Serge Lee

Arrived in the United States at 18 years old (May 1979) as a young Hmong political refugee from the Secret War in Laos but very passionate about school, volunteer work, and human relations, Dr. Serge Lee has achieved the American dream. Started to learn English at age 18, did his first volunteer work at the Utah State Prison in Orem at age 20, and countless other social, cultural, and educational activities locally, nationally, and internationally in past 42 years, Dr. Lee has become an “exceptional naturalized American citizen.”

Dr. Lee is an expert on minority behavioral health, child maltreatment, immigration and refugee experiences, research and statistics, grant proposal writing, and international social work. Dr. Lee has over 20 years of extensive knowledge in international social work to China, Thailand and Vietnam and is the first Hmong in the world to be awarded the Fulbright Senior Specialist (2007) and the Fulbright Distinguished Chair (2019-2020). Dr. Lee has written more than 20 peer-reviewed papers, monographs, book chapters, white papers, and is the author of: Statistics for social work with SPSS (2022); From earth to elite: The memoir of Dr. Serge Lee (August 2020); and Statistics for international social work and other behavioral sciences (February 2016).

Dr. Serge Lee served as a statistics and research professor in the Department of Social Work at California State University, Fresno from 1993-1999 and currently teaching research and statistics in the Division of Social Work at California State University, Sacramento. He has a BS in International Economics from the University of Utah, an MSW from California State University, Sacramento, and the PhD from the School of Social Welfare at the University of Washington, Seattle.