FOURTEEN PRESIDENTS LED SCHOOL

Southeast Missouri State University's 14 presidents have led Southeast from an upstart school to train high school teachers in 1873 through 122 years of changes.

The university is gearing up for another transition as President Kala Stroup leaves Southeast to become Missouri's commissioner of higher education and a search begins for the 15th president of Southeast Missouri State University.

On Friday the Board of Regents named Bill Atchley as interim president of the university.

Two of the past three presidents at Southeast, Bill Stacy and Robert Foster, served as interim presidents before officially taking over leadership of the school.

Stacy was president from 1979 to 1989. He had been named interim president in the summer of 1979 following the departure of Dr. Robert E. Leestamper. The Board of Regents made it permanent in February 1980.

When Stacy left here in 1989 to head the University of California at San Marcos, Robert Foster was named interim president while the search for a new president began.

Foster served for a year as interim president. Near the end of the year, the Board of Regents decided to officially name him the 13th president because of his exemplary performance.

Foster turned over the duties of president to Kala Stroup on July 1, 1990.

Southeast's first president, or principal, as they used to be called, was Lucius H. Cheney.

Cheney was vice principal of the Warrensburg Normal School before being hired for the head post here at an annual salary of $2,000.

Classes were held the first year and most of the second on the upper floor of the Lorimier Public School in Cape Girardeau.

The first year, 57 students were enrolled -- 28 women and 29 men. The second year, attendance rose to 164.

Cheney and his wife, Frances, were the entire faculty during the school's first year of operation.

In those early years, students were charged a fee of $3 a term. The school year consisted of 40 weeks, divided into four terms.

Cheney died on July 14, 1876, in a cave-in while helping to excavate an Indian mound as part of a Harvard field camp in Cumberland Gap, Tenn.

The school's fifth president was Willard Duncan Vandiver, who served from 1893 to 1897. A professor in the school's science department, his selection as president marked the first time that a member of the school's faculty had been chosen to head the institution.

Vandiver subsequently won election to Congress and resigned as university president. He served in the House for eight years before becoming the state commissioner of insurance in 1905.

He is credited with coining the phrase, "I'm from Missouri, you'll have to show me," which led to Missouri being known as the "Show Me State."

Mark Scully, presided at a time of enormous growth for the school, when the campus was absolutely swamped by students.

It was a time when there was a national emphasis on getting a college education. In response to the influx of students, Southeast saw an increase in both staffing and buildings.

When Scully took office, there were 10 buildings on campus. By the time he retired, there were 22. During his tenure, enrollment climbed from around 1,500 to nearly 8,000.

Scully was the first graduate of the institution to serve as its president. The teachers college became a university in 1972, during his administration.

SOUTHEAST PRESIDENTS

Lucius H. Cheney, 1873-1876.

Alfred Kirk, 1876-1877.

Charles Henry Dutcher, 1877-1880.

Richard Chapman Norton, 1880-1893.

Willard Duncan Vandiver, 1893-1897.

John Sephus McGhee, 1897-1899.

Washington Strother Dearmont, 1899-1921.

Joseph A. Serena, 1921-1933.

Walter Winfield Parker, 1933-1956.

Mark F. Scully, 1956-1975.

Robert E. Leestamper, 1975-1979.

Bill W. Stacy, 1979-1989.

Robert W. Foster, 1989-1990.

Kala M. Stroup, 1990-present.