Southeast’s first president, Lucius Harrison Cheney, was technically the school’s “principal,” the official title normal schools used instead of president.
During his abbreviated tenure from 1873 to 1876, Principal Cheney oversaw the institution’s rather humble origins: constructing the original Academic Hall, developing the teacher education curriculum, and quadrupling the student body from 57 to 229. Wearing multiple hats as chief administrator, recruiter, and lead professor, Cheney worked closely with teachers and pupils, even personally conducting the written aptitude test for placing prospective students.
His education, experience, and scholarship made Cheney a wise choice to lead Missouri’s third normal school in those formative years. After graduating from Albany State Normal School in 1852, he served stints as a secondary school principal in both New York and Illinois, before becoming the vice-principal of the Second District Normal in Warrensburg, Missouri when it opened in 1871, the position he held when Southeast’s board of regents hired him two years later.
Lucius Cheney died unexpectedly in an archeological dig accident in 1876 as part of a Harvard University summer expedition in Virginia. While excavating human remains found within in a large burial mound in the Cumberland Mountains, he was buried when the walls collapsed. Frances Cheney stepped in to complete her husband’s remaining term before Southeast hired Alfred Kirk as it second principal.
Lucius H. Cheney is buried in Cape Girardeau’s Old Lorimier Cemetery with the headstone inscription: “a teacher.” In 1939 the college dedicated its newest men’s dormitory, Cheney Hall, in his honor.
