This week’s professor spotlight goes to: Professor Lee!
This is a new series here on the Raptor’s Nest blog where professors of Rutgers—Camden are put into the limelight. It gives the chance for professors to show students their pathway to success and what they are currently doing on campus. This series is a way to promote our amazing professors and to hopefully help students by showing different avenues of success!
Professor Kwangwon Lee started his college career in South Korea at Suwon University where he majored in genetic engineering. At the time, genetic engineering was very new on the scene and one way Professor Lee was going to do what he wanted to do the most: help people. Suwon University then supported him to go to the United States at Chicago State for a master’s degree in biological sciences. During this degree, he was in a lab where the beginnings of Professor Lee’s love for fungus began, but not as one would expect. Professor Lee grew tired of the sciences because he felt as though he was not helping the people he so badly wanted to. To solve this, he then applied to be a missionary in Michigan. Lee ended up spending a year as a missionary and found out that political science and philosophy was not what he was looking for. He then returned to college to earn his PhD degree from Texas A&M University. From there, he went on to Dartmouth medical school for his postdoctoral training where his love of studying fungi grew even more.
Cornell University was his first job outside of his fellowship where he would be a professor in the microbiology department and plant pathology. However, in 2009 Professor Lee then went from New York to Camden, New Jersey to become a professor in the biology department on our very own campus.
Professor Lee has become the head of the undergraduate biology department while still teaching courses of that nature. He also is able to continue on with his research of fungi. Lee studies fungi, specifically Neurospora, through their circadian rhythms and their reproductive formation. Students are also able to work in his lab or volunteer to discover more about fungi. If students are interested or thinking they might be, Professor Lee does have a dedicated website or students can go to Biology Day which is held on campus each semester. But you might be wondering why Professor Lee decided that Rutgers—Camden was the one place where he wanted to be.
Rutgers—Camden gave him something he’s always wanted: to help others. Our campus gives opportunities to those in need and many more such as first generation college students and other underrepresented groups. He loved this aspect. He could help offer those opportunities to students that wanted to go down the path of science such as being the head of the MARC program. The MARC program is specific to Rutgers—Camden students that offers students a chance to do their own research under the guidance of a professor. This program is able to teach students about experiments and even give them the chance to publish their own work as an undergraduate! To find out more about this amazing program you can visit: https://marc.camden.rutgers.edu/. To find journals of student’s published work you can visit: https://jbs.camden.rutgers.edu/.
At the end of the day, Professor Lee offers advice to all students. One piece of advice being that there is no golden key or set path to being successful in whatever field you choose, but having a mentor can help you along the way to figure out what can be done. With that being said, Professor Lee is a prime example of what success can look like. No matter the path life takes you will find your success.
If any professors or any students that want to recommend a professor for this series can contact LeAnne Hall at lmh291@camden.rutgers.edu.
Written by LeAnne H., a Rutgers—Camden Undergraduate Student and Raptor Ambassador.