Andrea Lawrence (professor)

Andrea Lawrence (born October 6, 1946) is a computer scientist and educator, and the first African-American to get a Ph.D. from the Georgia Institute of Technology in computer science.[1] She is an associate professor at Spelman College.[2] In 2014, Lawrence was awarded the SIGCSE award for Lifetime Service to the computer science education community. The award honours an individual with a long history of dedicated volunteer service to the computer science education community.[3]

Lawrence completed her undergraduate degree at Purdue University, her masters at Atlanta University and her Ph.D. at Georgia Institute of Technology. She has been a faculty member at Spelman since 1985 and has taught classes including Computer Science, the Theory of Programming Languages and Computer Human Interactions. She has previously served as Association of Departments of Computer Science/Engineering at Minority Institutions at Spelman.[4]

In 2018, Lawrence was credited by Juan E. Gilbert, the principal investigator for a National Science Foundation-funded programme called "Broadening Participation in Computing", as the reason he finished his own Ph.D. Gilbert said that Lawrence, then chair of the computer science department at Spelman College, motivated him by introducing him to other black computer science doctoral students.[5]