DATE: Monday, March 3, 1997                 TAG: 9703010007

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B10  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Editorial 

                                            LENGTH:   46 lines

ASSEMBLY TREATED ODU WELL HARD-EARNED MONEY

Virginia colleges and universities fared well this year in the General Assembly, and Old Dominion University did perhaps best of all.

With 5 percent of the state's public higher-education students, ODU got nearly 20 percent of all nonsalary operating funds.

ODU President James V. Koch gave three reasons for his school's success.

1. Recognition that in earlier years the school had received less than its share of state funds per student.

2. Aggressive support from these senior local legislators: Speaker of the House Thomas W. Moss Jr., D-Norfolk; Sen. Stanley C. Walker, D-Norfolk, co-chair of the Senate finance committee; Sen. Richard J. Holland, D-Windsor; and well-placed delegates Alan A. Diamonstein, D-Newport News, and George H. Heilig Jr., D-Norfolk. Those legislators went beyond merely urging the funding for ODU; they fought for it.

3. ODU programs aimed at converting scientific breakthroughs at federal facilities into new businesses and high-paying jobs. For example, ODU received $224,400 for such efforts at the Thomas Jefferson Lab in Newport News and $500,000 for similar efforts at the Department of Defense Joint Training, Analysis and Simulation Center in Suffolk.

Among other good legislative news: 6 percent raises for faculty and 4 percent raises for staff and administrators; restoration of $1.4 million that ODU had lost because its early estimate of enrollment was overly conservative; and authority to use $8 million in nongeneral-fund money, such as from student fees, to buy land east of Hampton Boulevard to expand the campus.

Virginia avoided a tax increase during Gov. L. Douglas Wilder's tenure by starving universities. Partly because of lobbying by prominent business leaders around the state, the General Assembly and the governor seem to recognize that the state's economic health depends on vigorous and nationally competitive universities.

Much remains to be done, of course. The state goal for college faculty salaries is that they rank in the 60th percentile nationally among comparable institutions. ODU salaries had dropped in recent years to the 30th to 35th percentile. The 6 percent raise should put ODU salaries somewhere in the 40 percentile range, still not high enough.

Under President Koch, ODU has become more efficient. It has continually sought ways to convert new knowledge and technology into high-paying jobs. The school earned the state money it got.

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