THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, January 15, 1996 TAG: 9601130085
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: PROFILE
SOURCE: BY PHILIP WALZER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 205 lines
THE PROFESSOR bored in on the student, like a prosecutor interrogating a lead witness, probing for inconsistencies and stray bits of information.
The junior, who transferred from Virginia State University in Petersburg to Virginia Commonwealth in Richmond, was outlining a paper on funding disparities between black colleges such as Virginia State and integrated universities like VCU.
Almost immediately, the professor interrupted him.
``What did you find out about Virginia State as it relates to its founding?''
It was a land-grant institution begun in the late 1800s, the student responded.
``Were you aware of the fact that in land-grant institutions, the government mandated certain courses to be taught, such as agriculture? Did you check that out?''
``Yes. Most of the funding they get comes from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.''
``Most of the federal funding they get,'' the professor corrected him.
The student went over some of the problems he saw at Virginia State - buildings in disrepair, an inadequately stocked library, mediocre food. But once more, the professor cut him off, to offer another view of black schools: ``They graduate two-thirds of people in the African-American community. You didn't check that statistic?''
``I did have that statistic.''
On they went for 15 minutes or so in a lively exchange, the student marshaling his statistics to support his opinions, the professor interjecting to grill him on details, challenge his assumptions, until the student admitted that his two years at Virginia State were his ``favorite years in college,'' despite the funding problems.
The professor is still a relative newcomer to Virginia Commonwealth. But with his cowboy boots and needling ways, he's a Richmond mainstay instantly recognized on campus.
The professor is L. Douglas Wilder, the former governor of Virginia. When VCU starts classes tomorrow, Wilder will begin his second full semester in his new role as Professor Wilder.
Wilder was hired by VCU last March as a distinguished professor in its Center for Public Policy. He gets $50,000 a year, slightly less than the average salary for VCU profs.
Wilder the faculty member is much like Wilder the politician: Often contrary and combative, but always intriguing. If Gov. Wilder peeved even some of his fellow Democrats at the Capitol, on campus Professor Wilder is enchanting his students.
Senior Karen Miller, who took his class in ``Public Policy Challenges: Virginia and the Nation'' last semester, said: ``It's been a very positive experience. It's very different from other classes. You don't sit down and take notes; you sit down and have discussions. . . .You're propelled to talk in class.''
Terita Hewlett, a senior from Virginia Union (Wilder's alma mater), who also took the class, said: ``We have a lot of student interaction because he allows us to express ourselves. A lot of other professors, they come to class with their opinions and you have to conform to their opinions.''
She even saw Wilder's ``super-detailed questions'' as a plus. ``It helped to build confidence. `Yes, I do know this stuff,' '' Hewlett said.
``Some say I use a Socratic method,'' Wilder said in an interview in his faculty office last month. ``I interrupt them quite frequently, but I'm trying not to interrupt their train of thought, but to make them deepen it and broaden it.
``I quite frankly tell them: I love to see differing views, even if they differ with me. But I like to see them defend it. Don't just agree with the prevailing view.''
And in class, he frequently prods them to see the other side.
During the last day of his course in December, for instance, Wilder challenged Miller's effort to link poverty and crime. ``You've got to be very careful when you equate poverty and crime,'' he said. ``Are you saying that historically this nation has not had crime heretofore because it did not have poverty before?''
In his youth, Wilder recalled, blacks could get jobs only as janitors and chauffeurs. ``If that wasn't institutionalized poverty, what was?''
Laughter rang through the classroom repeatedly during the class. Wilder wore a charcoal pinstripe suit, with a gray handkerchief peeking out of his coat pocket, but looked casual and relaxed, crossing his knees and leaning forward to engage students in debate and tweak their opinions.
Many, anticipating a once-in-a-lifetime experience, scrambled to get into the class. Miller said she did because ``I am the biggest Democrat you will meet in your life.''
Marc Johnson, the junior who was interrogated about black colleges, said simply, ``I wanted to be taught by history.''
Often it's Wilder history. ``We like to call it `Storytelling with Doug,' '' Johnson said.
During Johnson's give-and-take with Wilder, for instance, the former governor recounted his trip to Virginia State to ask for the resignations of all the board members to ensure full board support for the new president, Eddie Moore.
And Wilder went farther back, to a 1970s debate in the General Assembly about merging the agriculture departments of Virginia State and Virginia Tech. ``But for the intervention of certain people,'' he said, ``it would have happened.''
Johnson: ``Any people in this room?''
Wilder: ``It might be.''
