Teachers stop at Nordenia USA

Teachers from central and northern Missouri made a stop at Nordenia USA in Cape Girardeau County Monday as part of a two-week tour of southern Missouri business and industry.

The 53rd annual Missouriana Studytour is sponsored by the Missouri Chamber of Commerce Educational Foundation and Central Missouri State University.

The 38 teachers taking part in the tour will receive three hours of graduate credit from Central Missouri when the tour wraps up Friday.

Julie Malter, a counselor in the Malta Bend School District in central Missouri, said she wanted to take the tour to see what Missouri has to offer her students when they graduate.

"As a school counselor I help kids decide what to do with their future after school," Malter said. "I couldn't help them if I didn't know what all is available for them. The industry in southern Missouri is different from north and central Missouri."

Malter said the most exciting tour on the trip so far has been the tour of the Doe Run Co. mine in Viburnum, Mo.

The tour of southern Missouri business and industry is held during the even numbered years. A tour of northern and central Missouri is held on the odd years.

Angela Bills, an elementary school teacher in Warsaw, Mo., which is about a 30 minutes south of Sedalia, Mo., took the tour of northern Missouri last year and is in the middle of the southern Missouri tour.

She said the only times she has ventured to southern Missouri have been on family vacations to Branson, Mo.

"I've learned more in two weeks than I did in college," she said.

The tour will stop in St. Genevieve, Mo., today; St. Louis on Wednesday; Wentzville, Mo., on Thursday; and finish at Central Missouri State in Warrensburg, Mo., Friday afternoon.

hkronmueller@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 128