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

DATE: FRIDAY, August 4, 1995                   TAG: 9508050013
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

NEW LEADERS AT RADFORD AND VMI

WHEN THE 1995-96 academic year opens in a few weeks, two of Western Virginia's state-supported institutions of higher education will have new leaders at their helms: Douglas Covington at Radford University and Josiah Bunting III at Virginia Military Institute.

Both schools have gone through turbulent waters in recent years. For Covington and Bunting, getting their institutions safely through to calmer seas may prove chief among their tasks.

Covington, previously president of Cheney (Pa.) University, was named Radford's new president back in January, and officially came on board June 1. Bunting's appointment as VMI's new superintendent was announced just this week, and is effective Aug. 16. But, as a VMI graduate and former president of Hampden-Sydney College, Bunting already is familiar to many in the Western Virginia and VMI communities.

Radford must continue making up for time lost with delays in state-mandated ''restructuring" - yet in a way that does not sacrifice consensus-building. Already, Covington has gotten high marks on the latter point by observers who remember Donald Dedmon, the long-time Radford president on medical leave for the past year pending his formal retirement this month.

Yet, while a share of the blame for Radford's recent difficulties may be laid at Dedmon's doors, there's far more to the story. For example, a key component of Radford restructuring - a proposed New College of Global Studies - was abruptly dumped overboard by Gov. George Allen. At worst, it was an example of the governor's unfortunate penchant for blundering micromanagement. At best, Radford found itself an unwilling combatant in Virginia's political wars.

The rotting away of state support for higher education in the commonwealth affects every institution in the system. But places like Radford, lacking extensive private endowments and not in the top tier of the Virginia hierarchy, are particularly vulnerable to budget politics and the decline since the late '80s in Virginia's reputation for high-value colleges. Radford needs to continue re-examining its mission.

While different from Radford in many ways, including the size of its private endowment, VMI also is worried about enrollment, in quality if not (yet) quantity. Some 80 percent of VMI applicants are accepted for admission, a figure higher than institute officials want.

VMI is also unlike most other schools in its ferociously defended males-only policy, challenged on constitutional grounds by the U.S. Justice Department and moral grounds by others. VMI has won the legal point for now, perhaps for a long time, with establishment of a state-subsidized, women-only leadership program at Mary Baldwin College. Bunting is apparently a staunch supporter of the single-sex status quo.

But he represents a departure from recent VMI superintendents in that his background is primarily in civilian education rather than the military. This underscores the point, sometimes neglected, that VMI is a state-owned undergraduate college, not a military installation. Even if the legal case is settled, the question will linger: How can VMI serve the taxpayers well if it refuses to consider educating half the population because of gender?

by CNB