REGENT QUITS TO RECRUIT STUDENTS IN ST. LOUIS AREA

Pat Washington has resigned from the Southeast Missouri State University's Board of Regents to take a key recruiting job with the school.

Washington, 36, of St. Louis resigned Friday.

The Board of Regents then held a closed-door meeting Monday afternoon and hired Washington as the school's outreach coordinator in the St. Louis area. She will make a salary of $40.000.

In that job, Washington will head up a St. Louis office that is expected to open next month in downtown office space donated by Sverdrup Corp., an architectural and engineering firm.

The company has handled a number of construction projects at Southeast in recent years.

Washington was the choice of Southeast's president, Dr. Dale Nitzschke, to head the new office.

He said Washington knows the media, corporate and civic officials and school leaders in the St. Louis area.

Nitzschke participated in the regents meeting via telephone, as did three of the four regents.

Cape Girardeau lawyer Don Dickerson is president of the board. He chaired the meeting from the president's office at Academic Hall. He was the only regent to attend the campus meeting in person.

"I think the salary is good and I think she is good. I think she really cares about the school," said Dickerson.

Washington's resignation leaves the board with only four members, the minimum number needed to conduct business.

The board had been operating with only five members since the resignation last year of Lynn Dempster of Sikeston for health reasons.

But Dickerson said he expects Gov. Mel Carnahan to fill the two vacancies later this week.

Washington is a former journalist. She previously served as press secretary for Freeman Bosley while he was mayor of St. Louis.

But she lost her job when Bosley was defeated in his re-election bid last spring.

The university hopes the new office will boost the sagging enrollment of St. Louis-area students.

"I love that school," said Washington, a Cape Girardeau native and 1984 graduate of Southeast.

Carnahan appointed Washington to the Board of Regents in April 1993. Her term would have expired Jan. 1, 1999.

Washington said it was a difficult decision to leave the board. "I really enjoyed my work on the board. My colleagues are wonderful."

But she said she wanted to help in the student-recruitment effort, particularly in regards to black students.

"That to me is more important than how much money I am making or any other considerations," she said.

"At one time we were getting a significant amount of black students from the St. Louis area," she said. "That has diminished over the years."

Washington said her office will be working to recruit white students, too.

"I just feel confident that while we are putting on a full-court press to get all students we can make some real significant gains with black students.

"We want to take Southeast from the back burner to the front burner," she said.

The institution used to draw about a third of its undergraduate enrollment from the St. Louis area.

Since the mid-1980s, however, the school's enrollment from the St. Louis area has dropped to less than a fourth of the total undergraduate population, officials said.

For several years in the late 1980s, Southeast had an office in Westport Plaza in St. Louis County.

That office was closed when the school's admissions office was restructured during the 1989-1990 academic year.

Although Washington's job will focus largely on student recruitment, she also will be assisting with alumni services and fund raising.

"There is no magic formula, said Washington. "You have to network. You have to be there. You have to let people know what you are doing."

Washington said she won't be sitting in her eighth-floor office near the Arch.

"If I am sitting in the office, I am not doing my job," she said.