Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 5, 1991 TAG: 9104060423
SECTION: FOUNDERS DAY PAGE: VT-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
"I cut that out of the paper and sent it to him, and I told him not to ever say that again unless he meant it," she said with a laugh.
"He called me later and said that he did mean it. Marshall always did what he said he was going to do," the dean added.
T. Marshall Hahn Jr. created many opportunities for the sons and daughters of Virginia. In his 12-years as president, from 1962-74, Hahn set the stage for the evolution of VPI from a small, highly technical school to the modern, comprehensive university it is today.
In celebrating its future by honoring its past, Virginia Tech recognizes the accomplishments of its 11th president at Founders Day 1991.
Nothing describes the changes that took place at VPI more than the word university. It was Hahn who first started calling the school a university.
"I was a reporter for the Richmond papers when Marshall first started talking about this university out in the mountains," said Lon Savage, Hahn's former assistant.
"We reporters kind of chuckled at him. `Who is this guy?' we asked. But Marshall kept repeating it over and over. Soon others picked it up and started saying it, too." he added.
Savage also noted that internally, people around the school began to use it as a benchmark to assess policy decisions and directions. "You would ask the question: Does a particular action help or hinder the concept of a university?" he said. "For the development plan, the long-range goal, university said it all."
To achieve his goal, Hahn was forced to go against some cherished traditions very early in his presidency. It was a time of controversy and change.
Certainly the most notable of these was the Board of Visitor's decision, at Hahn's request, to make participation in the Corps of Cadets optional.
"Nothing could have happened without that change," said Savage. "You just couldn't attract the students with mandatory service. We would always be another VMI."
"The lines were drawn," said former physics professor and colleague Andrew Robeson. "Those who were content were upset by Hahn. Younger people like myself were excited. Those who had been away from Blacksburg saw that we couldn't grow to a position in the state with compulsory military."
Many of the university's most dedicated alumni were enraged by the decision. The rector of the board, Thomas Rice, resigned over the issue. And Governor A.S. Harrison requested a public hearing on the matter with the understanding the board should reconsider its decision. It did, again voting to make participation optional.
Hahn also moved to fulfill his promise to Dean Harper to open the university to women. Hahn led the effort to sever the institutional and legislative ties that merged VPI to Radford College in 1944. While the state's goal in merging the two schools, as well as the University of Virginia and Mary Washington College, was to restrict and reduce the number of state supported institutions, women students were required to take their first- and second-year classes at the female institutions if both schools offered the same classes.
Harper notes that while this legislation was primarily aimed at excluding women from the University of Virginia, Institution X as Hahn liked to call the Charlottesville school, it, along with the mandatory corps requirement, kept significant numbers of women from attending Virginia Tech.
"Women students couldn't come to VPI for their first two years unless they were a bona fide resident of Blacksburg or lived in Hillcrest Dormitory," said Harper. "Otherwise, they had to got to Radford.
"Splitting from Radford helped women come to VPI. And Marshall had built the housing that enabled them to stay here," she noted.
But Hahn's achievements were more than just bricks and mortar and growing enrollments. They were qualitative, as well.
"He put us on a level where we should have been, with the likes of Wisconsin and Cornell," Harper notes.
The Hahn years also saw the creation of three new colleges: Architecture was broken off from the College of Engineering; Arts and Sciences was created from several schools; and Education evolved from the College of Arts and Sciences.
Fellow physicist Robeson likens Hahn's achievements as president to that of his leadership of the physics department which he headed from 1954-59.
"Hahn built the physics department," Robeson says directly.
"When I graduated, my degree was in industrial physics," he added. "The University of Virginia had the physics program; VPI could only have an industrial physics program. That was the way things worked back then.
"Marshall oversaw the evolution of the physics department from a technical view to a full physics department."
Robeson also notes that Hahn was desperate to have a Ph.D. program. "When I came here I was the third Ph.D. in the department," he said.
Yet Hahn also saw opportunity in a new and growing field: atomic energy. Robeson notes that Hahn had the foresight to send him to Oak Ridge, Tenn., to train at the federal research facility for two years, even while he was desperately building his new department.
"In the 1950s under President Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace program, atomic energy could do no wrong. Marshall recognized this would strengthen the department and generate the research dollars needed to move the department.
"Marshall built the Ph.D. program by going out and recruiting instructors who were doctoral candidates, and we didn't even have a program yet. That's salesmanship," Robeson said admiringly.
Virginia Tech has sometimes been called the "house that Hahn built," and there is is no denying the tremendous changes he made at the institution. In addition to serving as this year's Founders Day speaker, the university is naming the chemistry research building in his honor.
One thing is certain, though. Virginia Tech has not heard the last of T. Marshall Hahn.
As Robeson wryly notes: "He will probably have a dialogue with the undertaker."
by CNB