
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, September 10, 1994                   TAG: 9409120061
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-1   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY  
SOURCE: By RICK LINDQUIST STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG                                LENGTH: Medium

NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM'S CHIEF NOT ALARMED BY FUND SCARE

The Virginia Tech Museum of Natural History intends to have a long life - and possibly even a prosperous one - despite the potentially shaky future of its parent Virginia Museum of Natural History in Martinsville, which supplies almost 60 percent of its annual budget.

Gov. George Allen's commission on reorganizing state government announced this week it was considering eliminating the Martinsville museum as a state agency and turning it over to a nonprofit foundation. But Susan Eriksson, who directs the Virginia Tech branch on North Main Street, on Friday predicted the Blacksburg museum will survive because it's has been doing more with less all along.

"We've been cut back every year and we're growing in our programs," said Eriksson, who explained that the Blacksburg branch is set up as a university museum. The collections all belong to Virginia Tech, and the museum branch's two full-time and two part-time staffers are university employees.

When Eriksson came aboard in 1990, the branch - which opened in 1989 - got $114,000 in state money from the headquarters museum, funneled through Virginia Tech. This year, the figure was $88,000. The rest of the branch's budget comes from various grants and donations, approximately $59,000 in all this year, she said.

"We have [funding] crises every year, so we're always looking for long-term funding," she said. "We have thrived in spite of the budgetary restrictions." She also thinks the Blacksburg branch makes good use of its money.

Eriksson estimated that each year, 20,000 people visit the museum's exhibits or use its research facilities and collections. That includes school tours and those touring the affiliated Museum of Geological Sciences on the Tech campus. Thousands more take advantage of the museum's various outreach programs, she said. "We're a window for the public to the research at the university," she said.

Because of its close association with the university, many students - perhaps each year - use the museum's facilities as part of their classes, Eriksson estimated. In addition, grants to the museum have funded research to enhance public school programs in the natural sciences.

"I'm really proud of what we've done here," she said. As a result, "the educational community has been very supportive."

While no one's pushing the panic button just yet, Martinsville's dicey future is likely to generate talk of contingency plans when the museum's board meets Tuesday. Eriksson is taking a wait-and-see approach. "We've been through this before," she said. "We will proceed as though the funding is secure."

Memo: ***CORRECTION***

by CNB