MaryJo Benton Lee

Biography

MaryJo Benton Lee is an adjunct faculty member in sociology at South Dakota State University. She also has taught classes (in qualitative research and academic writing) and done research in the People’s Republic of China for the past 20 years, most recently as a Fulbright U.S. scholar to Yunnan University (2016-17). She earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in journalism (with a certificate in East Asian studies) from the University of Maryland and a Ph.D. in sociology (with a minor in Asian studies) from SDSU. She is the author of two books and the editor of a third, all dealing with race, ethnicity and education. She was the co-creator and coordinator of the Flandreau Indian School-SDSU Success Academy, a nationally recognized college preparatory program for American Indian high school students, from 2000 to 2012. As a principal investigator or co-PI, she has raised more than $1 million in grant funding for diversity and inclusion efforts at SDSU. She is a Certified Clinical Sociologist (C.C.S.) and currently holds an evaluation specialist position at SDSU’s Population Health Evaluation Center.