MSU to Name New Building for Lee

STARKVILLE, Miss.–Mississippi State is honoring its 17th president Friday [Oct. 3] with a public ceremony dedicating the J. Charles Lee Agricultural and Biological Engineering Building.

The university program begins at 3 p.m. at the new $11 million structure located on Creelman Street between Dorman Hall and McCarthy Gymnasium.

In addition to Lee, speakers will include President Mark E. Keenum; Greg Bohach, vice president for agriculture, forestry and veterinary medicine; and George Hopper, dean of the colleges of Agriculture and Life Sciences and Forest Resources.

Also open to all, a reception will follow at the location.

Mississippi State is home to the region’s oldest agricultural engineering program and one of the nation’s first in biological engineering. University officials have said the state-of-the-art facility that opened in 2007 enables the 136-year-old land-grant institution to continue setting benchmarks in these fields.

Lee became interim MSU president in January 2002. After a year, he was named permanently to the office by the Board of Trustees, State Institutions of Higher Learning and served until retiring in 2006.

Prior to becoming the chief executive, the North Carolina native had been MSU’s vice president for agriculture, forestry and veterinary medicine since 1999 and, since 2000, dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

He earlier had spent five years on campus as dean of the then-School of Forest Resources and associate director of the Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station. He left in 1983 for Texas A&M University, where he held a number of major administrative positions–among them, vice chancellor for research, planning and continuing education–before returning to Starkville in 1999.

Lee holds bachelor’s and doctoral degrees from North Carolina State University in forest management and forestry/genetics, respectively. He also completed graduate work at Duke University.

Located near the center of campus, the building being named in his honor features three stories and a basement. Funded through state appropriations and private contributions, it houses offices, classrooms and research laboratories, and replaces the smaller Howell Building that still is in service near Humphrey Coliseum.

More than 6,000 square feet of the red-brick structure is dedicated to instruction and research by faculty and staff members of the department of agricultural and biological engineering.

The department offers the state’s only graduate program in biomedical engineering. Students primarily are preparing for medical school, work with biomedical engineering companies and conduct research and development of new renewable energy resources, among other areas. For more, visit www.abe.msstate.edu.