Dr. Toni Alexander has had a love affair with culture and geography since her time in college. Since then she has worked to research and teach others about marginalized cultures consisting of people who have been left out or left behind. When she applied for the position of the Global Cultures and Languages Department chair for Southeast Missouri State University last year, she knew the position and the area would be the perfect fit for her and her family.

How did you come to be at Southeast?

Before I arrived here I spent nine years at Auburn University in Alabama, and I'm predominantly a cultural and historical geographer, so I'm interested in culture and diversity. I'm particularly interested in what we say are "spatially marginalized" populations, which basically is for people who get kind of put in the corner and excluded physically and socially. ... I was there for nine years [Auburn] and coming here offered me, well one, it was a chair position, but also, this department's much closer to what I do in terms of, I've always had all my previous degrees were integrated with anthropology and language and geography, so it was a good fit.

The other thing is, Southeast is a lot more like the undergrad school I went to. I am a first-generation college student and I grew up in California, but I grew up in the part of California nobody knows about. I grew up in the rural and agricultural part, so the middle of the state, lots of cows, lots of almond orchards, lots of dairies. I went to a regional school there called California State University Stanislaus; it was founded in the 1960s. It was a very student-focused school. So every one of my professors knew me, you know, I had no problems interacting. I mean, I could stop in and see them, I could ask questions, and I'm pretty sure without having had that experience with them -- and it wasn't just in my own major it was any professor I had -- I wouldn't have then been encouraged to go on to grad school and at first I was just going to get that bachelor's degree because as far as I knew that's all you did in college was get a bachelor's degree. At Auburn I really missed that. ... I really wanted to get back to a school that was much more student-focused.

What does leadership mean to you?

I think for me it has to do with being able to bring out the best in what people do. Not everybody is supposed to do exactly the same thing, but knowing what their strengths are -- I mean you still have to deal within the confines of what the university says somebody has to do -- but it's really recognizing that everybody's got different strengths, and allowing them to bring that out to contribute to the overall goal. It's more of a facilitator than a dictator. Sometimes you still have to make those decisions that people don't like, but at the same time the idea is the overall goal to get everybody achieving.

What roles do you hold on campus?

Administratively I'm a department chair, but I also teach. Last semester as my first semester I taught one class, this semester I'll teach two and that's my usual load because of the duties here. Also we all have to have research.

... Right now I'm actually working on projects that relate to disability in the university, but particularly what are called "invisible disabilities" among faculty. Often universities have really good support systems for students faced with disabilities, but they don't really know what to do with faculty often -- particularly if it's mental-health related.

What, to you, constitutes a quality leader?

I guess for me it's accessibility, the other thing is often people need to feel like they can actually speak to that person without fear of being penalized for what you said or, because a lot of times, and this is at every institution I've ever been at, people will hold kind of these pent up things they're frustrated with, and it's any organization.

... One of the reasons I accepted the offer here had to do with the higher [education] term "collegiality." It's not necessarily likability of people, they always stress it's not likability -- it's a willingness to work with each other, and a willingness to try and negotiate. And that was one of the things that struck me when I visited here, was the department is very collegial, and generally on campus that's the case.

The university here seems to foster more a sense of collaboration than competition. ... Here, even across campus, I've had more people reach out just to see what can they do, is there something they can help me with, than I've seen anywhere else.

Who have been your role models, past and present?

I mean probably foremost, earliest, and it sounds very cliché, is my dad. My dad actually never graduated from high school, and he points out you can't do that today. But he ended up eventually becoming a construction foreman, and it was long hours, but part of it was he always respected education. The other thing I had was also, and we've reconnected on LinkedIn, my undergraduate adviser. Even though he's been retired for quite a few years, I was thinking about even the way he approaches his classes was very similar.

So if you talked to students who have taken my class last semester one of the things they find, and maybe this is bad, maybe my enrollments for the spring will drop, is I will -- my job as a professor is to push you. A class shouldn't be a cakewalk. It shouldn't be demoralizing and everything else, but part of it should be that I should push you, but I also need to give you the tools to be able to do it. ... I remember I wasn't even a geography major at the time, I was a social science [education] major so I could be a high school teacher. And one of the classes that was required, I remember I'd never had him before. I was sitting outside the door on the first day of class and there were some other education majors sitting there who were talking, they were like "Oh, he's so tough," "I heard he's so tough," "Just let me get a C and get out of here," and my first thing was well, if someday I could have to teach this, I probably need to do more than that. Later on as I had him I mentioned that day and he said, "Well what did you think," and I was like "No, you weren't unreasonable," I said "You put in as much as you expected us to." ... It's kind of like I always say, if I expect students to show up to class prepared and on time, I need to do the same thing.

Why do you think it's important for cultures to have strong leaders, especially in light of the recent terrorist attacks in Paris?

Part of it is I think people want some form of assurance. One of the things that, I was just looking at online, since the attacks in Paris, France, has some very strict speech laws in terms of restricting free speech. ... One of the things that happened is, they now are experiencing this kind of swing which is people are being arrested for if you publicly state, verbally or in writing, and it actually has a harsher proposed penalty if you do it on the Internet, for saying something like "The attackers were right." By law you don't have the right to say that.

... France has been in this position for quite a while, but this is the first time these laws have really been used. You're talking about prison sentences, and in some cases people are being arrested and convicted and put in jail within three days. ... One of the things that's come out is the president of France has actually kind of stepped back and said this needs to be free speech, if we propose free speech we need to start thinking about what we're doing, and that idea of "Let's not get wrapped up in the emotion of the moment," let's sit back and actually think about it. We certainly don't want this stuff going on. Some people would critique it and say "Well why was it OK for the magazine to target -- why was that not hate-speech? Or violence?" You know, but other things qualify, so there's a lot of debate over that right now.

... [In terms of the peace march in France] I think it was a really big deal. I mean, it was an interesting position for the administration here was immediately critiqued for not participating in it. And now they did start to say, "Well, we couldn't have, in the short time span, it wasn't really possible for or reasonable to do the security stuff to get President Obama there." But I did notice on the news today they had John Kerry, and also pointed out because he's fluent in French. But you know, the question is, was it a little too little a little too late? It's interesting because I was like, "It's a peace march." You're getting mad because somebody's not participating at a peace march. If the idea is tolerance and that -- I mean I get it, I do think there should have been a representative there, but at the same time, you go "It's kind of ironic, isn't it?"