~ News About the Department ~
In
addition to celebrating the 100th Birthday of Missouri State, we've seen several
significant changes taking place in our
department. As you may know, we now offer a Minor and a Major in
Anthropology and in Crime and Society
(formerly the Criminal Justice Studies program).
Associated with
the expansion of those programs, together with recent retirements, we
also have some new faces on the faculty. We moved to new
quarters just a few years ago.
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Happy Birthday, Missouri State!
The
Missouri State
Centennial Celebration
by Professor Robin Amonker
Missouri State University is currently
celebrating 100 years of service. The centennial celebration
will recognize the University’s contribution to educational,
social and economic well-being of residents of Southwest
Missouri, the state, and beyond.
The centennial book entitled “Daring
to Excel: The First 100 Years of Missouri State University,” written by Dr. Don Landon, Emeritus
Professor of Sociology, has been published and distributed to
the public. Over the last 100 years, the University’s name has
changed several times to reflect its evolving role in Missouri
education.
Through the years, Missouri State’s name
changed from
State Normal School #4 (1905-1919) to
Southwest Missouri State Teachers College (1919-1946)
to Southwest Missouri State College (1946-1972)
and, finally, to Missouri State University
(1972-present).
Missouri State began in the summer of 1906 as a regional teachers school
serving 543 students from primarily 22 counties in
southwest
Missouri. It has grown into a university serving more than
20,000 students from every county in Missouri, 44
other states and 80 foreign countries
on three campuses located in Springfield,
West Plains,
and
Mountain Grove.
The Department of Sociology
and Anthropology has undergone several historical changes
over a period of 85 years. The sociology program at Missouri State,
starting in 1919 as a part of the History Department, became the
part of the newly created Department of Sociology and Economics
in 1930, where it remained until 1971. By 1976, Anthropology and
Social Work programs were added to the Department degree
offerings, and in 1980, the name of the Department was changed
to the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work.
The Department continued to grow in the 1990’s when a major in
Anthropology in 1997 and a major in Crime and Society in 1999
were added to the program. Since its inception, the Department
has made significant contributions to the societal and
educational needs of its students. At present, there are over
2000 living alumni from the Department programs in Sociology,
Anthropology, and Crime and Society. If you would like to
explore the history of the department
further, and perhaps find a familiar face or two among
our faculty old and new, please click the
above link.
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Changes in the Faculty and Headship
Mr.
Jeff London and Drs.
William Meadows,
Suzanne Walker, and
Gayle Rhineberger
have joined the faculty over the past four years. London and
Rhineberger teach courses primarily in the
criminal justice curriculum while Meadows and Walker teach
Anthropology courses. Recently retired are Drs. William Larkin
(SOC), Doris Ewing (SOC), and Burton Purrington (ANT).
Dr.
Melodye Lehnerer announced she will be retiring at the
end of the 2004 academic year. She will move to her home in Las
Vegas to join her husband and, it seems, the other millions of
people who are taking up residence in that exciting desert city.
Because Lehnerer teaches criminal justice courses, we are in the
process of searching for a replacement in that field of study.
Dr. and Mrs. William
("Bill") Larkin
moved to Kansas, immediately west of Kansas City and north of
Leavenworth. They have family in the area and are thoroughly
enjoying life in retirement. Dr. Ewing still lives in
Springfield, although she can be found traveling around the
world quite often. Dr. and Mrs. Purrington moved to Seattle to be
near family and the bounties of nature so prevalent in that part
of the country.
Dr.
Karl Kunkel became Head of the department about two years
ago replacing Dr.
Jeffrey Nash, who served in that position for eight years.
Mrs. Avon Bradshaw retired as our fulltime secretary and Mrs.
Janet Graham
now fills that position along with Mrs.
Christy
Titus, her assistant.
The department is happy to announce that
its participation in the online Master
of Science in Administrative Studies (MSAS) program
has been very successful. The
36 hour degree program requires 18 hours of
coursework in administration (through the College of
Business) and 18 hours in the Criminal
Justice component. Through our Crime and
Society program, our faculty teach the criminal justice courses.
If you'd like to learn more about the new program, please
visit its website. Give us a call or
email us
if you have additional questions.
That brings us to other changes which have taken
place in the
department, one of them a change in name of one
of our degree programs. Originally called the Criminal Justice
Studies (CJS) Program, our Crime and Society Program
will become known as the Criminology program
effective in the Fall of 2005. There are several
other changes, all of them outlined below and on the
next web page.
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We Moved!
|
If you don't already know, in 1999 we moved
from our old and rather cramped quarters in
Cheek
Hall to the smartest building on
campus -
Strong Hall, named after
the family of the well-known and highly respected
Springfield attorney, Tom Strong.
Our building is referred to as a "smart"
building because every classroom has
a link to the Internet, a video
player and large screen, and more.
Strong Hall is located on the eastern edge of
the Missouri State campus facing west into the Hammons'
Fountain and Carrington Hall.
We have a unique and beautiful
four-story atrium in the center of
the building in which we hold
several different ceremonies each
year and which students use daily
for studying and socializing.
Strong Hall has three large
classrooms in the basement and four
above-ground floors with office
suites for seven of the College of
Humanities and Public Affairs' eight
departments - Sociology and
Anthropology, Religious Studies,
Economics, Philosophy, Defense and
Strategic Studies, Political
Science, and the History Department.
Only the Department of Military
Science is housed outside Strong
Hall. Both our Public Television
(PBS) station and KSMU radio have
their headquarters and offices in
Strong Hall. |
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Next Page
If there is something about
the department you'd like to read about,
send your suggestions to the
editor and we'll try to include that material in the next
issue.