It took a $4.4 million renovation to bring it about, but the social science building on the campus of Southeast Missouri State University finally has a name.

The university's Board of Regents has decided to call the building A.S.J. Carnahan Hall in honor of Southeast Missouri State graduate Albert Sidney Johnson Carnahan. Carnahan, who died March 24, 1968, at the age of 71, is the father of Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan.

Built in 1901-1902 as the science hall, the social science building is the oldest structure on the Southeast campus. The building, which is behind Academic Hall, was closed in 1993 because of structural problems detected during installation of an elevator. That led to the renovation. The building, which houses the political science and history departments, reopened in August.

A.S.J. Carnahan Hall is a fitting name for the building.

Carnahan, who grew up in Carter County, graduated with a bachelor's degree in education from the university -- then called Southeast Missouri State Teachers College -- in 1926. He served as a school administrator in Carter, Reynolds and Shannon counties until 1944, when he received the Democratic nomination for the Southeast Missouri congressional seat. He was elected to Congress in November 1944 and served seven terms, retiring in January 1961.

He was a delegate to the United Nations in 1957 and served as a congressional adviser to the U.S. delegation to the Second International Conference on Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1958. President John F. Kennedy appointed Carnahan as the U.S. ambassador to the then newly independent African nation of Sierra Leone in 1961, a position he held for two years.

He was awarded the university's Alumni Merit Award in 1962 in recognition of his career in public service.

Long before Carnahan attended Southeast, he was teaching in one-room rural schoolhouses in the foothills of the Ozarks. He attended the Crommertown country school near his hometown of Ellsinore, and at age 17, had already begun teaching at that school. After two years of teaching at Crommertown, he taught two years at Hogan Hollow, another rural school in Carter County. He then taught grades 4 through 8 for a year at Ellsinore.

Carnahan spent a lifetime dedicated to education and later public service, and the Carnahan family can feel proud that the science building will carry his name.