Former art teacher now heads SEMO foundation

Former high school baseball coach and seed corn salesman Wayne Smith knows how to pitch a product. Now Smith is gearing up to make a pitch for his alma mater, Southeast Missouri State University.

Smith, a vice president with Verizon in the Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, area, is returning to Cape Girardeau as the new vice president of university advancement at Southeast and executive director of the university foundation.

University president Ken Dobbins said Smith's experience and corporate connections should benefit the foundation's fund-raising efforts.

In the fiscal year that ended June 30, the foundation received cash contributions of $5.6 million and supervised endowments of $21.8 million.

Smith replaces Alan Zacharias, who resigned Sept. 1 to take a job with a Chicago-based consulting firm. Smith, 54, will receive a salary of $120,000 and manage a 12-member staff.

While he doesn't officially begin his new job until Nov. 30, Smith said he's already met with various community leaders. He's also spent time at the foundation office, getting up to speed on the fund-raising operation.

"I'm doing a whole lot of listening," Smith said Friday. "I want to get a head start."

Smith, who grew up on a farm near Delta and still owns that land, said he never could have imagined returning to the campus as a university vice president.

After graduating Southeast with a teaching degree in 1971, he took a job as a high school art teacher at Pacific, Mo., and coached the baseball team. He also drove the team bus.

To supplement his income, he sold seed corn in the summer.

Smith, who was living in the St. Louis area, had a neighbor who worked for Southwestern Bell. At the neighbor's suggestion, Smith took a job working with the company's Yellow Pages directory operations.

He spent a dozen years with the telecommunications giant, serving in various management positions.

But after attending a funeral in Chaffee, Mo., for a friend killed in a farming accident, Smith decided it was time for a career change.

"It made me think, 'What do I want to do with my life?'"

Smith spotted a Southeast Missourian want ad for a company that was starting up a cellular telephone business. "I said, 'God's speaking to me,'" Smith recalled.

He took the job, becoming general manager of Cybertel in 1991 and setting up the first cellular telephone network in Southeast Missouri.

"I started out with a room at the Holiday Inn, a rotary-dial phone and a license from the FCC," he said.

Beginning in 1994, he moved on to a series of jobs with other telecommunciations companies.

For the past 2 1/2 years he has been a vice president with Verizon, managing the company's business pages telephone directory operation in the United States.

He has helped direct a sales and marketing team of more than 700 employees.

Smith said his experience at marketing products and services should help him in his new job. "There is no better product than this university," he said.

mbliss@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 123