Dr. Laura Sams Haynes, faculty and Director of the Office of Outreach in ECE, is deeply committed to the mission of access and advancement through higher education.  Highly collaborative, Laura partners with other units at GA Tech, such as Mechanical Engineering (ME), CEISMC, and CEED and has launched Design.Thinking@ECE.GT 2023 summer experience for high school students; GT PRIME 2024 summer camp for middle school students in collaboration with ME and CEISMC; and co-chaired the IEEE-sponsored 2024 Black Issues in Computing Education (BICE) Symposium, hosted in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. 

Previously, Laura served as the Director of Graduate Student Assessment and Retention in the Office of Graduate Studies at Clark Atlanta University, where she directed graduate student services for over 700 graduate students. Prior to that, Laura administered the Southern Regional Education Board’s (SREB) Doctoral Scholars Fellowship Program. A former English professor, Laura holds an English BA (Florida State University), an English MA (Clark Atlanta University), and an English PhD (Louisiana State University).