Sarah B. Lee, PHD

mississippi state university

assistant DEPARTMENT HEAD & ASSOCIATE CLINICAL PROFESSOR

COLUMBUS, MS

www.sarahblee.me/

Sarah Lee joined the faculty at Mississippi State University in 2011 after a 19-year career at FedEx Corporation. She is currently serving as faculty and in an appointed administrative role in the computer science (CS) department. Her passion is creating awareness and programs that encourage more women to enter the computing pathway and persist into computing majors and careers. In 2016, she was awarded an NSF INCLUDES grant that is part of a national initiative to increase U.S. leadership in STEM. That project, the Mississippi Alliance for Women in Computing, engages stakeholders to leverage and strengthen existing programs and create new programs in computing for young women.

In 2012, she launched the Mississippi Affiliate Aspirations in Computing award program, in collaboration with the National Center for Women and Information Technology, for girls in grades 9 -12 in the state. Since then, the program has grown by 1000% and multiple young women have been recognized and awarded scholarships through this program both at the state and national level. In 2013, Sarah founded the Bulldog Bytes outreach program that offers informal learning for K-12 girls to introduce them to computer programming and cybersecurity. Bulldog Bytes has engaged more than 1000 K-12 students and over 150 K-12 teachers with CS and cybersecurity learning. Sarah has also sought to encourage students with disabilities on the computing pathway. She co-hosted a computing outreach program in 2018 for learners with low vision or blindness through Bulldog Bytes.

Sarah is developing alternative educational pathways for Mississippi citizens through the Mississippi Coding Academies as a board member and site director. She recently co-founded a national level non-profit program called Last Mile. This program provides short-term funding to young women who are close to completing their computing education, but have encountered financial roadblocks that could prevent them from persisting.