Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 28, 1994 TAG: 9408300023
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By ALLISON BLAKE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RADFORD NOTE: ABOVE LENGTH: Long
For the first time in recent memory, the door to the Radford University president's office is open.
Huge applause greeted Charles Owens the day he announced he'd moved into the presidential suite's big office, swapping with the president's assistant, who moved into the smaller office next door. "The inner sanctum," some had called it, when President Donald Dedmon worked there.
A major change is under way at Radford, where in the last two weeks Owens, Radford's new acting president, held not only the usual faculty convocation, but also the first student convocation in years.
As his temporary administration gets under way, Owens is stressing academic excellence. He's dismantling the cumbersome bureaucracy that reported directly to top administrators. He wants to revamp the university's internal governance system, so a greater number of campus groups are represented more fairly.
He presides over a decidedly upbeat campus, where the future is the watchword.
"When I assumed the role of acting president in June, I asked all of us to ignore the past and look to the future," Owens told the assembled faculty last week. "I really appreciate the response of nearly all of you to that request.
"We have had a most positive, forward-looking, optimistic atmosphere at the university this summer."
Owens' let's-all-work-together ethic is in striking contrast to the mood that surrounded his predecessor's last months.
For about the last two of his 22 years at the former women's college, Dedmon had come to be seen by many on campus as a control-driven president in near absentia.
There was his sabbatical in Hawaii in 1992. His days spent lobbying in Richmond - a skill at which all agree he was very good. Then, late last winter, misfortune struck when his spleen ruptured. He was forced to recuperate for weeks following a serious operation, reportedly at his South Carolina beach home.
Lingering now is a sense of irony: Dedmon is a nationally noted communications scholar with a thick rsum, known for giving engaging speeches. Owens, meanwhile, is a chemist by training who basked in a near-ovation for simply announcing that he wanted open lines of campus communication.
In his early years at Radford, Dedmon spoke to civic groups, lunched with students in the cafeteria, opened his door to interviews and worked hard to increase the profile of what was then a faltering women's college.
But his increasing distance in recent years fueled a certain mystery and intrigue on campus.
Ultimately, rebellion ensued, albeit led by a well-ensconced faction of tenured faculty. In June, Dedmon abruptly announced his retirement after members of the faculty released documents that they alleged showed financial impropriety.
An audit into his discretionary fund was launched the same day Dedmon announced his departure, which was accelerated by his lingering illness. The board of visitors also learned for the first time that the state had conducted a "whistle-blower" audit into the same fund in 1993. Dedmon had owed money.
But neither board nor faculty members knew about sweeping guidelines that allowed broad use of the fund, adopted by another board years ago - and considered nearly routine by state auditors familiar with discretionary funds.
Dedmon is expected to owe "a very small" sum after the audit report is reviewed Tuesday, board Rector Bernard Wampler said.
But the audit is only part of the story.
"Here's a guy who got his doctorate in oral communication, and he couldn't communicate with the faculty," retired history Professor Ed Jervey said the day Dedmon suddenly announced his retirement. "If he had communicated with the faculty, this thing never would have happened."
"[Dedmon] ruled with an iron hand," longtime Professor John Rutherford said.
The university named a state-of-the-art, multimillion-dollar sports complex the Donald N. Dedmon Center - a tribute rarely seen among sitting university presidents, critics say.
He had an assistant who drove him around. Then, last year, a campus furor arose when tenure was granted to his longtime administrative assistant, who did not undergo the grueling process professors must endure for the same job security.
The president who successfully lobbied Richmond legislators for almost $30 million on buildings that went up under his watch, and who increased the total student population by nearly 6,000 to 9,400, came under increasing attack from a faculty that questioned his devotion to academic excellence.
Standard academic indicators show that that the freshmen who entered Radford in 1992 had combined Scholastic Aptitude Test scores of 888. The same group entering James Madison University, the Virginia school most often compared with Radford, came in at 1,101.
Of last year's Radford freshmen, 53.6 percent entered with grade-point averages between 2.5 and 3.0.
But fewer than one in four of the Radford freshmen who came in 1985 graduated in four years; it took seven years for 53.4 percent to graduate. Those figures reflect Radford's status as "a second-choice school." Many entering freshmen transfer but are counted in statistics, said Carter Fletcher, Radford's director of institutional research.
Focusing on academics is one of Owens' big goals, and that includes plans to tighten Radford's admissions guidelines. Hopefully, that will help dispel Radford's nagging image - deserved or not - as "a party school."
A Falls Church guidance counselor described Radford as "a good alternative," and "a fine state school."
"But the problem we have faced - our kids get to feeling it's still got that party-school reputation," said Marilyn Anderson, director of guidance at George Mason Middle and High School.
Asked to describe the school's previous focus, the diplomatic Owens chose his words carefully.
