Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, June 17, 1995 TAG: 9506210014
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: ALLISON BLAKE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RADFORD LENGTH: Long
Remember Radford University's New College of Global Studies?
It's still there - until July 1. That's when the final minutes tick off the governmental funding calendar, and the program - once touted as a grand experiment in higher education - passes into Radford lore.
In January, after the board of visitors bowed to pressure from the governor's office and dropped the program, the phone at the college stopped ringing. Teachers hired only months before to develop its curriculum went ahead with their scheduled second-semester classes. But some felt a new discomfort.
"We were the still the same group of six people, with 90 years [of combined experience] to offer the university," said Bruce Conforth, who left his job as curator of the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame to come to Radford for half his old salary. "We were marked; we were branded. We were Hester Prynned ... Not a call. No one said, 'I'm sorry.'''
Simple courtesies seemed to evaporate - at least for a while.
Some learned they were moving from one office to another after movers showed up with tape measures to plan for new tenants. Win Everham, an environmental scientist, was meeting with students who wanted to learn computer modeling in an ad hoc class the day workers wanted to come take away the conference table. They didn't -that day, at least.
Charles Owens, acting president at the time, concedes that the college staff and faculty suffered "benign neglect." He met with them in March to try to smooth relations. The four who are remaining this year are now ironing out their assignments with him. They will be paid courtesy of an appropriation by the General Assembly.
To understand how the new college faculty felt, rewind to last August.
They were hired from the outside. All left promising futures to launch an experiment linking high-technology teaching to real-life business concerns, while working with motivated students.
Professor Monica Bauer was so excited she paid half of her plane ticket from Cairo, where she taught at the American University, to make the job interview.
When the new professors arrived, they saw committees of Radford faculty at work on a program that had been germinating for years. They saw state support - $2.2 million in operating funds, and a $4 million building on the drawing board. They met Provost Meredith Strohm, a strong advocate who'd been at work for a year and clearly had made connections in the business community.
It was stimulating. It was exciting. They would leave traditional classrooms, where they'd seen students get bored, and launch interactive classes with students who'd be headed abroad.
Then it all ended.
"It was like walking into a punch you didn't expect," said Bauer, leaving now for a tenured post at Iona College in upstate New York.
Four of the six original faculty interviewed this week described initial feelings of anger, bewilderment, grief. They gave up tenured jobs, moved families and bought houses here.
"How can it be the best thing that ever happened, and the next thing, say you're not going to do it?" Conforth said. "If I were the people of Southwest Virginia, I would say, 'What the heck is going on?'''
At the time, the board said it was worried about saving $1.6 million - which was at risk in the legislature - for the rest of the university. The faculty then watched legislators win back all other higher-education appropriations that Gov. George Allen had wanted to cut.
Valorie Watkins, the college's second-in-command, has remained to close out the program. She describes a group of dynamic people who always managed to reach consensus.
"That's been the value of it," she said. "That's what I always thought an academic environment should be."
Watkins is leaving July 1. She's going home to Richmond to take some time off and rest.
"We have missed an opportunity," she said on one of her last days in Radford. "Something about the New College that hasn't been said: We wanted to change the way to fund the New College, [and] reduce dependence on state funding."
Projects with businesses would have earned money, she said.
Were they ahead of their time?
"Maybe we were," Watkins said. "And that's too bad."
Indeed, all the professors said they'll take from their sad experience a re-energized vision of teaching, the result of a group dynamic that all involved say they found exhilarating. Everham is teaching a biology class this summer, gratis. Said Conforth: "I am still crazy about Radford. Amazingly enough. I think the students here are vastly underrated."
One professor said the slow death of the New College has been akin to watching a family break up.
Strohm, who got married two days before Allen unveiled his budget, returned to Richmond to live with her husband and help Radford from there. Other staff were reassigned within the university.
Karma Castleberry, interim vice-provost at the New College and a nursing teacher at Radford, compared the faculty's feelings to those of anyone who needs to grieve.
"This doesn't necessarily mean this was similar to the death of a spouse or a partner, but it is a significant loss. I think we would be remiss not to think of it in those terms," she said.
Memo: ***CORRECTION***