more than three decades. She began her career in academia as the inaugural budget manager for the University of Toledo in Ohio. She progressed through financial leadership roles at the university, and later became a vice president at Savannah State University in Georgia. Dr. Rhodes then served as vice chancellor for finance and administration at what was then Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis before joining the University of Maryland, Baltimore in 2016.
In her current role, Dr. Rhodes oversees the university’s $1.3 billion budget. Over the past decade, she has enhanced transparency for university finances, revitalized the Live Near Your Work program, created several new offices within administration and finance, and hired her division’s first executive director of diversity and inclusion.
Dr. Rhodes is a graduate of the University of Michigan, where she earned her bachelor of business administration degree in accounting. She holds an MBA from the University of Toledo and a doctor of business administration degree from the University of Maryland Global Campus.