During his tour of Missouri Southern, President-Elect Dr. Bruce W. Speck spoke at a faculty and at an open forum. He talked about his love of teaching, the challenges he has faced and his philosophy of leadership.

“I’m not looking for a presidency where you can settle in and get comfortable,” Speck said. “I would like to think that I would have been a president who first of all, would have brought people together.

“I would like to believe that when I left I would have friends.”

Improvements on his list were more involvement between the students and the University, then taking it a step further and having the University more involved in the community.

Coming from Austin State University, Speck described it as similar to Missouri Southern with a large commuter population due to nearby Fort Campbell. School enrollment had been the fastest-growing enrollment in the state for the three years prior to this.

Speck has addressed many issues during his tenure there. He answered questions about student involvement, talked about diversity and described the decision-making process that led to Austin Peay going smoke free.

Speck had been at Austin Peay since 2001 and held the position of provost and vice president for academic and student affairs. Before taking the position at Austin Peay, he was associate vice-chancellor at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. He worked nine years at the University of Memphis, where he coordinated the Writing-Across-the-Curriculum program. At Indiana University-Purdue University he developed a master’s program in technical writing. He began his career as a science writer.

Speck is a graduate of University of Northern Colorado. He received his master’s degree at Wayne State College and holds a doctorate from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

He has authored and co-authored more than 20 books on topics of education, writing, editing, service-learning and a volume of poetry.

“My sense of leadership is that I’m here to serve the people here,” Speck said.

He described the president’s position as that of “ultimate decision maker,” but emphasized the need for taking the counsel of others.

“If you don’t consult with faculty, if you don’t consult with staff, if you don’t consult with people then you can come up with this brilliant idea and it can have all these flaws,” he said. “A president can only bring so much to the table. You really have to tap into the creativity of the people on the campus.”