Wilder, who will turn 65 on Wednesday, said his experiences can provide valuable lessons to the students. ``I've been there and can speak to it. It gives them a sense of reality and a broader understanding of what the theory is because I show them the application of the theory.''
But senior Sherry Jones said the class sometimes got bogged down in Wilder reminiscing and didn't fully cover the assigned topics, such as affirmative action. ``We've talked about generalities on a lot of occasions, yet every time we get ready to talk about (specific) subjects, we don't get there,'' Jones said.
``Sometimes I think I don't like to hear his stories. I've heard them three times already.''
For his part, Wilder doesn't suffer his students' shortcomings quietly. On the last day of class, he chided them because more than half were absent and many had not handed in their papers, even after a two-week extension.
``This is the smallest class we've had,'' he said. ``I wonder why? Because papers are due today? . . .You get the impression someone might think I'm not serious. However, know that I am. It's not a thing to be played with.''
To bring home the point, he sent each student a letter a few weeks later reminding them of their responsibilities and that their final grades would be based, in part, on timeliness and class participation. ``If you bend the rules too often, you make the whole process a mockery,'' he said in the interview.
``When I told people on the faculty about it, they cheered,'' said Robert Holsworth, the director of VCU's Center for Public Policy. ``Typically, professors are a little less willing to draw the kind of line he has drawn. He has no tolerance for nonsense at all.''
Wilder appears to be adjusting to academia quite well. He went to South Africa last month with VCU President Eugene Trani to forge closer ties. He's planning to write a book on his term as governor to set the record straight, he says. He's hoping to organize a symposium on race, bringing national speakers to campus.
The university, he said, ``is an excellent place for the crystallization of what has happened and what needs to happen.''
Wilder was the king of unpredictability in politics, swerving in and out of the campaigns for U.S. president in 1992 and U.S. Senate in 1994. Will he bounce back into another election in the future?
Wilder's contract runs out in March, but he said he expects to reach an agreement with Virginia Commonwealth to stay on. ``I don't have any political aspirations,'' he said, ``though people don't think it's true when I tell them that.''
But because his future at VCU is still up in the air, he won't teach any classes this semester. Instead, he will appear as a guest lecturer in various courses, Holsworth said.
Wilder's policies toward colleges - slicing state funding by more than 20 percent, encouraging big tuition increases - were harshly criticized by educators as endangering one of the state's greatest assets. But even with his new perspective as professor, Wilder voices no apologies.
With a state shortfall in the billions, ``I had no choice,'' he said. ``I heard students say, `Raise taxes,' but raising taxes does nothing but increase the recession.'' And he stands by his criticism that colleges ``could cut programs that were unneeded and things that were not geared toward education but were frills.''
Yet in some ways, he has taken on the world-view of an academic.
For instance, though he once criticized professors at research universities for not teaching enough, now he bristles at even the idea that he ought to teach more than one course this school year.
``We've got professors who don't teach at all,'' he said. ``What the university's asking me to do, I'm doing it.''
And like many professors, he said it's hard to quantify the time he spends as professor. He spends some nights in the office and there are the hours, too, he spends reading books, such as a study of affirmative action by a South African official. ``Every time you read something, you say, `This is something I might want to talk about.' ''
Wilder's particularly excited about the symposium on race. ``It's something I said in 1992: This needs to be discussed; we see instances of it each day,'' he said, such as the revelation last year that federal agents attended a racist gathering in Tennessee.
As Holsworth sees it, that's another hallmark of Wilder, the nation's first elected black governor: His courage to take on racial issues.
That came through last year, Holsworth said, when Wilder said in interviews that Colin Powell wouldn't be a popular contender for president if he weren't black. ``Wilder put that right in the forefront when everybody else was dancing around,'' Holsworth said.
And the former governor came back to that point in his class.
After senior Rebecca Riofrio discussed her paper on affirmative action, Wilder segued into an anecdote from a friend who had attended a party at which former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz discussed Powell's candidacy.
``When he was asked that question, `What effect would race play?' Shultz said, `When I look at Colin Powell, I see red, white and blue.' So I told the guy, `This man needs to see an ophthalmologist.' ''
Laughter again rolled through the classroom. ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photos]
BILL TIERNAN
THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
L. Douglas Wilder, a distinguished professor in VCU's Center for
Public Policy, accepts political science papers as he chats with
junior Marc Johnson.
Wilder during a discussion with a student in his political science
class.
FROM TOP: Ali Ault, Henry O'Neal and Terita Hewlett listen and
respond during Wilder's class at Virginia Commonwealth University.
BILL TIERNAN
THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Wilder listens as a student answers a question in his political
science class at VCU.
by CNB