Written By Zoe Elledge

For most Yellow Jacket students, Georgia Tech was a temporary home. They spent four or more years on campus and left. Some never returned. Others have made a regular pilgrimage back to Atlanta, sometimes coinciding with Homecoming.

And then there are alumni who made Georgia Tech a home for a second time, returning after graduation as a faculty or staff member.

Nearly a thousand current faculty and staff members hold Georgia Tech degrees. In the College of Engineering, they include the dean, Raheem Beyah, who received his master’s and Ph.D. degrees in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE).

His Double Jacket status pales in comparison to some of his peers. Sixteen College faculty boast three of more Georgia Tech diplomas. The group spans seven of the eight schools, with research fields that include drones, signal processing, and chemical behaviors of soils.

Why did they come back to Georgia Tech — or in a few cases, why did they never leave? Why is campus a special place for them? As we prepare for Homecoming 2021, these longtime Jackets, including ECE Professor James Stevenson Kenney, reflect on a lifetime at Tech.

Read more about Kenney and his fellow alumni