Dr. Alan Marble was unanimously approved by the Board of Governors to assume the position of University president on a one-year interim contract today during a closed executive session.  Marble replaces outgoing president Dr. Bruce Speck, whose departure was announced Monday.

“I’m delighted,” Marble said. “There is a world of opportunity here at Missouri Southern.

“This is a great university with great faculty, a great president’s council and great students—my goodness. There is nothing but success ahead for us.”

Marble had recently been hired by Speck to serve as interim assistant to the president.

Richard Walter, BOG chairman, says that the position of assistant to the president will not be filled.

“Our staffing needs change periodically,” Walter said. “This one happened to be a high profile one but he will make decisions and recommendations to the board on where we need to go.

“We aren’t going to do anything or fill that position until we hear what he has to say.”

Marble was hired close to the time of Speck’s evaluation as University president. Soon after, the BOG announced the vacant position but did not release information as to why on grounds that personnel hiring and firing laws do not require them to make this information public.

“We had talked to him [Speck] about his performance and we had talked among our selves about his performance,” Walter said. “There have been questions about how we’ve gone about it.”

Sherry Buchanan, past BOG chair, assured the University that the search for a new University president begins today.

“I think we have incredible opportunities,” Buchanan said. “There are many challenges today within higher education and I think Southern is looking at those realistically and trying to figure out how we want to move ahead. There are so many projects across the horizon and I think students are going to be overwhelmed with the possibilities that could be happening.”

Marble recently retired from his position as president at Crowder College after serving there in multiple capacities for 27 years. He had been president since 2006. Marble is also a Southern graduate from the class of 1979.

“Fingers crossed, knock on wood that it all goes well,” Noah Triplett, Student Senate president said.