Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 26, 1995 TAG: 9503270082
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ALLISON BLAKE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
As guests settle into the elegant Tudor-style hotel, Tech's hospitality and tourism management students will find a chance to learn how a hotel really operates. The morning after check-in, those guests in town to learn the latest in, say, accounting techniques, may settle into a lecture room. They'll plug their laptop computers into one of 36 outlets installed just for that purpose, and turn to face their instructor - who might well be a Tech professor.
It's an opportunity for the university to extend its hand to the business and government community, as Virginia Tech works to expand its outreach.
On paper, outreach is one of three missions for a land-grant university such as Tech. The others are teaching and research. Engineering Professor Harold Kurstedt took over outreach planning back in January, and sees the growing importance of university outreach to nearly equal the rise of university research 25 years ago.
The basis for the concept is to expand the public university's job in the state - to reach out to the citizenry. The people ``need to feel they can come to us,'' Kurstedt said.
Why? Because of what university professors can give government and industry. Kurstedt ticked off a list: Professors know state-of-the-art information that businesses can put to use; they're perceived to be more unbiased than people from business or government; and they're trained to figure out why something works - a good pairing with industry's ever-present drive to solve problems.
``Hotel Roanoke is a jewel,'' Kurstedt said. ``It's a way to implement the reaching out, the bringing together.''
Not only does Internet access to the Blacksburg Electronic Village make the conference center state-of-the-art, but the old hotel itself is all but synonymous with the city to many people around the state. It comes with ready-made positive public perception, Kurstedt said.
``If Jim McComas was right, Virginia Tech needs to be a leader in this. If Virginia Tech faculty do end up doing more [training for corporations], more facilities will become an issue. To me, the hotel project is a manifestation of that,'' said Ted Settle, who is in charge of outreach programs already operating at the smaller Donaldson-Brown Hotel and Conference Center on campus.
McComas, who died in February 1994, was Tech's president when its private foundation, the Virginia Tech Foundation, accepted the century-old hotel from Norfolk Southern Corp. in 1989.
At that time, university administrators could see using the hotel to conduct programs. The hotel now is owned by the Virginia Tech Real Estate Foundation. The conference center is owned by the city of Roanoke, under the Hotel Roanoke Conference Center Commission - upon which university representatives sit. Both the hotel and the conference center are managed by Doubletree Hotels Inc.
Tech's outreach operation already has an office at the hotel, but its hospitality and tourism management program also is expected to operate there.
``We are planning to have a classroom in the hotel, and a seminar in the hotel,'' said Mahmood Khan, department head. ``We are thinking of offering graduate-level courses, and it offers a [student] recruitment opportunity.''
Research programs run at the hotel by graduate students might cover such subjects as consumer preferences for different products or services, or use of the Internet to book rooms or groups, Khan said. Settle said he can see a partnership wherein a pillow manufacturer, perhaps, tests its pillows at the hotel - and students conduct research to see if guests like the pillows.
While many projects remain in planning, Khan said he hopes to hold a course in conventions and meetings at the hotel this fall.
Tech's other major presence at the hotel is the Center for Organizational and Technological Advancement, which has undergone a management shift of its own in recent weeks.
Just over a year ago, university administrators won $500,000 from the General Assembly to launch the center, known as COTA. As envisioned, five eminent scholars were to be paid $100,000 apiece to conduct specialized courses for business in the following areas: education; engineering and physical science; business and management; government and nonprofit organizations; and biotechnology and life sciences.
But in a reorganization under Kurstedt, the center has been moved under the overall umbrella of outreach, alongside the existing Donaldson-Brown center.
``COTA is now a concept that's part of the broader concept of outreach,'' said Jim Buffer, its former director. He noted that the change is expected to reduce administrative costs.
Buffer has moved back to Tech's College of Education, where he once served as dean, as the Horace G. Fralin professor of education. He will be responsible for the educational programs at COTA. However, Buffer also said he probably will take the university-offered faculty buyout.
For his part, Kurstedt said he hopes to announce in April the new business-university partnerships that will be developed at the center. Funding formerly earmarked for five professors now will be spread across a number of people - and not all of them necessarily university professors, he said.
Evoking the new style of management for which the hotel's many meeting rooms seem a ready-made fit, Kurstedt said he envisions business-university teams.
For instance, Kurstedt said he'd like to set up a certification program this summer to teach ``first-line supervisors.''
``What tools and skills do they need to work with the work force? That's where the action is,'' Kurstedt said.
Kurstedt and Settle both point out how well-suited the university faculty already is to forming business partnerships, because so many are active members in professional associations.
Those same connections could aid in simple bookings for the hotel. Accounting Professor Craig Shoulders, for instance, already has booked his regional Virginia Accounting and Auditing Conference into the hotel for the next three years.
In the same way, the university is counting on alumni to spread the word about the revived Hotel Roanoke and the conference center.
The Roanoke-based hotel may compete with the smaller Donaldson-Brown Center, although planners hope the two centers offer services that are sufficiently different so there's room for both. Groups who want to be on-campus, for instance - with access to labs where students can demonstrate research that might benefit the business - may opt for the 100-room Donaldson-Brown Center.
Those who need larger meeting rooms, such as the 1,500-seat Roanoke Ballroom, as well as more luxurious surroundings, can go to the 332-room Hotel Roanoke.
Sheri Decker, the hotel's director of conference services, has been in town a month after a stint at a similar Galveston, Texas, conference center. The advance bookings for Roanoke, she said, ``are phenomenal.'' As of mid-March, 75 conferences had been booked through the end of the year.
Kurstedt echoes the high level of optimism surrounding the hotel.
While it's too soon to say how the idea of university outreach will work at Hotel Roanoke, Tech's starting with a bang. COTA's inaugural event will show off the conference center to 175 CEOs from companies around Virginia on May 2. The keynote speaker is even donating his time.
And that would be nationally recognized Stephen R. Covey, author of longtime best-seller ``The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.''
by CNB