Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, September 2, 1994 TAG: 9409020051
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
That's why mid-tier institutions like Radford University are as important as their higher-profile brethren - and why bringing an old Radford era to a close, so that a new one may dawn, is a good thing.
Closure of an old era ought to be helped with news this week of the settling of petty-cash accounts with retiring President Donald Dedmon. Under the settlement, made after an audit of the president's discretionary fund, Dedmon repaid about $1,800 to the university.
As with an earlier repayment, no evidence of intent to defraud was reported. Indeed, some of the questioned items might have been justified if Dedmon - on medical leave until his retirement in August 1995 - had cared to dispute the bill.
The fact that the reported irregularities are relatively trivial offers additional confirmation that allegations of financial mismanagement were not at the heart of faculty complaints about the longtime president. More fundamental were criticisms that Dedmon's management style had grown autocratic, that he had overseen a bureaucratic expansion isolating him from the rest of campus life, that he had become the man who stayed too long.
With acting President Charles Owens working to unclog procedures and inspire renewed stress on academics, such issues also should be reaching resolution. If so, the university can devote its full energies to looking toward the future.
An excellent example of what that can accomplish is the university's New (and new) College of Global Studies. Ground was broken for this impressive initiative this week; the college's first 50 students are expected to enter next year. Its mission is to train students for jobs in the multicultural global economy, a mission that can pay off not only for the students and the university but also for Southwest Virginia.
The college is to depart from tradition in both content and techniques of education. It will offer new kinds of interdisciplinary majors, such as global environmental management and international education. There also are plans to rely on fast-emerging computer technology of international communications, and to de-emphasize traditional grading.
Transition to the new does not, however, render irrelevant a good understanding of the old. Viewing the Dedmon era through the prism of only its last few years would be a mistake.
Should it be a criticism, for example, that the average SAT scores of entering Radford students stayed below 900 during the Dedmon years while enrollment was growing from 3,700 to nearly 9,000? If enrollment had been held down, Radford presumably could have risen a notch or two on the selectivity scale. But in a state amply supplied with selective institutions, the university served a greater need by educating larger numbers of less spectacular students.
That point does not invalidate the wisdom of stressing academics at Radford, but makes it all the more imperative. For the good of its future, America needs well-educated young people, whether they scored 1250 or 850 on the SAT.
by CNB