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

DATE: SATURDAY, August 19, 1995                   TAG: 9508210035
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ALLISON BLAKE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RADFORD                                LENGTH: Medium

4-YEAR DEGREES OFFERED

Radford University signed an agreement Friday that allows students to work two years on an associate's degree in nursing, media studies, criminal justice or social work, then move on to bachelor's studies - all at Virginia Western Community College's Roanoke campus.

Previously, nursing and social work students could earn degrees through Radford, but they had to take some classes on the Radford campus - a 46-mile drive from Roanoke.

"At last, the folks in Roanoke are going to have an opportunity to pursue a bachelor's degree at home base," said Charles Downs, president of Virginia Western.

Social work, criminal justice and nursing classes start this semester; media studies classes will begin in the spring.

Radford is setting up an office on the Virginia Western campus, and professors will travel there.

It's "a different breakthrough" from Old Dominion University's Teletechnet program, which beams a bachelor's degree program in engineering technology to the Roanoke campus via television, Downs said.

"The realities are, today, people who need access to higher education cannot obtain access," said Mark Emick, the Virginia Western administrator who helped work out the plan.

For a variety of reasons, sometimes personal, sometimes financial, students don't want to leave home or can't add a commute to campus to their schedules, Downs said. The new programs fit into a long-recognized trend in higher education: The greatest influx of students in the future will be workers, not 18-year-old freshmen coming to a residential campus.

Smart scheduling will allow students to use labs at Virginia Western, and only paint and a cleanup of some space has been required, Downs said.

"If this grows, we may need more classrooms," he said, "but those are cheap compared to laboratories and libraries.

"You can do this without building an ivy-covered campus someplace. The key is bringing programs to buildings."

The agreement fits into an oft-stated goal of Radford's new president, Douglas Covington.

"Radford University views itself, and aspires to be, the comprehensive regional university for Southwest Virginia," Covington said. "This signals one of the many initiatives we will be making toward that commitment."

The program may also dovetail with the long-standing sentiment in some Roanoke circles that the city needs a university. Roanoke is said to be the largest city in the country without its own university.

Negotiations to turn one of the vacant Norfolk Southern Corp. office buildings into a higher-education center have reached as far as Gov. George Allen's Cabinet, where officials have agreed to look into the matter. The buildings are located next to the newly renovated Hotel Roanoke, where continuing education programs brought in by Virginia Tech and others are a cornerstone of the new enterprise.

Downs said the four-year degree programs could be a part of the higher-education center.