THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, September 13, 1996 TAG: 9609130002
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A20 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: 42 lines
Old Dominion University turns 66 today, an event being marked by a Founders' Day celebration.
The date's unlucky: Friday the 13th. But who needs luck? The school has momentum, following a highly successful 65th year. As ODU President James V. Koch noted in his State of the University address, last year the school had its:
Largest enrollment, at 17,077.
Largest annual value of private gifts, $5.9 million.
Highest value of extramural grants: more than $25 million in awards and more than $50 million in value, counting super computer time.
First permanent regional higher-education center in Virginia Beach approved, with construction to begin soon on 35 acres provided by that city.
First Rhodes scholar, Samantha Salvia, who majored in environmental engineering and co-captained the field-hockey team.
There was more.
ODU student Channing Blackwell, a civil-engineering major, was the first Virginia institution undergraduate to receive a patent; more than $110 million in construction was under way or being planned, most on the main campus; and TELETECHNET, the school's distance-learning system, enjoyed rapid growth, putting it among the nation's largest.
The National Science Foundation recently named ODU one of 13 institutions to receive access to a new high-speed computer network. By year's end, the network is supposed to transport data 14 times faster than the top speed of the current commercial Internet links. Researchers need higher speeds for working with complex computer models. Each of the 13 schools receives $350,000 to defray cost of improving its campus computer network to take advantage of the higher speeds.
This year ODU begins its Weekend College, offering degree programs that can be completed on Friday evenings and Saturdays. A number of economic-development programs are in the works that should contribute to Hampton Roads' prosperity.
It seems certain that the best is yet to come. by CNB