Its purpose was to provide professional-level continuing education and graduate degree programs in engineering, management, and applied science for career advancement, updating, and redirection.
SIT received 501(c)(3) status from the Internal Revenue Service, allowing gifts to the Institute to be tax deductible.
Box 1485, Huntsville, AL. As a professional school, SIT differed from standard academic institutions in a number of important ways: The Huntsville metropolitan area has one of the highest concentrations of engineers and scientists in the United States, and is the home of hundreds of high-technology industrial and governmental organizations.
Southeastern Institute of Technology was then planned as a stand-alone professional school, with the purpose of meeting the special needs of this high-technology community.
The planners included individuals who had previously been involved in the graduate programs and continuing education then available in Huntsville, and understood the potential students as well as the shortcomings of the existing offerings.
By 2004, the SIT Board decided that the original purpose of the school was no longer valid and duplication of effort was not in the community's best interest.
The school continues, however, as an entity, allowing the completion of degree requirements by the many students who were near the end of their master's and doctoral studies.
This schedule was designed to be optimum for part-time students, allowing good progress toward a degree while pursuing one course at a time.
Persons with considerable senior-level experience but who had not completed a college degree might be admitted to pursue a combined Bachelor's-Master's Program.
These included the administrative offices, classrooms, a computer laboratory, and a library with some 10,000 volumes and hundreds of journal and magazine series.
As an independent professional school with many non-traditional characteristics, Southeastern Institute of Technology was not eligible for SACS accreditation.
For programmatic accreditation in management, the primary cognizant body is the Association of Collegiate Business Schools and Programs (ACBSP).
In the absence of accreditation eligibility, the Alabama State Department of Education periodically made comprehensive assessments of SIT and its degree programs as part of the licensing procedures.