Lake R. Neel, 1907 UT agriculture graduate, edited the UT Farmer while a student and was editor in chief of the 1907 Volunteer. After graduation he spent a year working on his father’s farm and then returned to UT in 1908 to do graduate work in agronomy, while holding a teaching fellowship in zoology. In the spring of 1909, he began doing fieldwork for the Agricultural Experiment Station and writing about his work for the Southern Agriculturist. He was for five years an assistant in cooperative farm experiments in Middle Tennessee and then left UT to devote full time to the editorship of the Southern Agriculturist.
In 1916 Neel returned to UT as the first general secretary of the UT Alumni Association, establishing its first office in Science Hall. He managed the first homecoming organized by the Alumni Association (1916) and wrote and edited the Alumnus, beginning with its January 1917 inaugural issue.
Discouraged by the slow trickle of alumni who joined the association (and paid their $2 dues), Neel resigned in 1917 to rejoin the staff of the Southern Agriculturist and to develop his land. He returned to the employ of UT in 1922 as superintendent of the Middle Tennessee Agricultural Experiment Station at Spring Hill.
In 1937 Clemson College (now Clemson University) conferred upon him (and C. E. Brehm, in the same ceremony) the honorary DSc degree. Neel retired from UT in 1946 but continued working for the Southern Agriculturist and Farm and Ranch well into his eighties.