Our Opinion: SEMO Homecoming Week: The familiar and the new

It’s Homecoming Week at Southeast Missouri State University.

Each year, activities and events draw graduates and supporters from all over, and this year will feature familiar and special events.

An annual highlight of homecoming week is the Copper Dome Society and Merit Awards dinner. This year’s event will be Friday at the Show Me Center. A social hour will begin at 5:30 p.m., with the dinner following at 6:30 p.m.

Six alumni will receive awards for their service after leaving the university.

Jason Lane, Lew Miltenberger and Roosevelt Mitchell III will each receive an Alumni Merit Award.

Lane — an award-winning scholar, best-selling author and professor — has served as president of the National Association of Higher Education Systems and chairman of the Board of the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems.

Miltenberger is an attorney and has worked in Missouri, Illinois and Texas, after beginning his career in commercial real estate in Nashville, Tennessee.

Mitchell is an award-winning educator, special education supervisor for East St. Louis School District 189, author and speaker. Black Enterprise Magazine ranked him one of its “100 Most Influential Urban Professionals”.

Laura Hatcher will receive the Faculty Merit Award. She has taught constitutional law, judicial behavior, administrative law and disaster studies at the university for a decade. She is chair of the Department of Political Science and serves as the department’s pre-law coordinator.

Tiffany Rodriguez will receive the Distinguished Service Award for her work as a forensic chemist. For more than two decades, she worked at the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Laboratory, and she now works for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Among her work has been to restore the ATF’s Trace Evidence section’s accreditation.

Tara Meyer will receive the Distinguished Young Alumni Award for her work as a costumer in Los Angeles. She had led teams on Emmy-winning productions of “The Masked Singer” and “Beauty and the Beast Live!”

The Homecoming parade is another staple event. Beginning at 9:30 a.m. Saturday, the parade will travel down Broadway. Be sure to stake out your spot early!

A special addition this year will be the official ribbon cutting on the Charles Stamp Cyber Command Center. The event will be at 11:45 a.m. Friday at Dempster Hall, 1121 Greek Drive. The university’s cybersecurity program has boomed in recent years, and Stamp’s $1 million donation to the new facility will enhance student learning even further.

Of course, all the Homecoming hubbub will culminate when the nationally ranked Redhawks (7-1) take the football field against Gardner-Webb (2-5) at 2 p.m. Saturday.

The shiny, sparkly, newly reconstructed stadium is the perfect location to cap off Homecoming. It’s a showpiece for the university and Cape Girardeau. (And the weather promises to be outstanding!)

We look forward to seeing friends old and new this week, and we congratulate SEMO on another exciting Homecoming Week.