MASTER PLAN AGAIN BEFORE REGENTS; BOARD WILL MEET WITH CONSULTANT TO DISCUSS PROPOSAL IT TABLED

The Board of Regents will get what it wants later this month: A chance to thoroughly review a proposed master plan that would transform the campus.

The regents will hold a study session, tentatively scheduled for July 25 or 26. The regents will meet with a consultant who helped draft the plan.

Donald Harrison, board president, said the regents won't take any formal action at the study session, but simply review the plan.

"Presumably when we get to the August meeting, we will all know what we are talking about," he said Tuesday.

The regents last month tabled a proposed master plan that would dramatically change the Southeast Missouri State University campus over the next 20 years. The action came at the last regents' meeting for Dr. Bill Atchley, then university president.

Regents said they wanted more time to study the plan developed by consultants with the aid of a campus committee.

Among other things, the plan would turn Parker Hall into a campus student center and the University Center would become a conference and visitors center.

Harrison said some university employees told him they were pleased the regents tabled the issue last month.

"We have always tried to listen to public input," he said.

"Those of us on the board feel we were charged to do a job and not just sit there and let somebody else do it for us, and rubber stamp it," he said.

The plan, designed to make the campus more user friendly, would result in a lot of internal moving of university departments to different buildings.

Regent Don Dickerson objected to plans to move the Child Study Center from the Scully Building to the little-used and aging Dearmont residence hall.

Harrison said the master plan is only a guideline and will likely be revised many times over the next two decades.

The regents don't want to adopt a plan that ties its hands or that of future boards when it comes to campus improvements, Harrison said.

Southeast's new president, Dr. Dale Nitzschke, said he and his top administrators are reviewing the master plan in advance of the study session.

"It is a very lengthy and significant document about the future of the institution," he said. "We are all trying to spend a lot of time with it again."

Nitzschke said that on balance it is a good plan.

"It is a vision for the university. We have to plan well in advance for that vision."

Nitzschke said future state appropriations for capital improvements will be tied to the master plan.

But he agreed with Harrison that the plan isn't set in stone and changes will be made in it over the years.

Nitzschke also said the New Madrid-Henderson street intersection needs to be improved.

But the final decision on how to improve that intersection rests with city and not university officials, Harrison said.

Southeast officials had sought to redesign the intersection and construct improvements before the end of August and the scheduled opening of the new College of Business building.

A plan drawn up by Sverdrup engineers would have allowed free-flowing traffic between Henderson on the south side of the intersection and New Madrid on the east side. It also would have realigned Greek Drive.

University officials, including the regents, had signed off on that design before Nitzschke took over as the school's president this month.

But high bids put the project on hold and now the city's Planning and Zoning commissioners are looking at a 10-year-old plan drawn up by former city engineer Kensey Russell that would make the intersection a four-way stop.

Nitzschke doesn't know what would be the best solution.

But Nitzschke, who drives through the intersection on his way to his Academic Hall office, said some improvements are clearly needed to aid traffic flow.

"With the increased traffic that will come with the opening of the business college there, it could become a very real hazard," he said.