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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, November 2, 1994                   TAG: 9411020050
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-1   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: ALLISON BLAKE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

TECH LEAVES PUPILS WITH GOOD IMPRESSIONS

Such words are music to the ears of those who planned Tuesday's Lincoln Terrace Day Celebration at Virginia Tech, where exposing kids to a college - some for the first time - was one of the chief goals.

But the morning spent touring backstage at the theater, the Internet via computer and other intriguing aspects of college, also was meant to recognize the relationship formed between student-mentors from Tech and their younger friends at Lincoln Terrace.

For two semesters, Tech students have been spending an hour here and an hour there reading with Lincoln Terrace students. The pilot effort has been dependent on the notoriously limited schedules of college students, so administrators have come up with an even better idea. Next semester, the mentoring program becomes a three-credit class.

The Virginia Tech Outreach Projects for Schools will fall under Tech's new Service Learning Program, an ambitious outreach plan that will link Tech students and faculty to various community programs. The center should be launched by next semester, complete with both full-time director and office space, said Lucinda H. Roy, the associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences who masterminded the mentoring plan. Temporary offices will be in Solitude, the historic house on campus.

Costs to push the new center into action come in near $200,000 for the next two years, with the university paying $167,000 and the College of Arts and Sciences paying the rest, Roy said.

"Instead of saying to community service agencies, 'You need to place our students,' we recognize that we need to create placement opportunities ourselves," Roy said.

But for the students from Lincoln Terrace, the formalities of setting up such a program really don't matter. If the dinosaurs on the computer screen didn't turn them on to college, then a brief visit with Tech quarterback Maurice DeShazo probably did.

DeShazo, who said he is asked to talk to kids once or twice a month, didn't mince words. College, he told them, is where you "learn how to be a man or woman."

"One of the things you have to do is start working on your grades," he said.

And if they were sufficiently impressed with what they saw on campus Tuesday, maybe they will.