Southeast foundation director resigns

The director of Southeast Missouri State University's fund-raising foundation has resigned, effective Sept. 1, to take a job with a Chicago-based consulting firm.

Alan Zacharias of Jackson has been vice president for university advancement and executive director of the Southeast Missouri University Foundation since September 2001.

He is leaving to take a job with Gonser Gerber Tinker Stuhr LLP, based in Naperville, Ill. He will serve as a consultant in strategic planning, management processes and resource development for not-for-profit clients in education, health care and charitable foundations.

Zacharias, who attended Southeast for two years in the 1980s and graduated from Murray State University in 1983, said Thursday that the job opening came up suddenly.

"This new position allows me to use my 20 years of experience in higher education advancement to assist a variety of clients," he said.

Zacharias previously headed up fund raising efforts for the Concordia University Foundation in River Forest, Ill., near Chicago.

Foundation board chairman Fred R. Wilferth said Zacharias was instrumental in helping raise money for the River Campus arts school project. The foundation has secured $9.5 million toward the goal of raising $11 million for the project, Wilferth said.

University president Dr. Ken Dobbins has appointed Gerald McDougall, dean of the Harrison College of Business, as the interim head of the foundation until a permanent replacement is found.

Dobbins said he hopes to hire a new director of the foundation by the end of the year.