Southeast rings bell for 807 December graduates

As the carillon within the dome of Academic Hall reverberated its vibrant tone Saturday, the words of Nelson Mandela rang out around campus.

“It always seems impossible, until it is done.”

That was the message Southeast Missouri State University president Carlos Vargas-Aburto passed on that resonated with the 807 new Southeast graduates at their commencement ceremony.

Among the graduates, 620 earned undergraduate degrees, and 187 earned master’s degrees and specialist candidates.

One graduate in particular felt the presence of the carillon’s tune a little greater.

Fred “Chris” Naeter of Cape Girardeau earned a Bachelor of Science in corporate communication. His relationship with Southeast, though, is rooted much deeper than the five years he spent there.

Naeter comes from a family that helped shape pieces of Cape Girardeau’s history. His great-great-uncles came to the city from St. Louis by boat. As soon as they dropped anchor, they began to make an difference in the community.

His uncles were responsible for starting the Southeast Missourian newspaper and the placing of the first stoplight in town.

Naeter’s great-uncle, Fred Naeter, his namesake, donated the carillon that is heard at Southeast today.

“Fred traveled a lot, and he noticed how churches and universities had chimes and bell systems,” Naeter said. “He saw that SEMO didn’t have that, and he wanted to provide that to them, so he donated it. “

According to Naeter, he grew up to the sounds of that bell.

His mom went to Southeast while he was a boy, and she often would bring him along to classes and study groups. He said from that experience, Southeast always felt like home.

He attended University of Missouri-Columbia his first two years of college, but moved back to the place his family planted their roots.

“I wanted to come back because my mom went to school here, so I remember growing up always running around campus with my mom and running around Kent library,” Chris Naeter said.

During his time at Southeast, Chris Naeter not only attended school, but was married, had a child and worked a full-time job as a carpenter.

“Going to school and doing all that was tough,” Naeter said. “I am proud of myself because I have hardly any debt. I would take a few classes at a time and pay them off. You just have to know what you want in life and work toward that.”

After seven years working toward his undergraduate degree, Naeter graduated from the school that links his family’s history to his future.

Naeter eventually would like to earn a master’s degree in history and become a professor.

In the December graduating class, Naeter is not the only one with a family history invested in the university. Abby Tinnin of Festus, Missouri, is one of 20 members of her family who have graduated from Southeast and one of 10 who found their passion in teaching.

Tinnin said her family lineage at Southeast dates back four generations from when her great-great-grandmother went to school when Southeast was still a teachers college.

“She taught in a one-room schoolhouse down near Charleston,” Tinnin said. “That obviously sparked an interest with my grandma, my grandma’s sister, my mom, my cousin and now me. It’s a big part of our family, for sure.”

Tinnin said growing up in a family of teachers had a huge effect on the development of her teaching career and the passion behind it. She said throughout her childhood, she spent much of it in her mother’s classroom, helping her any way she could. Her mother’s passion became her own.

“All those years I saw her come home, and she was excited about teaching and just seeing the lightbulb moments in kids, and it was just kind of a cool thing to see,” Tinnin said.

It’s those lightbulb moments that keep her moving as a teacher, and she said there has been no better university to prepare her than Southeast.

“I looked at a couple schools, but at the end of the day, it was not really comparing apples to apples because Southeast was so up there with their degree program,” Tinnin said.

According to Tinnin, she felt Southeast did a great job preparing her as an educator.

She has a job lined up as a teacher’s assistant at Clippard Elementary School and is hoping to find a position in Cape Girardeau to become a teacher and work to make an impression on her students.

“My underlying motto anytime I am in the classroom is that every child can learn no matter what,” Tinnin said. “As long as their basic needs are met. If you have a child that comes in and they might not get a hug at home or have food in their stomach, there is no way they are going to learn anything you teach them. If those needs aren’t being met, you cannot really move forward from that.”