STARKVILLE – An academic note, if you will, after the biggest college football weekend in Mississippi that I can recall. And while this isn’t as sexy as one of our universities hosting Katy Perry or Tim Tebow, it’s heady stuff.
Mississippi State’s iconic capstone building – symbolic of this state’s flagship land-grant research university – is called Lee Hall and was named after founding university president Stephen D. Lee.
The beaux arts building was constructed in 1909, survived a devastating 1948 fire, and was just reopened after a major restoration and renovation. Lee Hall is the historic seat the MSU administration and after the recent construction, that’s again true.
Sid Salter
But on the eve of MSU’s game with Texas A&M, with the cheers of the SEC Nation television almost drowning out the proceedings, a building on the MSU campus was dedicated to another former MSU president named Lee.
On that point, there was applause from Bulldogs and Aggies alike on the day before the game, because J. Charles Lee served both universities with great distinction.
On the day after the higher education leader celebrated his 75th birthday, MSU on Friday dedicated the J. Charles Lee Agricultural and Biological Engineering Building. The $11 million building, opened in 2007 while Lee was serving as MSU’s 17th president, houses offices, classrooms and research laboratories.
MSU’s Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering is Mississippi’s only graduate program in biomedical engineering. Students in the department primarily are preparing for medical school, work with biomedical engineering companies and or conducting research and development of new renewable energy resources, among many other areas.
Lee was named interim president of MSU in 2002. A year later, he was named to full presidential status by the state College Board. He led MSU until his 2006 retirement. Prior to becoming MSU’s chief executive, Lee served as MSU’s vice president for agriculture, forestry and veterinary medicine since and dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
The North Carolina native spent five years at MSU as dean of the then-School of Forest Resources and associate director of the Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station. He left MSU 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.
The fact that Charles Lee has a transformative career in higher education that left tangible legacies on the campuses of both Mississippi State and Texas A&M should be enough – and in fact, it was the driving force behind the decision to name the MSU building in his honor.
But across the Southeastern Conference footprint, Charles Lee is known for another reason. Working with former MSU athletics director Larry Templeton, Lee had the courage to hire Sylvester Croom as the SEC’s first African-American football coach.
It was a bold and progressive decision. The choice made by Lee and Templeton put Mississippi State on the cutting edge of diversity in the Southeastern Conference and across the nation. It put Mississippi in the headlines nationally as the state that broke the color barrier for head coaches in the nation’s best known and toughest football conference.
A decade after Lee’s support of hiring Croom, five African-American head football coaches have had the opportunity to lead SEC football programs. The novelty, if you will, of race has fallen by the wayside. Coaching and recruiting ability is the measure now, along the wins and losses.
Charles Lee had a great hand in bringing about the change. It’s a footnote in Mississippi and national history that should be remembered along with his namesake building at MSU.
Sid Salter is a syndicated columnist. Contact him at 601-507-8004 or sidsalter@sidsalter.com.