BIUNDO RETIRES FROM SEMO ADMINISTRATION

From his spacious office in an old house, Jim Biundo has overseen Southeast Missouri State University's marketing and public relations efforts for a dozen years.

His job as assistant to the president for university relations ended Tuesday when he retired.

Diane Sides, assistant director of university relations, will serve as interim director of university relations and will report to Art Wallhausen, assistant to the president.

The university plans to review the university relations role before conducting a job search.

The 65-year-old Biundo is ready to retire.

"It just feels like the right thing to do," he said, sitting behind his clean desk in his office Monday.

Over the years, Biundo's desk routinely has been uncluttered.

"I truly believe in cycles as we live our life," he said. "For the most part, they are all wonderful."

He and his wife, Antoinette, plan to remain in Cape Girardeau for several months, but they likely will move later this year to Tucson, Ariz., or Las Vegas.

"We do like Tucson a lot," Biundo said. "We like the desert and it is so dry there." The Las Vegas area also has a desert climate.

"We just are going to take it a step at a time,

he said of moving, but Biundo has resigned from the Rotary Club and the Chamber of Commerce.

He and his wife have three daughters, scattered from Florida to Colorado.

Biundo was born and reared in Colorado and spent three years in the Marine Corps, including 25 months in Japan.

After his military stint, he went to college on the GI Bill, majored in English, speech and theater at Adams State College in Alamosa, Colo.

He taught and was assistant principal at Las Animas High School in southeastern Colorado before joining the faculty of Adams State in 1964.

He initially taught technical theater and later chaired the division of humanities at the school.

He later served as assistant to the president for community relations at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He then worked for four years as executive director of public affairs and director of marketing at Pima Community College, which operated three campuses in the Tucson area.

In January 1988, he took a job as director of university relations at Southeast.

At Tucson, he had worked in a central office. Biundo welcomed the chance to return to an on-campus job.

"I loved it here," said Biundo. "The people were fantastic."

Although he grew up in Colorado, Biundo said he didn't miss the snow, saying he wasn't a skier.

"I was a trout fisherman out there," he said. "I would just wander the streams and fish a little bit."

Biundo hopes people remember his years here as a time when the university developed a solid marketing foundation.

"We kind of set some benchmarks, if you will, that people can build upon," he said.

Biundo rarely talks about himself and prefers to talk about his staff in news services and marketing.

"You have got to have the support of the people around you," he said of his eight full-time employees.

During his tenure, the university has developed a coordinated marketing effort and upgraded news services and campus publications.