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Southeast Missouri State University

  • 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.
  • Attend any function, game, or sporting event at Southeast Missouri State and you’ll be greeted, hugged, and otherwise entertained by an oversized raptor, Rowdy the Redhawk, our cheerleading mascot. But it wasn’t always Rowdy that adorned baseball caps, t-shirts, and other Southeast merch.
  • 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.
  • Southeast Missouri State University's Bachelor of Fine Arts in Interior Design has received another six-year accreditation from the Council for Interior Design accreditation. Southeast’s Interior Design program first earned accreditation in 2017. I spoke with Dr. Michelle Brune. She's professor and Interior Design program coordinator at Southeast.
  • 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.