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Sarah Lee joined the faculty at the University of Southern Mississippi in an administrative role as Director of the School of Computing Sciences and Computer Engineering in August 2020. This follows nine years at Mississippi State University (MSU) where she served on the faculty and in leadership roles since 2011, including her most recent appointment as Assistant Department Head in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering.

Since leaving a 19-year information technology career at FedEx to return to academia, Sarah has worked to create awareness and programs that encourage more women to enter computing pathways and persist into computing majors and careers. In 2016, she and Dr. Vemitra White were awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) Inclusion Across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science grant (NSF INCLUDES 1649312). Part of a national initiative to increase U.S. leadership in STEM, the Mississippi Alliance for Women in Computing (MSAWC) engages stakeholders throughout the southern US to leverage, strengthen, and create awareness of existing programs and create new programs for young women in computing across Mississippi. Goals of MSAWC include recruiting women to computing pathways, retaining them in computing degree programs, and assisting them with the transition to the workforce.

At FedEx, Sarah held a variety of positions in the information technology division starting in 1992. She managed large software development projects, including a courier route planning system and a customer relationship management system. Awards she received while at FedEx include Information Technology Division Hall of Fame (2000), Shipment Management Systems Hall of Fame (2000), and Corporate Systems Development Hall of Fame (1998). She received leadership endorsement through FedEx's Leadership Evaluation and Awareness Process (LEAP).

While at MSU, she launched multiple programs to increase the participation of females in computing. In 2013, she initiated the Mississippi Affiliate Aspirations in Computing award program, in collaboration with the National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT), for girls in grades 9 -12 in the state. Since then, multiple young women have been recognized and awarded scholarships through this program both at the state and national level. Winners of this program have worked with Sarah and other professionals in the state to offer near-peer outreach programs for girls through NCWIT’s AspireIT program. One of these Aspirations winners, MSU student Rian Walker, collaborated with Lee to establish the Bulldog Bytes summer outreach program for girls in 2013. Currently, Bulldog Bytes programs, funded largely through the National Security Agency’s GenCyber program, are offered each summer for elementary to high school girls to introduce them to computer programming and cybersecurity. Sarah was awarded the highest teaching award for faculty at MSU, the John Grisham Master Teacher Award, in 2020.

Sarah also seeks to encourage students with disabilities on the computing pathway, and has hosted summer interns through the AccessComputing program at the University of Washington and collaborated with The Clovernook Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired to offer a programming workshop for persons with low vision or blindness. In 2015, she was selected by Dow for a Diversity Fellowship through which she mentored MSU engineering students who are members of an underrepresented minority group.

As an active board member for the Mississippi Coding Academies, Sarah works to develop alternative educational pathways for recent high school graduates in addition to persons who want to retool for our increasingly digital economy. She co-founded the Last Mile Education Fund, inspired by a Mississippi student’s personal journey, that removes financial barriers for persons pursuing computing and engineering undergraduate degrees.

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.  

Sarah is a fifth-generation native of Lowndes County, Mississippi. Her hobby is genetic genealogy, and she has helped numerous persons locate family members using DNA results. She is active in the Bernard Romans Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Lowndes County MS Pioneer Society, and is member of the Pace Society of America. She is married to David M. Lee Sr., Esq. and has two children.

Sarah Lee
PHD