Southeast Missouri State University
Southeast Missouri State University is a public, accredited
university located in
Cape Girardeau, Missouri.
In Fall 2002, the University had 7,756 (full-time equivalent) students. 93.1% of students attended full-time, while 6.9% attended part-time. In Fall 2002, 645 male students and 921 female students enrolled as first-time students (freshmen, typically). Female students made up 58.8% of the student body and male students comprised 41.2%. Minority enrollment included African-American (6%), Hispanic (1%), and Asian (1%).
Southeast Missouri State University was founded in 1873 when a group of prominent businessmen and politicians successfully lobbied the State of Missouri to designate Cape Girardeau as the home of the Third District
Normal School. Classes were originally taught at the nearby Lorimier School until April of 1875 when the first normal school building was completed. Southeast Missouri State College had an enrollment of approximately 1600 students in the 1950's and steadily increased to more than 7,000 students in the 1970's due to low tuition costs, aggressive recruiting, and the construction of
Interstate 55 between St. Louis and Cape Girardeau. The College also moved away from its focus on only training teachers and began to offer courses of study in business, nursing, and the liberal arts. Due to this expansion of curriculum and student body population, the college officially became Southeast Missouri State University in 1972. The physical size of the campus also grew in this same period. In 1956, the institution had ten buildings on campus. In 1975, the number had increased to twenty-two buildings.
Until January of 2005, the athletic team nicknames were the "Indians" (men's teams) and "Otahkians" (women's teams). After a movement by Student Government, the Booster Club and the National Alumni Council, those names were officially retired in a ceremony on October 22, 2004 and replaced with "Redhawks."[
1] The current mascot is a stylized hawk known as Rowdy Redhawk. The University's original mascot was known as Chief Sagamore and was represented by a student dressed in Native Amerian regalia. Chief Sagamore was retired as mascot in the mid 1980's due to a growing cultural sensitivity to Native American mascots though the team names lasted for nearly twenty more years. The school's athletic teams compete in the
Ohio Valley Conference.
The
Capaha Arrow is the University's
student newspaper. Established in 1911, it is currently one of the oldest college newspapers still in publication. Notably, the second editor of the
Arrow was Rush Limbaugh, Sr. who became a nationally recognized Missouri attorney and practiced law in Cape Girardeau until just before his passing at the age of 104 in 1996. Rush Limbaugh, Sr. is the grandfather of the media personality
Rush Limbaugh. The
Arrow is still run by Mass Communication students and publishes a weekly newspaper distributed throughout campus. The current Editor-in-Chief is James Samons.
* 1960
Dick Hantak,
NFL referee
* 1960
Ken Iman, center with
NFL's
Green Bay Packers and
Los Angeles Rams* 1969
James T. Conway, United States Marine Corps general
* 1974
Linda Godwin,
NASA astronaut
* 1976
Peter Kinder, politician
* 1987
Cedric Kyles, aka Cedric the Entertainer
* 2003
Willie Ponder, wide receiver with
NFL's
New York Giants* 2006
Eugene Amano, center with the
NFL's
Tennessee Titans (was drafted in 2004, but attained degree in 2006)
* One of the most widely recognized figures associated with the institution is probably
radio talk show host
Rush Limbaugh, who is a Cape Girardeau native and attended the university for a year before dropping out. [
2]
* The University's fifth president, Willard Duncan Vandiver, was later elected to the
Fifty-fifth United States Congress from the State of Missouri. He is credited with originating Missouri's state motto by saying in a speech, "I come from a state that raises corn and cotton and cockleburs and Democrats, and frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I am from Missouri. You have got to show me." [
3]
*
Student Association of Missouri*
Southeast Missouri State University*
The Capaha Arrow*
Show Me Center
