Profile
Sarah Lee has served as the Director of the School of Computing Sciences and Computer Engineering at The University of Southern Mississippi since August 2020. This follows nine years at Mississippi State University (MSU) where, as Assistant Department Head, she provided leadership to cybersecurity course and curriculum development and K-12 outreach programs.
Following a 19-year career at FedEx Corporation, Sarah entered academia in 2011 with a passion to encourage more women to enter computing pathways and persist into computing education and careers. In 2016, she was awarded a National Science Foundation grant (NSF INCLUDES 1649312) to establish a collective alliance in Mississippi to engage stakeholders to leverage and strengthen existing programs and create new programs to broaden participation in computing. Sarah works to develop alternative educational pathways for Mississippi residents to upskill and increase their earning potential in higher wage tech jobs, and she recently launched Cyber4Work, a collaborative project with the nonprofit Mississippi Coding Academies, through which USM is delivering cybersecurity skills training to Mississippi residents.
In 2020, Sarah received the highest teaching award for faculty at MSU, the John Grisham Master Teacher Award. She was recognized by the Mississippi Business Journal’s Top in Tech program in 2019 for her work to broaden participation in computing through workforce development.
Sarah holds a BS in Business Administration and Computer Information Systems from the Mississippi University for Women and a master’s degree in computer science from MSU. She earned her PhD in computer science from the University of Memphis.
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