She Saw His Potential. He Carries Her Legacy

Lee Matthews ‘67 is passionate about the power of a mentor: someone in your corner, that person who sees potential and guides you toward it. 

He was, as he puts it, “on the fast track to flunking out” of the University of Tampa in 1964 when he met his person, Janet Baker ‘66, a tall and focused sociology major from New York. 

At the time, Matthews was more interested in the car races at the Plant Field Speedway, a dirt track next to campus that has since become the University’s athletic fields, than his classes. 

But as Matthews and Baker began dating in 1962, she saw his GPA (rather low); looked at what he liked to do academically (not much); and promptly signed him up for summer school, Matthews recalls. 

She encouraged him in things she knew he was already interested in, like history, and began luring him toward academia, a one-credit class at a time. “Music, chorale, barber shop, madrigal singers, readers’ theater, and plays for the next two semesters to get my GPA up,” Matthews said.

Eventually, it worked. 

“I also got interested in academics,” Matthews said. “Who knew?” 

Well, Baker may have had an inkling. 

Three years later, they were married while still students at UTampa. The year after that, he made the Deans’ list and graduated with a degree in psychology and a minor in history. 

“I'm going to claim, correctly or not, that I was the first student she mentored,” Lee said of Baker, who became Janet Matthews Ph.D, an accomplished psychology researcher, mentor and teacher. 

Janet Matthews went on to earn a master’s and doctorate in clinical psychology, taught and earned tenure at Creighton University, and reached professor emerita at Loyola University New Orleans, where she stayed for nearly 40 years. She ushered 57 students through Ph.D programs in her 37-year career, according to her husband.

Today, Lee Matthews, an accomplished psychologist and Ph.D in his own right, promotes the power of mentorship in the name of the person who first showed him how it’s done, his wife.

After Janet died from cancer in 2019, he funded one of the University’s first endowed academic chairs, the first to be named for an alumnus: the Janet R. Matthews Ph.D Endowed Chair of Psychology. The chair is held by Professor Stephen Blessing and is one of three such roles at UTampa, with a focus on undergraduate research, teaching and mentorship. 

And Matthews continues to give back to UTampa. This fall, he is funding a limited-term archivist position at the Macdonald-Kelce Library and donating his late wife’s research papers to the University. The three-year, part-time archivist role will work on projects including arranging, describing, preserving, digitizing and promoting various collections in the library, including materials related to the Janet Matthews endowed psychology chair. 

At a lecture at UTampa commemorating the library gift last month, Matthews gave students a glimpse of who Janet Matthews was: the accomplished academic;  the bride who wore a white suit to her wedding so she could use it again later; the connoisseur who loved a glass of well-balanced wine; the traveler who enjoyed first-class flights.

But even things that seemed indulgent had a purpose.

“She wanted to be able to work on things,” said Lee of the airline upgrades. “Because that way she could fold the table thing down and sit there and write a paper, grade papers, write a book.”

For conferences, she insisted on staying in the concierge, or executive level, of hotels so she had more amenities. 

“Then she could take at least two of her students to breakfast for free by having them come up to wherever the concierge level was,” Matthews said. “It was all in service to the kids.”  

Ever the mentor, Janet Matthews gave her time freely, offered wisdom and guidance often, showed up for those she loved, and continues to inspire her husband’s philanthropy.

After he graduated from UTampa, Lee Matthews became a decorated clinical psychologist and neuropsychologist. He co-authored papers with his wife and served on the faculty in the Department of Psychiatry at LSU Medical Center School of Medicine at New Orleans and at Tulane University Medical Center.  

He was named the 2014 Distinguished Psychologist by the Louisiana Psychological Association and served on the Louisiana State Board of Examiners of Psychologists. 

At 82, Matthews, who lives in Kenner, Louisiana, near New Orleans, still works in psychology. He serves as a consulting psychologist to Southeast Louisiana Medical Associates at Leonard J. Chabert Medical Center and St. Charles Parish Hospital. He co-owns a company that hosts continuing education workshops for psychologists. The firm does about eight workshops a year in Louisiana. 

Matthews mentored young psychologists, too, and received a mentoring award in his wife’s name from the Louisiana Psychological Association in 2020, according to the group.

But even as he carries her legacy forward, Lee is adamant: Janet was first. 

While both were officially “Dr. Matthews," Lee is clear that he is the “second Dr. Matthews,” and Janet was the “first Dr. Matthews,” since she earned her Ph.D. first. The names stuck after both started lecturing at Loyola University in New Orleans, and students had to tell them apart.

“One time a student during class asked me if we were competitive,” Matthews said. “My response: That would be like me bringing a knife to a gunfight.”

Though Janet led, Lee endures, helping others just as she did.