River Campus Center to be renamed in honor of Dobbins duo

The board of regents announced Monday the River Campus Center at Southeast Missouri State University will be named after the university's current president, Kenneth W. Dobbins, and his wife, Jeanine Larson Dobbins.

Construction on the River Campus Center, a 90,000-square-foot building adjacent to the university's River Campus, was completed in August. The board of regents unanimously voted to name the building The Ken and Jeanine Dobbins River Campus Center.

This will be the second component of the River Campus complex to be named after the Dobbinses since a dance studio within the River Campus was named for the couple.

Kenneth Dobbins, the university's 17th president, played a role in making the River Campus a reality for Southeast students and faculty and worked through nine years of conceptualization, planning and building to reach the end product the university claims today. This year marks the eighth year of operation of the River Campus and the 16th and final year for Dobbins at Southeast.

Dobbins has been a staff member at Southeast since 1991 and was named president July 1, 1999. Throughout his tenure, he has improved the university in a number of ways, from establishing the College of Science, Technology and Agriculture to the construction and acquisition of five new residence halls along with the Otto and Della Seabaugh Polytechnic Building and the River Campus.

Jeanine Larson Dobbins

Dobbins announced his retirement -- set for June 30 -- on Sept. 8 at the annual State of the University address in Academic Hall.

With her husband, Jeanine Dobbins has dedicated much of her life to education. She is the founder of the Missouri Statewide Literacy Intervention Program and worked from 1991 until her retirement in 2010 as an advocate for literacy for children in Missouri.

She held a number of leadership positions, including president of Southeast's chapter of Phi Kappa Phi, a representative of Southeast's Reading Recovery program and president of the Southeast Missouri Council of the International Reading Association.

Kendra Neely-Martin, vice president of the board of regents, said the entire River Campus concept was the brainchild of Kenneth Dobbins and that over the past few years he has worked to make the River Campus an accessible and convenient resource for all students and members in the community.

She said the board decided to rename the River Campus Center to keep the history of his tenure alive and commemorate the efforts he and his wife put in to ensuring the River Campus was completed.

The motion to name the building after the Dobbinses was brought to the table by Doyle Privett, president of the board of regents.

"We felt like that due to Mr. and Mrs. Dobbins' -- and especially president Dobbins' -- service and devotion to the university over the past 24 years ... we felt it only fitting that we should honor him in this way, and we thought the new facility at the River Campus was the best way to do this, since he had such a large part in the River Campus being formed to begin with," Privett said. "It probably wouldn't be there if it weren't for his efforts during that period of time."