SEMO Sesquicentennial Moments

On the eve of the bicentennial, KRCU crackled to life on March 5, 1976, an alternative music college station powered by student on-air personalities and 10 watts. Which meant that the station’s limited daily broadcast schedule carried from its tower on Academic Hall all the way to Capaha Park.

Just as two African American women – Roberta Slayton and Helen Carter – integrated Southeast Missouri’s student body in 1954, two black men broke the sports color barrier. These pioneering student athletes – Ronald Staten and Curtis Williams - became the first African Americans to play intercollegiate sports for our university.

Abe Stuber coached football, track, and basketball at Southeast between 1932 and 1946. During those years roaming the sidelines, courtsides, and meets, Stuber’s teams – usually known as the “College Indians” or “Teachers College Indians – won 17 MIAA titles in three sports.

Consistent with its professional teacher-training mission, in 1896 the Third District Normal School opened its first “practice” or “laboratory” school to give prospective educators hands-on classroom experience. What we today at Southeast showcase as experiential learning.

Formed in 1907, just two years after the completion of Academic Hall, the Southeast Marching Band is one of the oldest traditions on campus. Officially named the “Golden Eagles” in 1957 after a steamboat that traveled the Mississippi River, the band has marched to its own drumming across football fields, parade routes, and castle esplanades.

Following the May 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education – which ruled that racial segregation in education was inherently unequal – many America schools began integrating that fall while others stubbornly resisted for years. Southeast fell into the former category, enrolling Roberta Slayton and Helen Carter, our university’s first African American students.

Nestled on bucolic, tree-lined hills in between the Show Me Center and Dempster Hall, Wildwood serves as the official residence of Southeast Missouri State University presidents.

From “Pig Clubs” to presidential speeches, southeast Missourians have gathered together at the corner of Sprigg Street and New Madrid as a community; first it was for agricultural contests at the university’s demonstration farm and today to see live entertainment and sports at The Show Me Center.

Perched majestically upon Cardiac Hill, the rare Gum Tree – indigenous to the Southeast campus – is a one of our timeless traditions. And while the tree itself has evolved through at least five incarnations – most significantly from wood to metal – one constant endures: a hard exterior of repurposed chewing gum.

Formed on October 22, 1913, when we were still the Third District Normal School, the Black Mask Honorary Dramatic Society is thought to be the oldest student group at Southeast Missouri State University.

Long before Tik Tok, Google, KRCU, KFVS TV, heck even KFVS radio, Southeast students were kept informed by their campus newspaper, The Arrow. Our paper has been dependably reporting the local, national, and international news, sports, opinions, and features from a college perspective since 1911; making it one of the longest-running student newspapers in the country.

Beloved teacher, gifted orator, and avid photographer, Dr. Harold Oscar Grauel wore many hats over a 43-year-long career as English professor, department chair, and head of the divisions of English, foreign languages, philosophy, and speech.

Dr. B.F. Johnson came to Southeast in 1897 just as Southeast’s fifth President William Duncan Vandiver, ended his tenure to pursue a career in politics. Working as Chair of the Department of Mathematics, Johnson was its “lone professor” until his retirement in 1940 – a career spanning 43 years!

Under his 16-year tenure as president, Dr. Kenneth Dobbins ushered in tremendous growth for the university, effectively guiding Southeast into the 21st century.” Serving from 1999-2015, Dobbins got his start at Southeast in 1991 as the president of finance and administration until 1993 when became vice president. He served in this position until his inauguration as our 17th president six years later.

As Southeast Missouri State’s 14th president, Dr. Kala Stroup ushered in a number of firsts for the University – the first female president, hiring the first African American deans at Southeast, and moving to the NCAA division one in athletics, which secured an invitation to join the Ohio Valley Conference.

Inaugurated on October 5, 1980, Bill Stacy left a lasting legacy as Southeast's 12th president, fostering the creation of two notable academic programs and a breadth of university facilities, notably the Show Me Center in 1987. A graduate of Southeast himself, Stacy’s nine-year tenure guided the university through the “times of excess,” when the quality of American education was called into question.

St. Vincent’s College opened in 1838 to prepare young Catholic men for the priesthood. For almost one hundred and fifty years, the institution educated seminarians, and considering their reputation for hospitality, this college overlooking the Mississippi River served as Cape Girardeau’s “front door,” giving steamboat travelers an impressive and warm welcome.

In the midst of the Great Depression, the federal Public Works Administration or PWA – part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s alphabet soup of New Deal agencies – funded construction of Southeast’s new library. Completed in 1939 between Albert and Leming halls, directly across from Academic Hall.

A magnificent, new multi-million-dollar, 10,000 seat Houck Stadium highlights our sesquicentennial festivities. And its completion comes almost a century after the original facility was dedicated to honor Louis Houck with a football game between Southeast and SIU on October 3, 1930.

Like the adjacent stadium, Houck Field House honors Regent Louis Houck, but the original structure owed its existence to the most renowned evangelist of the 1920s: a major league baseball player-turned-preacher, Billy Sunday.