LETTERS: SEMO CONTINUES TO EXPAND SERVICES

To the editor:

In the two and a half years since the Board of Regents gave me the honor of serving as president of Southeast Missouri State University, the people of this region have welcomed me to their communities, taken me into their confidence and permitted the university to become a more significant factor in the life of this 25-county area.

This year alone we have made tremendous progress in creating a permanent partnership of five higher-education institutions, all of which serve Southeast Missouri in some capacity, to expand outreach and enhance access to all varieties of post-secondary education. With our partners in this new Southeast Missouri Educational Consortium, we are developing a communications network that will enable each of our institutions to deliver classes to off-campus sites by instructional television and other electronic media.

At the university, we have continued development of the Crisp Bootheel Education Center at Malden and the offering of courses at the Sereno Center near Perryville. This year we also opened a temporary higher-education center in Sikeston. This building will serve Scott, New Madrid, Mississippi and Stoddard counties until a brand-new, 30,000-square-foot facility is completed in January 2000.

In addition, we are working with the people of the extreme Bootheel to plan a new outreach center in Kennett, and we are discussing the creation of still another center to serve the northern part of the university's service area. We are ready to begin construction of a new polytecnic institute on our main campus where training in the latest advanced manufacturing technology will be available to students in this region for the first time. The institute will cooperate with our consortium partners in bringing this advanced technical training to other sites in the region in traditional classroom settings, through instructional television and by means of state-of-the-art mobile technology classrooms.

As we approach the holiday season, please let me express to everyone in this region how much we at the university enjoy our opportunity to work with the people of Southeast Missouri in creating an affordable, efficient and easily accessible system of higher education with a new emphasis on technology. We are committed to being the best we can be and to improving the access of all our people to the economic opportunities which come with improved education.

We are looking forward to an even better year in 1999 and pledge our continued efforts on behalf of the residents of Southeast Missouri. We thank you all for working with us. Happy holidays.

DALE F. NITZSCHKE, President

Southeast Missouri State University

Cape Girardeau