SOUTHEAST WILL OFFER HONORARY DEGREES IN '96

Officials at Southeast Missouri State University hope to be able to award honorary doctoral and professional degrees as early as next spring.

Dr. Bill Atchley, university interim president, proposed the addition, which was approved this week by the Board of Regents.

"It's a good thing for almost any university to have," Atchley said. "It's a good opportunity to honor those people who have acted successfully either from a humanistic point of view or from a professional point of view. It also broadens the recognition of your university, and those kinds of things are always helpful."

Honorary degrees aren't about academic achievement, he said. The policy approved Tuesday stipulates the honorary degrees will be awarded "in honor of distinguished achievement, accomplishment, or service that is recognized both by peers in the field and by a broader spectrum of society."

Fields listed in the policy include teaching, scholastics, creative endeavor, public service, philanthropy, the professions and business and industry.

The degree to be awarded will be determined by the field for which the recipient is being honored. Choices include Doctor of Laws, Doctor of Letters or Doctor of Humane Letters.

Atchley introduced an honorary degree program during his presidency at Clemson University. Two honorees he remembered were a midwife who had delivered babies for many years in the area and a music teacher whose "greatest accomplishment was integrating the gospel choirs to include blacks and whites" at a time when integration was "just being started in that regard," Atchley said.

Art Walhausen, assistant to the president, said guidelines by which the honorary degrees will be awarded will be developed.

"We'll be working at the start of the spring semester in January to develop some guidelines as to how we take nominations and just how the process will work," Walhausen said.

Atchley and Walhausen said they hope to be able to award the degrees by spring commencement.

Southeast has no doctoral degree programs but that doesn't matter, Walhausen said.

"That's not unusual," he said. "Small, liberal arts colleges, major universities all award honorary degrees. It's just a recognition of achievement; it's not an academic degree. President Atchley has had honorary degrees at all of the universities he has been affiliated with in the past."

An honorary degree program has many advantages, Walhausen said.

"It's a two-way street," he said. "It provides some prestige for the institution; it provides some prestige for the recipient."

Walhausen believes honorary degrees also will help the university attract speakers "of national stature" for commencements and other events, which also will be good for the university.

The policy stipulates that the Board of Regents has final approval of all nominees for the honorary degrees.