SOUTHWEST WANTS STATEWIDE STATUS

Southeast Missouri State University officials are concerned over Southwest Missouri State University's desire to be designated by the legislature as the statewide school for teacher education and public affairs.

The Springfield school wants to follow in the footsteps of Northeast Missouri State University at Kirksville, which was designated as the state's public liberal arts school in 1986.

Southwest, Southeast and the other regional universities were started as teachers colleges.

Southeast, for one, has a strong College of Education. Its teacher education program has won national acclaim.

Southeast's administration hasn't openly opposed Southwest's proposal, but it has expressed some serious reservations.

"It is kind of hard to see how Southwest would have a statewide mission in teacher education," said Art Wallhausen, assistant to the president at Southeast.

"At first blush, there might be some concern that it would not be useful for the state to have one institution designated as the premier teacher education school," said Wallhausen.

Since it is important for teacher education programs to work with school districts in their regions, Wallhausen questioned how one institution could effectively serve the state in that role.

Wallhausen said Southwest has been seeking to separate itself from the other regional institutions for a number of years.

Southwest previously sought to change its name to Missouri State University, eliminating the regional part of its name. But school officials were unable to gather the necessary legislative support to make the change.

Charles McClain, Missouri's higher education commissioner, said he won't bring Southwest's proposal before the Coordinating Board for Higher Education unless it is supported by the presidents of the other colleges and universities in the state.

Even if Southwest had a statewide mission in teacher education, Missouri's other schools will continue to turn out teachers, he predicted.

"Teacher education is not going to be minimized on any campus from my point of view," McClain said.

But Mark Pelts, a Kennett lawyer and member of the Board of Regents at Southeast, said that designating another school as a statewide institution would defeat the original purpose of regional universities.

The whole purpose of such schools is to serve the residents in their regions.

"I don't think as far as teacher education goes that you want that centralized," said Pelts.

If that were to occur, it would encourage other universities in the state to seek statewide status for various programs.

Pelts said schools are competing today for limited state funds. Schools that have statewide missions can count on increased state funding, he said.

"What we are seeing in Missouri is regional universities are all trying to find a little niche in the education business to where they can have some type of special status which will necessarily de-emphasize it at other regional universities," said Pelts.

"There is no cooperation, no efficiency to it. You have got everybody working against everybody else."

Southwest officials, however, contend it makes sense for the Springfield school to have statewide status.

Nearly half of the school's 18,000 students come from outside the 24-county service area.

The school's president, John Keiser, has talked of the need for a statewide Board of Regents for the institution.

Bruno Schmidt, Southwest's vice president for academic affairs, said that it is envisioned that the other regional institutions would continue to have teacher education programs even if the Springfield school received a statewide designation.

Southwest currently produces more teachers than any other state university in Missouri. In the 1992-93 academic year, 410 students graduated with bachelor's degrees in education from Southwest. Southeast graduated 228 that year.

Southwest, however, plans to increase its requirements for students to be admitted to the education program. Schmidt said that it will mean the school will be turning out fewer teachers.