ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, April 13, 1996 TAG: 9604150032
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
The likely loss of $950,000 in state funding does not mean the death of Roanoke's College of Health Sciences, the school's president said Friday.
But if the school is forced to close, Virginia would lose a major supplier of health-care workers for much of rural Western Virginia, Harry Nickens said.
Gov. George Allen this week used his line-item veto to strike a 1996-98 budget amendment that provided $950,000 to help the college gain independence from its patron, Community Hospital of Roanoke Valley.
"These dollars from the General Assembly are very important to the college's transition from hospital dependence to a self-sufficient model," Nickens said. "The college has confronted, over the last 20 months, many challenges regarding its future viability. We are confident that this and other challenges will be met with a positive conclusion."
Nickens said the college needs to develop resources outside those afforded by its sponsoring hospital. Initially, that means increasing tuition but to a level where the college can remain competitive, Nickens said.
During the 1996-97 academic year, annual full-time tuition - 15 credit hours - will rise from $4,200 to $4,800. Tuition, however, would have risen with or without the state funding, he said.
The college also is pursuing an endowment challenge grant. The federal government is holding $500,000 for the college if it can raise $250,000 in nongovernment funds by May 1997, Nickens said. The endowment would be used to help support the college's operation.
The college - with a current enrollment of nearly 600 - offers two- and four-year degrees in health-care fields. It serves 21 counties in Western Virginia, 19 of which are federally designated as Medically Underserved Areas.
Ninety percent of the college's graduates come from those 21 counties, Nickens said. Eighty-five percent return home to those rural areas to practice.
"They go into the Grundys of Southwest Virginia and deal with problems of breathing coal dust, deal with people who are maimed because of accidents in the timber business or coal mining business, and they do it in areas where people won't move to," Nickens said. "We have to grow our own. Nobody else is interested in coming into these areas and staying."
Among the school's degree programs are six specialities where workers are in short supply, Nickens said. And in 1997, the college is scheduled to begin Virginia's first physician's assistant program to help meet the demand for workers who can provide many of the same services as a physician.
"We have the only occupational therapy program west of Charlottesville and the only health-service management program west of Richmond," Nickens said. "Absent the college, there are no state institutions or other opportunities for students to pick up most of our areas of study."
Nickens had pushed for the state funding, as well as for a land donation from American Electric Power Co. for the college's new home - to be built possibly in six to eight years, or whenever the college outgrows its quarters on Jefferson Street.
"This is a blow to the Roanoke Valley," state Sen. John Edwards, D-Roanoke, said this week. Edwards sponsored the budget amendment that provided the $950,000.
"I don't know what [Allen's] motives are, but they certainly are short-sighted," Edwards said. "It's a mistake. This is a fine institution that needs the funding."
In a memo to members of the House of Delegates, Allen wrote that he eliminated the funding because it could not be "justified on economic development grounds." Others had argued that the funding request should have been placed under an education umbrella rather than under economic development.
But Nickens said it clearly belonged under economic development.
"Education in Virginia has been so underfunded in the last number of years," he said. "We didn't want to compete with needs at Radford or Virginia Tech or Clinch Valley College."
The college's request "appeared to meet the needs of the western part of the state from both an educational and quality of life standpoint that could have been funded under economic development," Nickens said.
The college has a 1995-96 budget of $4 million. Of that amount, $350,000 is from Community Hospital and about $500,000 from the federal government. The bulk of the college's funding comes from tuition.
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