SEMO GETS $2.1 MILLION FROM LATEST FEDERAL BUDGET

Southeast Missouri State University will receive $2.1 million in federal money for three projects, including $1 million to help equip a new polytechnic building that soon will be under construction.

The funding is part of the massive $390 billion budget approved by Congress and the president.

The $1 million for the polytechnic school marks the first time a Southeast project has been specifically earmarked as a line item in the budget, said Chancellor Dr. Dale Nitzschke, who lobbied for the federal funds.

Besides funding for the polytechnic project, the university is to receive $600,000 to fund public transportation services for welfare-to-work clients in Southeast Missouri and $500,000 to help relocate the Southeast Missouri Regional Crime Lab to larger quarters."We can't be anything but very pleased with what we are receiving," said Don Dickerson, president of Southeast's Board of Regents. "Those are no small sums of money. They help us terrifically."Dickerson credited Nitzschke, U.S. Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond and U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Emerson with securing the federal funding.

Nitzschke stepped down as Southeast's president at the end of June, saying he wanted to spend more time with his family. He moved into a newly created position of chancellor to raise money for the university primarily for the River Campus school for the visual and performing arts and the polytechnic school.

Dickerson said Nitzschke's fund-raising job includes securing federal money for projects. "We have never really taken a run at that before," the board president said.

Nitzschke said the university sold Bond and Emerson on the merits of the polytechnic project, and the two Republican lawmakers from Missouri convinced their fellow lawmakers to support the project.

Nitzschke, who made four trips to Washington to lobby for funding, said Southeast sold lawmakers on the polytechnic project by pointing out that the building will provide high-tech manufacturing training that will provide the region with skilled workers and boost economic development.

Constructing and equipping the polytechnic building is expected to cost about $8 million, most of that funded by the state. Construction is expected to begin next year and be completed by spring 2001.

Southeast hopes to tap into future federal funding too for projects such as the River Campus, which involved turning a former Catholic seminary into an arts school."We have already started working on next year's budget," said Nitzschke. "I am putting together a campus master plan for federal funds, and we will use that as a basis for working with Sen. Bond and Congresswoman Emerson next year." The River Campus tops the university's list of funding priorities.

The $500,000 for the crime lab will be used to help renovate a building at Merriwether and Ellis to house an expanded lab. The building currently is used by the university's facilities management department and houses the department's carpenters and other crafts-trades personnel.

The entire project will provide 7,000 square feet of space to house the regional crime lab. The lab handles some 3,000 cases a year. It has operated out of cramped quarters in an old house on campus since 1976.

The $500,000, coupled with a Justice Department grant of $250,000, will provide the bulk of the funding for the $1 million project. The remaining $250,000 is coming from the university, the state and private donations.

Dr. Robert C. Briner, who directs the crime lab, said the latest funding from Washington will allow the project to proceed. Briner said he hopes construction can be done next year and be completed by the fall.

But Dr. Ken Dobbins, Southeast's president, said the construction schedule still has to be worked out. That depends partly on relocating facilities management's operations at Merriwether and Ellis to other quarters such as the old Washington Elementary School, which the university recently purchased.

As to the transportation project, Dobbins said the university will administer a program that will provide funding for transit companies to provide transportation services for welfare-to-work recipients.

Dobbins welcomed the infusion of federal dollars for campus projects. "We think it is important to bring the dollars back to Missouri," he said.