I have an album of photos on my iPad that isn't among my iPhoto files, but when I sync the two devices the album isn't copied onto my laptop. Is there something I should do differently?

iPhoto won't see albums that you've created in the Photos app on your iPad, nor photos that were synced to the app from a computer - it will only see the photos/videos that are in the Camera Roll album and, if you've used the camera connection kit, photos/video in the Imported Photos & Videos album.

If you want to copy photos from a particular album on your iPad then there are iPad apps such as Simple Transfer that let you select the photos in an album and copy them to your computer via your wifi-network.