Kyle Peveto

Two summers ago, on a hot, humid day at the LSU AgCenter H. Rouse Caffey Rice Research Station in Crowley, Matt Lee was nervous.

Lee, a tenured sociology professor who spent more than a decade in the administration of the LSU system, was being introduced at the annual rice research field day as the interim LSU vice president for agriculture and dean of the LSU College of Agriculture.

“I remember it like it was yesterday, partly because I was a little terrified, coming in as an outsider and not knowing anybody,” Lee said.

At the event, rice breeders showed off two new varieties to farmers, and scientists addressed the weeds and insects that plague crops in south Louisiana. Lee watched as world-renowned scientists mingled with rice producers and politicians over lunch and tours of the fields.

The field day crystalized the importance of agriculture and the role of the LSU AgCenter and College of Agriculture in the lives of the people of Louisiana.

“These field days are very, very valuable experiences — the community bonding experience,” he said. “And it’s a good way to remind me the importance of the work we’re doing because people are relying on this to feed their families.”

Last year, Lee was permanently named to the post after a committee conducted a nationwide search. Paul Coreil, chancellor of LSU of Alexandria and a longtime AgCenter administrator, led the search committee for Lee’s position. Lee is uniquely prepared for this role, Coreil said.

“He’s not going to be a research scientist,” he said. “He’s not going to be out in the field doing research on soybeans or corn or livestock. He’s got to bring leaders together to find solutions. I think that is where his skill is, really understanding how to communicate very complex issues in a way that people understand them.”

A leader in agriculture

These days Matt Lee never appears nervous. Standing over 6 feet tall and perpetually dressed in an array of smart suits, Lee confidently strides into meetings and enumerates the accomplishments of the AgCenter.

The state cooperative extension service has offices in every parish to help residents with agriculture, youth development, gardening and health. As a $100 million per year operation, LSU agriculture ranks in the top 15 or 20 of university-affiliated agricultural research programs, he tells politicians and agricultural business leaders, and he believes LSU can exceed those numbers and rankings.

“The scope and scale of the research program here is so enormous,” he said. “It’s hard to comprehend.”

Now anchored in his role, the dedication of the agricultural community has been equally impressive.

“Just around the state, those involved in the agricultural industry, how much they care for their communities, how much they care for the state of Louisiana, and how they see the impact in terms of growing food and fiber and fuel for the state and the nation,” Lee said. “It’s just the best group of people I could have imagined meeting.”

The importance of education

Lee was born in Columbus, Nebraska, a small town surrounded by farmland. His father, Jerry Lee, was a community college administrator and served as president of the local branch of the regional community college system.

When he was 11, Matt Lee’s family moved to New York when his father became president of Dutchess Community College in Poughkeepsie.

It’s an understatement to say Lee’s family valued education. His three older sisters all have graduate degrees. Their father earned a doctorate, and their mother went to college at 16 in a time when many women did not pursue a four-year degree.

“We would sit around the kitchen table talking not about where we were going to college, but what we were going to go to graduate school for,” Lee said.

After completing an associate degree at Dutchess, he attended State University of New York at New Paltz, studying philosophy and developing an interest in the ancient Greeks and medieval thought.

While philosophy was his “first love,” he took sociology courses to round out his studies and became fascinated with the discipline’s big questions — social mobility and stratification and social problems such as crime and health — and added a second major in sociology. He delved further into the social sciences in graduate school, but he did it without a well-defined plan.

“I just knew I really enjoyed studying really interesting problems,” Lee said. “And because my father was a community college administrator, he was very comfortable with me not having much of a plan other than just to be an educated person.”

Halfway through Lee’s undergraduate years, his parents retired to Florida, and his father would call and rave about the warm weather. When choosing between graduate schools, Lee considered his father’s advice and moved south. LSU was one of few southern schools with a graduate program in criminology, a top interest of his.

A social scientist

After earning master’s and doctoral degrees at LSU, Lee joined the faculty of Mississippi State University in 1999. By 2004, he was recruited back to LSU to become an associate professor of sociology with tenure.

His work focused on social institutions that helped build social fabric, the institutions, places and connections that create a society or community. With much of his training in criminology, he had an interest in crime and focused on communities in rural areas and outside urban centers, said Tim Slack, a friend and professor in the LSU Department of Sociology.

“One of the things he was really interested in,” Slack said, “was understanding how community structures — local economic and social structures, the kinds of businesses that exist and things like church membership and voluntary organizations — how does the existence of these structures in communities act to buffer criminal activity and violence in particular?”

As a sociologist, Lee taught and published more than 60 scholarly articles. He also served as a scientific adviser for a Baton Rouge violence reduction program. With his success, he sought a new challenge in university administration.

In 2010, Lee became the senior associate vice president for research at LSU. The move into administration did not surprise colleagues, Slack said.

“He’s always had demonstrable leadership qualities,” he said. “He was always able to articulate visions and share ideas and work with groups of people to surface ideas and come to consensus with a group of people.”

In 2015, Lee moved to the office of the provost, which oversees academic affairs for LSU and consults on academic concerns across the LSU system. He became vice provost for academic programs and support services, and in July 2021 was named the interim executive vice president and provost.

