SOUTHEAST MISSOURI STATE ASSISTS NIGERIAN UNIVERSITY WITH TEXTBOOKS

Three tons of new textbooks are headed to a Nigerian university thanks in part to the efforts of the chairman of Southeast Missouri State University's marketing department.

The books will be used by Enugu State University of Science and Technology (ESUT) in Nigeria.

"We believe that thanks to Southeast's generous donation of time, energy and contacts, we are well on our way to having the best university library in this country," said A.M. Nwabuzor, a faculty member from ESUT who recently returned to Nigeria after a faculty exchange this semester at Southeast.

"When Dr. Nwabuzor was on our campus earlier this semester, he indicated that even the `one edition out of date' textbooks he'd been given by Southeast faculty were 20 years newer that what he'd been using in Nigeria," said marketing department chairman David K. "Skip" Smith. "He also indicated that there are no current texts in ESUT's library available to students."

Nwabuzor's experience at Southeast gave him his first opportunity since he earned his doctoral degree at Harvard in the 1970s to work with recent textbooks and articles and to be able to conduct database searches on topics of interest to him using the equipment and expertise available to him in Kent Library, Smith said.

In response to Nwabuzor's comments and experience on the Southeast campus, Smith began exploring book donations with various publishers. He learned that publishers are willing to donate books if freight fees can be provided.

When told this, Nwabuzor asked the chief executive officer of a Fortune 500 company, who was his former Harvard roommate, to donate funds to cover the shipping costs. The executive agreed and donated funds to the Southeast Missouri University Foundation, enabling the foundation to pay the shipping fees.

Smith asked David Fosnough, a local sales representative for the Richard D. Irwin Publishing Co. in Burr Ridge, Ill., if the company would be willing to donate the books to ESUT. The publishing firm agreed to provide 1,773 books on business topics such as finance and basic marketing.

With the aid of Tiffany Anderson, a former Southeast student now employed by Intertrans freight forwarders in St. Louis, arrangements were made to ship the books overseas.

Southeast's assistance with the book donation is part of a larger link between Southeast and ESUT. Southeast's relationship with ESUT developed through Smith's interest in Nigeria. He has traveled to Nigeria frequently, participating in research and teaching projects there. In 1989, he served as a Fulbright Scholar, teaching at the University of Ibadan, the University of Lagos and the University of Nigeria.

ESUT and Southeast signed an institutional cooperation agreement in 1993.