UNIVERSITY ENJOYS DECADE OF GROWTH

Southeast Missouri State University still has its copper-domed Academic Hall, but much of the campus has changed over the past decade.

There are new buildings and new academic programs. The university has boosted enrollment and reached out to the region through the establishment of area higher education centers, interactive television courses and the Internet.

Southeast offers more than 40 Web-based courses. "Students never have to come to the campus. Faculty never see the students," said Art Wallhausen, associate to the president.

"It's really individualized instruction to a large extent," he said of the Internet-delivered courses.

Once viewed as a luxury, computers have become an essential tool of learning at Southeast and other universities.

The Cape Girardeau school has become part of the wired world, with a fiber optic backbone covering the entire campus.

In 1995, 168 of Southeast's faculty didn't have computers. Five years later, every faculty member operated with a computer.

Southeast today has more than 2,200 PCs on the campus network, serving faculty, staff and students. More than 1,000 of the computers are in open and specialty labs used by students. From 1995 to 2000, the number of e-mail accounts at the university increased from 1,900 to 7,500.

Reaching out to region

School officials say they have reached out to the region in an effort to make higher education more accessible while at the same time raising academic standards for admission.

The move to enroll better prepared students has paid off in higher graduation rates, officials say. Forty-eight percent of freshmen who enrolled at Southeast in 1993 graduated from the university within six years. By comparison, only 40 percent of freshmen entering the school in 1989 graduated within six years, Wallhausen said.

Recruiting eligible students is no easy task in Southeast Missouri where many of the region's residents are poor, burdened by both limited incomes and limited education.

"We have a large percentage who never finished high school," said Don Dickerson, president of Southeast's Board of Regents.

The university has reached out to offer classes beyond the Cape Girardeau campus.

The opening of higher education centers in Kennett, Mo., and Sikeston, Mo., last year helped to bring college courses to the Bootheel. Those two centers and the 12-year-old Bootheel Education Center in Malden, Mo., offer college courses taught by faculty from Southeast and Three Rivers Community College in Poplar Bluff, Mo.

About 1,300 students are enrolled in classes at the Malden, Sikeston and Kennett centers combined.

Southeast is working to renovate a library at St. Mary's of the Barrens Seminary at Perryville, Mo., for use as a higher education center. The Perryville center is slated to open for classes next fall.

Developing tradition

"You see development of a tradition in Southeast Missouri that college is possible and we are going to start in these higher education centers," said Dr. Ken Dobbins, Southeast president. "We now have more people in higher education in Southeast Missouri than we have ever had in the history of the region."

Dobbins credits the leadership of the Board of Regents for some of the school's success.

Southeast has benefited from increased funding from the state, including $6 million in mission-enhancement money over the past four years.

The university used much of the money to help fund and establish its outreach centers.

"I think that is probably as good a use as we could make of that money," said Dickerson.

The university has reached out in other ways. Southeast established a bus system in 1993 to shuttle students across campus, particularly from outlying parking lots. Dickerson said it has helped relieve some of the parking problems on campus.

Much of the university's expanded mission can be traced to its strategic plan, adopted by the Board of Regents in February 1996.

Dickerson said the university has sought to provide a better trained work force, a key ingredient for economic expansion in today's high-tech world.

From buildings to academics, many of the improvements were fueled by increased state funding for higher education over the past eight years, Dickerson said.

Enrollment growth

Southeast's strategic plan envisions a growing university. School officials hope enrollment will grow to 10,300 students within the next five years.

Southeast has seen graduate and undergraduate enrollment grow from 8,816 students in the fall of 1990 to 8,951 students last year.

Still, through much of the early 1990s, the enrollment declined, bottoming out in the fall of 1994 when 7,925 students were enrolled.

Since then, enrollment has climbed steadily, aided by more aggressive recruitment efforts and the establishment in 1997 of an outreach office in downtown St. Louis headed by former regent Pat Washington.

School officials say it's important to recruit students from the heavily populated St. Louis area to boost enrollment. Over the past four years, the number of Southeast undergraduates from St. Louis County has grown from 615 to 1,114.

In boosting enrollment, Southeast also has worked to increase minority enrollment. Whites make up the vast majority of the student body, but black enrollment climbed from 320 students in 1997 to 511 students in 2000.

Curriculum changes

There have been a number of curriculum changes, too, notably the development of the School of Polytechnic Studies with its emphasis on industrial technology and improvements to the university's business school.

Both have been aided by new buildings. The $15 million Dempster Hall that houses the business school opened in August. 1996. The $8.5 million Otto and Della Seabaugh Polytechnic Building is expected to be completed this year.

Southeast also is working to develop its school of visual and performing arts. The university hopes to turn a former Catholic seminary in Cape Girardeau into its River Campus arts school. The $36 million project, which depends to a large extent on state funding, would give the university two campuses in the city.

"It is going to attract more students for us and, I think, it is going to bring tremendous benefits into the whole area," Dickerson said, adding that more cultural offerings could help attract new businesses and industries to the area.

Dobbins said the university has attracted and retained "high quality faculty," which has helped secure national accreditation for academic programs.

For Southeast, the 1990s were a productive decade, Dickerson said.

"I feel pretty good about the fact this university has really repositioned itself for the 21st century," he said.

The progress has come fast and furious at times.

Wallhausen said, "It's really been an amazing ride."