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From 1887 to 1925, Houck served 38 years on the university’s Board of Regents; 36 of those as president – an unmatched record of service.

At the time of the Old Normal fire in 1902, work was underway on a second campus building, a new Science Hall just a few hundred feet to the east of Academic to accommodate the recently created Department of Chemistry and Agriculture. By that summer – with insurance money from the fire – construction commenced on a third campus structure, the Training School.

Built between 1903 and 1906, Academic Hall is – by Legg’s neo-classical design – architecturally in harmony with Science Hall and Training Hall, all under construction at once.

Southeast Missouri Normal School did not initially offer on-campus housing. Since the state refused to fund residence halls, Louis Houck, M.E. Leming, and Leon J. Albert – a regent, lumberman, and banker respectively – formed the Normal Dormitory Association in 1904 to privately build and operate student accommodations.

In 1919, state legislators officially recognized the important evolution of our institution’s educational mission; marking the milestone with a somewhat subtle, yet significant, name change: from Southeast Missouri Normal School to Southeast Missouri State Teachers College.

Louis Houck bought a collection of ancient, medieval, and modern works of art reproduced by German artist August Gerber, donating them to the school with the wish that a room be made available in Academic Hall so that the statuary would be permanently displayed.

Southeast’s first president, Lucius Harrison Cheney, was technically the school’s “principal,” the official title normal schools used instead of president.

Just after daybreak on October 26, 1909, William Howard Taft addressed an enthusiastic crowd assembled on Normal Hill’s terraces, the first and only American president to speak at Academic Hall.

Willard Duncan Vandiver’s presidency of Southeast Missouri Normal School marked two firsts: Vandiver was our institution’s first leader selected from the faculty and, although four “principals” had served in the twenty years before him, Vandiver was, in fact, the first to hold the title of President.

Although no campus buildings, stadiums, or halls bear his name today, John Sephus McGhee, Southeast’s relatively obscure sixth president nevertheless shaped our school in familiar and recognizable ways.