A Discussion with Matt Lee

Please briefly describe your research. How did you decide to focus on this particular area? How is it important to you?

My scholarly program focused on community development, structure, and the impacts of these factors on various public health outcomes across rural and urban communities. My real-life experiences with work, stratification, health, and crime led me to the field of sociology. After years embedded in that discipline, I came to appreciate that context matters, and individual behavior never occurs in isolation. Rather community structures and cultures profoundly affect and shape individual behaviors, which then drive community growth and stability.  

What impacts have you seen from your research? How have these impacts shaped your career?

My research on rural communities in particular has spawned a significant body of research focusing on community development via civic and non-economic community institutions as a prophylactic for social problems like crime and poor health. Standard economic models of community development emphasize directly boosting income levels and community GDP, as opposed to socializing citizens to carry out dual functions of entrepreneurship and community civic leadership. This framework aligns very well with my current work, much of which supports promoting rural leadership training programs across the life cycle. Youth, college students, and working adults all get leadership training through AgCenter and College of Ag programming that helps stimulate and guide economic development in their home communities.

How does your research relate to LSU’s Scholarship First Agenda? How can education and the human sciences, and the College of Agriculture in particular, impact and serve Louisiana? 

The Scholarship First Agenda focuses on ensuring LSU programming aligns with needs and strengths of the state, as we are the public flagship University system. Everything we do, from agronomy to natural resource conservation to agribusiness, focuses on developing new knowledge and translating it out to end users to enhance economic growth. My own historical research program and that of the College of Agriculture and the AgCenter synchronize on this perfectly and help contribute to the roughly $40 billion dollar agricultural industry in our state.