Math professor Jong Pil Lee, 74, dies

Jong Pil Lee, a Korean-born math professor at SUNY Old Westbury who helped establish academic training programs for thousands of metropolitan-area teachers and students, died of a heart attack Monday at his Syosset home. He was 74.

During an academic career that spanned nearly 40 years, Lee accumulated numerous honors including a 2005 Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring. But his greatest passion was the conferences and training workshops he organized to encourage more challenging math instruction in his adopted country.

In Lee's view, this was simply payback for America helping him achieve his boyhood dream of being an educator.

"He was so proud of being a new American," said Aubrey Bonnett, a professor in American studies at SUNY Old Westbury and one of Lee's closest friends. "Yet, he had pride in South Korea, and the progress it made in establishing democracy, and he encouraged us to send faculty members there. There was no conflict between being an American and a Korean."

As a young man from a small Korean town, Lee won a scholarship in 1962 to enroll in a master's-degree program at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. But he couldn't afford the price of a plane ticket to America. Lee explained his problem to an airline office manager in Seoul who initially laughed at him, but eventually issued a ticket on credit.

Lee retold that story last summer when he returned to Bowling Green to deliver a commencement speech.

At Old Westbury, where he joined the faculty in 1973, Lee was a distinguished service professor. In 1986, he founded the Institute of Leadership Development for Teaching Mathematics and Technology, which has trained more than 1,000 teachers in the metropolitan area. A year later, he initiated the annual Long Island Mathematics Conference, which draws more than 500 area math educators each year to the Old Westbury campus.

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Lee's push for academic excellence extended to youngsters as well. In 1992, he set up the Institute of Creative Problem Solving for Gifted and Talented Students. The program provides free Saturday classes in advanced math for intellectually gifted students in grades 5-10 -- modeled after weekend programs in South Korea.

Estie Arkin, a Stony Brook University professor whose daughters won admission to the Saturday classes, remembers Lee as "a breath of fresh air."

Family members also marveled at his tirelessness. As recently as Thanksgiving break, he was at a daughter's house in New Jersey, cleaning up leaves with a rake and ladder he bought nearby.

"He had seemingly endless energy," said the daughter, Lisa Lee of Edison, N.J.

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Lee also is survived by his wife, Myoung Hye Lee of Syosset; a daughter, Karen Lee of Manhattan; a sister, Young Hee Seo of Jackson, Mich., and brothers Jong Pyo Lee and Jong Soon Lee of Jeonju, South Korea.

A memorial service will be held at 8 p.m. Wednesday at Arumdaun Presbyterian Church, 1 Arumdaun St., Bethpage. Burial will be 11 a.m. Thursday in Washington Memorial Park, 855 Canal Rd., Mount Sinai.