After the provost position was filled following a nationwide search, Lee was invited by LSU President William F. Tate IV to fill the role as interim vice president for agriculture in 2022.

Moving from academia into the administration was never intimidating, Lee said. As vice president for agriculture, he averages 45 meetings per week, Lee said, but he understood the level of commitment the role required since he was a child.

“It’s a lifestyle. It’s not a 40-hour-per-week job, and you’re not punching a clock,” he said. “I had learned so much from my father growing up.”

Now, he reflects regularly on lessons he learned directly and indirectly from his father.

“I had a built-in mentor through the whole early part of my career before he passed,” Lee said. “While I don’t intentionally follow in his footsteps, my sisters remind me every day that I remind them of dad, and I think they mean it in a complimentary way.”

Improving lives

Lee’s sociological background provides a helpful lens through which to view much of the work of the AgCenter. Churches and schools establish the threads that create social fabric, but so do 4-H clubs, agricultural field days and crop meetings.

“Our tagline is innovate, educate, improve lives,” Lee said, reflecting on longstanding AgCenter messaging. “And the ‘improve lives’ thing is an outcome of giving people the tools to have a strong community infrastructure that allows them to be self-sufficient to solve problems at the local level and to give them tools that they need to maintain strong social fabric. Because relying on outsiders doesn’t really do it.”

Lee sees AgCenter research priorities as a way of fulfilling the institutional promise, one step in improving the “socioeconomic well-being of local communities.”

“Research translates into improving lives one way or another, either through creating more yield per acre or creating healthier animals,” he said.

Since he joined the AgCenter, the breadth of the institution’s reach has stunned him. Initially, he became fascinated with the strength of the plant variety development and breeding programs for rice, sugarcane, sweet potatoes and other important crops. In June he was bragging about the ways faculty reach communities through 4-H and FFA and Seeds to Success: The Louisiana Farm to School Program.

“It gets exhausting being surprised by it all the time,” he said.

Two years after he became a leader of the LSU AgCenter and College of Agriculture, Lee has become an enthusiastic booster for the state’s agricultural enterprise.

“It has by far been the most interesting experience of my professional career,” he said. “It’s just so much fun.”

6 Key Facts for Knowing Matt Lee

Call him Matt. Just Matt.

“Matt has been at the top of his game in terms of scholarship, and he's held key roles in the university, but at the same time, he's been able to maintain being a regular guy,” said Tim Slack, a friend and former colleague in the LSU Department of Sociology.

Lee always introduces himself the same way: “I go by Matt,” he says. “Not doctor.”

He loves Louisiana.

Lee grew up in the north and followed his parents south.

“When I got here, the climate was very nice, but I just as much fell for the culture as well,” he said. “It’s a very celebratory place.”

He and his wife love Mardi Gras balls — they attend five to 10 a year — as well as the festivals and food of Louisiana.

“You can literally go from one parish to the next, and it feels like you’re going to a different country,” Lee says. “And that’s just very fascinating.”

He has a tire guy.

Lee is a car fanatic. He drives a 2017 Dodge Challenger, specifically the RT 392 Scat Pack — a beast with 485 horsepower. But he’s not a speeder. He hasn’t gotten a ticket in several years.

“I usually just burn through tires,” he says. “That’s really what I prefer to do. ... If you have a fast car, you have to do something with it.”

Lee is a favorite customer of a tire shop on Burbank Drive in Baton Rouge.

Two books have shaped his career.

For years, Lee has studied “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu, an ancient collection of military wisdom by a Chinese general. He enjoys its explanation of strategy.

“While so much of it pertains to war, much of life involves strategy or professional accomplishment,” he says. “So you have to know how to read in between the lines.”

The book contains meaningful insights, Lee said. “You have to know your terrain better than your enemy does,” or “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” he said.

Recently, Lee has spent more time with a 1936 classic, Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People.”

“It just gives you a set of tools that really elevates your ability to interact with people in a more sophisticated way,” Lee says.

He is a diehard metalhead.

As a teenager in upstate New York, Lee was exposed to two types of music piping from his friends’ boomboxes: hip hop and heavy metal. He loved both but grew enamored with bands that became known as thrash metal. His favorites were Slayer, a highly influential band that is retiring soon; Megadeath; Anthrax; and Metallica, which Lee calls the “greatest band ever in history.”

You’ll know Lee’s laptop when you see it around the AgCenter. It’s the one with a Slayer sticker.

Family matters.

For nine years Lee has been married to Mimi Singer Lee, a human resources executive who had a long career at LSU before moving into the private sector.

“I think his most important role is being a dad,” said Slack, his former colleague and friend.

Matt Lee’s son, Daniel, is a finance major at LSU, and his other son, Andrew, attends University High School in Baton Rouge. His stepdaughter, Anna Kate, is a senior at University High, and his stepson, Mason, is in the ninth grade at U-High.

Video by Olivia McClure

Matt Lee has served as the LSU vice president for agriculture and dean of the LSU College of Agriculture since the summer of 2022. Photo by Annabelle Lang

Sabrina Taylor, left, a professor in the LSU AgCenter School of Renewable Natural Resources, shares a light moment with school director Allen Rutherford, center, and interim LSU Vice President for Agriculture Matt Lee, right, during a tour of her lab Dec. 5, 2022. Photo by Olivia McClure