"Much of the emphasis, and it certainly wasn't conscious, was on Radford being a good place to be. Come for `a good life.' I think what we didn't have was a sense of priorities.
"Academics should be the first priority; the others, second," Owens said.
"The message to students is going to be: Radford University is going to emphasize academic excellence. To do anything less is to shortchange students."
Owens wants the new admissions requirements to be ready for next year's recruits.
The former president, said retired Professor Harold Mann, was "absolutely cynical" about sound academics.
"He deserves permanent recognition for his lobbying skills in Richmond. But an honest assessment of his 22-year tenure as leader of RU nevertheless gives him small credit. In my mind, he was hindered most by a disregard of the good sense of the general faculty, and even of his deans and Radford city fathers.
"The tragedy, at a higher level, is the failure of several boards of visitors to function in close scrutiny and oversight."
Al Pearson, the self-described faculty "lightning rod" who led the tenure battle and obtained the under-audit documents, mused over Dedmon's presidential legacy.
``If only he'd left after 10 years ...''
But he didn't.
When Donald Dedmon was hired in 1972, he was a "take-charge" leader.
He showed up for an interview and wowed a board that nearly had hired a close associate of Charles Martin, the previous president, said Maynard Turk, a Wilmington, Del., lawyer who served on the board at that time.
Like Dedmon, Martin stayed in his post for years and departed under a cloud. Martin's patriarchal style was a product of the old school, when students weren't allowed to walk on the campus lawn.
Enrollment had fallen to 3,670 women, and talk of merging the school with Virginia Tech was rampant. Dedmon took down the chains ringing the lawns, and almost immediately took the school coed.
"He was a great communicator," Turk said. "He was willing to look at the coed situation. He had a lot of ideas about how it could be implemented."
Faculty also felt a new breeze. ``He instituted new programs,'' Jervey said.
In his first weeks at Radford, Dedmon lived in an empty dorm suite with his wife, Geraldine, and two daughters.
"He would make it a practice of having meals in the dining hall on a regular basis," recalled Jim Stutts, Radford Class of '78 and member of the university's Board of Visitors.
``We'd see him in there. `Oh, the president's here,' and, `Everybody shape up.'''
Average SAT scores for entering freshmen plunged from 870 to 816 from 1972, the first year men were admitted, to 1977. But enrollment started up.
In 1979 came university status - graduate-degree programs had expanded.
"I just didn't see any reason to become a university," recalled Preston Durrill, a chemistry professor and former dean of the graduate school. "Time has proven me wrong. I think it helps our image, possibly our recruiting, possibly our funding."
Times were good at the growing university, infused with new faculty who earned 30 percent more in 1977 than they did before the school went coed. Up went the Dedmon Center.
"I remember when Dr. Dedmon came, he said he did not think a person should stay in a high-profile position for more than 10 or 12 years," Turk said. "I was inclined to agree with him. I think people run out of ideas and get too comfortable with the situation."
Even as Radford grew, cracks began to appear.
"Donald Dedmon was like a feudal lord, and there was no discussion about anything," said Gary Zeller, the former dean of the College of Arts and Sciences who was fired in the early '80s.
Zeller came to Radford from Boston University. He was a young administrator with prominent contacts throughout the performing-arts world.
In Radford's program, he saw promise. But, he says now, all his efforts to expand the program's profile were stymied. He blames Dedmon.
"The dance department - what it was doing there was quite unusual and quite fine, so I wanted to have a little showcase for that in Washington, D.C.," said Zeller, who now lives in Europe. "There was a possibility to do something in a small area of the Kennedy Center.
"This was just shot down, and I was told not to explore it any further," Zeller said.
Why?
"Anytime anyone proposed an idea, if Donald Dedmon did not have the idea first, it didn't fly," Zeller said.
Wampler, the rector, and former Rector Bittle Porterfield both defend Dedmon. Wampler points out that any strong leader, over time, steps on some toes.
"Dr. Dedmon is a doer. He cannot stand incompetence or laziness or lack of movement," said Wampler.
"He would not tolerate anything less than excellence," said Porterfield, rector at Radford during the '80s.
In off-the-record interviews, former administrators and professors described an autocratic president who could come down hard on dissenters.
Others describe a man who always kept a professional distance.
"I never felt I knew him well personally, but from a professional point of view, as an administrator, I felt I had the freedom to do what I felt needed to be done," said Durrill.
Even Pearson said he has no personal complaint with Dedmon, who allowed the political science professor to recruit the late former Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg as a distinguished visiting professor.
Dedmon was "a perfectionist, driven to accomplish goals," said Tom Mullis, the longtime faculty chairman.
"The man was good at his job. He was darn good at his job," said one board member. "But he was a control freak."
Some vestiges of a small college remained - like the requirement for administrative permission to do things like move a desk.
