Professor retires, takes sports marketing director job

Marketing professor Dr. Charles Wiles, whose career got a boost from newspaper publicity, won't be grading any more papers. But he still hopes to make the grade with his own marketing efforts.

Wiles turned in his final grades last month at Southeast Missouri State University after more than three decades in the classroom. He retired from full-time teaching in 2000. Since then, he has taught a single marketing course each fall and spring semester.

But even in retirement, Wiles will get a university paycheck. He has signed on as the school's sports marketing director -- a part-time position stuck in a makeshift office in a third-floor elevator lobby of Houck Field House.

From his windows, he has a good view of Houck Stadium.

That seems fitting. Wiles is returning to marketing a sports department that he promoted years ago when he worked for then-university president Dr. Mark Scully.

Wiles said he'll miss going to class. "What I won't miss is having to make grading decisions about students," he said.

Former student Jamie Overkamp, now working for an advertising firm in New York, credits Wiles with pushing him toward an advertising career. "Thanks again for believing in me and for inspiring me," Overkamp wrote in an e-mail to Wiles last month.

Wiles began teaching at Southeast in fall 1969. But he resigned at the end of the spring 1970 semester to pursue a doctorate degree at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale.

He was headed out of Cape Girardeau when he stopped by the Southeast Missourian. He had just completed a study on the impact of Southeast students on the economy.

The newspaper ran a front-page story on the study which attracted the attention of Scully. Wiles said Scully wanted him to hire him to market the university. Wiles declined, saying he wanted to finish is doctorate work.

A year later, in the summer of 1971 -- his doctorate work done -- Wiles returned to Southeast and a job marketing the school. He did a little teaching too.

In his marketing job, Wiles convinced Scully to cover up the words "State College" etched in stone above the front doors to Academic Hall.

Wiles said he pushed to have a decorative wood board placed over the words because he felt it would be bad publicity to have Academic Hall photos that described the place as "State College" when it was now a university. Southeast officially became a university in 1972.

Wiles worked to publicize the sports program. He refers to himself as the university's first sports information director although he says there was no such title in those days.

"I thought athletics was very under publicized," he said.

In his new job, Wiles helps sell sponsorships for Southeast's sports calendars, trading cards, posters and game events. Even T-shirt giveaways at home games are part of the school's marketing strategy.

But he concedes the best marketing tool is a winning sports team. "Nothing will make up for a winning program on the field," he said.

mbliss@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 123