State Tech awards 1st honorary degree to Claycomb

Campus building renamed after Claycomb

LINN, Mo. -- State Technical College of Missouri graduates this weekend heard a commencement message from the man who’s led the Linn-based school for 23-years — and who also is leaving at the end of June.

Donald Claycomb has guided the school through three name changes and two owners.

And he’s leaving with two other firsts — until Saturday, the school never had awarded an honorary degree. The Board of Regents gave Claycomb an honorary degree for his service and dedication to the college.

He was the first college official to carry a “mace” to graduation ceremonies, launching a new tradition.

And although not a first, the Regents are renaming the Information Technology Center in Claycomb’s honor.

Completed in 2001, it was one of the first buildings erected under Claycomb’s leadership on the new campus east of Linn.

John Klebba, State Tech’s long-time Board of Regents president, said in a news release that Claycomb’s level of contribution over the years is deserving of the college’s first honorary degree and the dedication of the building that is the hub of the main campus east of Linn — a campus Claycomb helped develop.

“It’s a reminder that this building was the first of many facilities built under his leadership,” Vicki Schwinke, State Tech’s chief academic officer, said. “It recognizes and honors his vision and tenacity to create a college campus worthy of the State’s one and only statewide technical college.”

Claycomb announced his retirement plans in January 2015.

“It’s been a wonderful experience,” he told the News Tribune in an interview after his retirement announcement. “I can’t imagine, as I’ve told people, anything having been any more rewarding, as far as a career is concerned, for me.”

Claycomb was hired in 1993 by the Linn R-2 School District, which had started the technical education program in the 1960s, to be president of Linn Technical College — and, he said, to help figure out a way to get the local school district out of the technical college business.

With the help of state and federal career-education money, then-Superintendent Thurman Willett’s vision of a technical education program had grown from a space underneath the high school gymnasium to a unique position among Missouri schools.

In the mid-1990s, the Legislature authorized state government to take over the program and renamed it Linn State Technical College.

Claycomb quipped in that January 2015 interview: “I got to be the last president of Linn Technical College (and) I got to be the first and only president of Linn State Technical College.”

With the help of lawmakers and Gov. Jay Nixon, Linn State changed its name in 2014 to the current name — State Technical College of Missouri — as a better way to identify the school and its statewide mission.

“That period of time from 1993 up until the present,” Claycomb noted, “is the longest tenure of any public (school) president, whether it be four-year or two-year, in the state of Missouri,” although there are one or two private college heads with a longer tenure.

State Tech’s board of regents announced in March that Shawn D. Strong — currently dean of Business Technology and Communication at Minnesota’s Bemidji State University/Northwest Technical College and a 14-year veteran at Missouri State University, Springfield — will succeed him July 1.