Agronomy: Graduate Studies: Professors

For Linda Lee, being a professor revolves around the students. Her research is important to her, and she enjoys working in the lab, but watching and helping a student mature academically and personally is what has kept her at Purdue for more than 10 years. Dr. Lee enjoys watching students get excited in response to things they learn in her courses, and continually demonstrates applied fundamentals in a real environmental scenario within a safe learning environment.

At the University of Florida, Dr. Lee worked as a part-time research assistant while earning her bachelor's degree in chemistry and as a chemist while earning her master's in environmental engineering sciences. She taught one year each of junior and senior high school at a private school before deciding to work as a chemist and to continue on with her Ph.D. in soil chemistry and contaminant hydrology. Because she wasn’t the traditional student herself, she thinks she can understand the balance required by students who have families and other outside responsibilities.

Dr. Lee is currently involved in the research of environmental fate and transport of pharmaceuticals such as antibiotics, hormones, non-prescription and other prescription drugs. She is also studying the leaching and attenuation by soils of selected constituents of concern (e.g., arsenic, selenium, boron, sulfate) from fly ash (a coal combustion by-product) under various practices, including impoundments, landfills and surface mine reclamation.

Her students receive support from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Department of Energy (DOE), the Purdue Research Foundation (PRF), the Joint Transportation Research Program (JTRP) at Purdue, and the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI).

A scuba diver since she was 15 years old, Dr. Lee still actively explores underwater depths as often as she can. Much of her spare time is spent camping, hiking and canoeing with her 13-year-old son, Joshua, and his friends. Her son James is a Ph.D. student in math and computer science at Berkeley. They share their home with a dog and two cats.