And some felt Dedmon mixed the personal with the professional.
Once, a vice president at odds with Dedmon at work sent Christmas flowers to the presidential home at Hickory Hill. The flowers were returned, said a professor, who ended up getting the arrangement. He would not allow himself to be identified.
Finally, a year ago, Dedmon struck a raw faculty nerve. The board of visitors approved tenure for Charlie Wood, Dedmon's longtime aide.
While faculty all say they like Wood, he had not undergone the grueling, six-year review that leads to tenure, the professorial plum that ensures academic freedom - and job security.
News hit the front page: A faculty committee appointed to investigate the tenure appointment was making a startling recommendation. It was going to ask the full faculty to hold a no-confidence vote in the board.
Karen Petersen, the state's secretary of education at the time, said she'd never heard of such a thing.
But it got the board's attention, and the committee got what it wanted. Informal "communications committees" between board and faculty members were established, which meant the faculty finally could circumvent Dedmon and talk directly to the board.
Ron Carrier, the president at James Madison University, said this summer that he had not known that Dedmon was struggling with faculty unrest. But based on his knowledge of campus politics, he offered a theory of how events finally unfolded.
"It can be brought to an explosion point by only a small event. Tensions smoldering on any campus - those can be ignited into a flame if something such as the Wood case mobilizes the opposition."
From his plush offices in the old Radford Hotel atop a hill, Radford attorney Ed Stone watched the tenure drama unfold with interest.
He possessed more than 500 pages of receipts and memos passed to him three years before by a disgruntled former administrator. They showed expenses from Dedmon's discretionary fund. He showed them to Professor Pearson.
"What did they mean?" Pearson asked.
On June 9, board members held a hastily called emergency session that lasted six hours.
The documents landed on their conference table with a thud. They found out that a state whistle-blower audit into the same fund had been conducted the year before. Unbeknown to them, Dedmon had repaid $2,862 for personal expenditures, including phone calls and Federal Express charges.
"That's the only question I feel was improperly handled," said Wampler, who was elected rector last month.
Whoever withheld news of the whistle-blower audit, "the critical error" had been made, he said.
The same day the board announced a new audit into the fund, Dedmon announced that he was retiring - in a year. Until Aug. 15, 1995, Dedmon officially remains president, but on sick leave. He earns nearly $125,000, and takes with him a five-year annuity paid out to him last year, funded by the RU Foundation at $30,000 per year, according to foundation officials.
The state of Dedmon's health is a critical complication in the story of his departure. He reportedly has been slow to recover from his ruptured spleen last winter.
Many gauge the seriousness of his illness by his uncharacteristic decision not to stay and fight.
He has not responded to repeated interview requests, and, reached at his South Carolina home last week, said he would not be giving interviews "of any kind."
Monday, the day before the final report on the audit into Dedmon's discretionary fund, the university will gather dignitaries to break ground for the experimental New College of Global Studies.
The Dedmon brainchild, still being developed by Provost Meredith Strohm, is a concept embraced by state legislators, who have granted $2 million for the project. Voters authorized $5 million for the first building through a bond issue.
Even though the college will operate under nontraditional ideas for granting degrees, hopes are high on campus that it will succeed.
"The university is going to move forward in a very positive way," said Wampler.
"There will be no clouds hanging on the university."
But even now, amid the new, can-do spirit on campus, a few clouds linger.
There are the results of the audit, due Tuesday. Wampler said he's prepared to spend hours, if necessary, going over the report when it is presented to the board of visitors.
There are the broad guidelines that govern the discretionary fund, filled with earnings from campus vending machines. They need to be rewritten, said Wampler.
There is the full faculty, back from summer vacation. Pearson said he will present a report to the faculty at its September meeting, and members may or may not decide to take further action.
If nothing else, faculty members hope to see the university's internal governance system restructured this year, to redistribute power.
"Everybody's just waiting to see what the audit will say," Pearson said.
And there is the fall meeting of the RU Foundation His retirement annuity benefit could be up for discussion, said foundation board Chairman Jerry Jebo.
In the end, Dedmon "failed to inform the board and the faculty, and they didn't have the information they needed to run the university in an effective manner," said Mullis, the faculty chairman.
A committee will be formed this week to start looking for a new president. Owens, with his open-door office, says he's not sure if he's a candidate.
And the students?
Two juniors stood outside the RU Post Office last week, shielding their eyes from the sun.
They were asked if they thought the change at the top of the university would mean anything to them. They couldn't say for sure - although both talked about Radford's party image, which tends to be mentioned in the same breath as the move toward improved academics.
Some people study. Some people party.
"School is what students make of it," said one.
Then, with the nonchalance of youth, the other issued his verdict on Radford University:
"There's nothing wrong with it."
Dedmon's presidential perks included a "gofer" who drove him around.
Keywords:
PROFILE
by CNB