The way Damon P. Williams (BSIE 02) tells it, he was destined to come to Georgia Tech — and destined to return years after he graduated. A Maryland native, Williams was a high school senior when he first considered engineering for his college major. This meant, he reflected in a recent interview, choosing between the “two best engineering schools in the country: northward to MIT and southward to Georgia Tech.”

It was 1998, two short years after the Centennial Olympic Games in Atlanta, and Georgia Tech’s campus had been spiffed up to welcome the world. Williams remembered touring the Institute, seeing the brand-new dorms and swimming pool, and becoming enamored with the campus. “Georgia Tech was where I wanted to go,” he said. And industrial engineering was a natural fit, because he’s always been the type of person interested in solving problems and improving on solutions.

While an undergraduate student at the Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering (ISyE), he completed two co-ops for a company that manufactured cell phones. Williams’ co-op experiences were enlightening, to say the least, as he became disheartened by the company’s “get it done as fast as possible” approach to solving problems, which favored employees who came up with quick solutions, regardless of whether the solutions were the right ones.

These experiences eventually led Williams to the realization that he wanted to stay in academia. After graduating from Tech, he went on to the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, for his M.S. and Ph.D. in industrial engineering.

In Michigan, Williams’ career path took what some might consider to be an unusual turn: In 2006, while working on his Ph.D., he entered the Christian ministry. After Williams finished his dissertation, his pastor told him it was time for him to go to seminary.

What brought Williams back to Atlanta is ultimately what brought him back to ISyE, where he is now a lecturer and advisor in the academic office. He enrolled in a small Presbyterian seminary, Columbia Theological Seminary, in Decatur, Georgia. After his experiences with two large universities — Tech and Michigan — for his industrial engineering degrees, Williams was looking for a program that could offer an intimate community.

Seminary demanded skills that William hadn’t used since early in his undergraduate career. “My brain is wired for math and science,” he said, laughing. “Seminary was a lot of group work, a lot of reading, a lot of writing. I hadn’t written a paper outside my dissertation since English class my freshman year. Doing so much writing was difficult for me, and I decided to do something that would take me back to my Ph.D.”

Williams reached out to then-ISyE School Chair Chip White (now the Schneider National Chair in Transportation and Logistics), who had also been a professor at Michigan during William’s time there, to find out if there were any teaching opportunities within the School. White directed him to Chen Zhou, the associate chair for undergraduate studies, who immediately contacted Williams about teaching. The School was beginning to admit a larger number of ISyE majors, and as a result, needed to hire additional lecturers.

Williams agreed to teach two ISyE undergraduate courses, took a part-time post-doctoral appointment with Tech’s then-Center for Enhancement of Teaching and Learning (CETL), and continued with his seminary studies until he graduated with his master’s degree in divinity in 2012. “I like my plate to be full,” Williams said.

As Williams was about to graduate from Columbia, the pastor of his Atlanta church asked him, “Do you think you’re ready to lead a church?”

“Because I was a good Baptist associate minister,” Williams remembered, “I did as I was told and applied for the senior pastoral position at Providence Missionary Baptist Church,” which is a large, historic African American church in southwest Atlanta.