DATE: Monday, July 21, 1997                 TAG: 9707180013

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B6   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Editorial 

                                            LENGTH:   55 lines

THOMAS W. MOSS JR. NORFOLK CAMPUS EARNED RECOGNITION

Tidewater Community College's Norfolk Campus becomes the Thomas W. Moss Jr. Norfolk Campus on Aug. 12. Appropriately so.

Liken the creation of the downtown-Norfolk campus to construction of an arch. Many labored to realize the 30-year dream. But Norfolk Del. Thomas Warren Moss Jr., speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, wrestled the keystone into place.

``Powerful speaker'' is the cliche, but nonetheless true. Moss, speaker since 1991, was positioned to assure that the campus would come into being.

He was a patron on the bill that established the state community-college system three decades ago. Norfolk sought a community college back then. But only now has the campus - with the critically important aid of private-sector donors - blossomed on Granby Street. Not until Chesapeake, Portsmouth and Virginia Beach and virtually all of Virginia's regions had gotten comprehensive community colleges was Norfolk included in the network.

The TCC board, representing Norfolk, Portsmouth and Virginia Beach, favored naming the campus after Moss. But naming authority rests solely with the State Board for Community Colleges. The state board unanimously approved the honor, not only for all Moss had done to bring the Norfolk campus into being but also for ``his hard work and dedication to the community colleges . . . and his support of education in the commonwealth.

Age 68, Moss is a lifelong Norfolk resident. Addressing the crowd at the May 7 ceremonial opening of the Norfolk campus, Moss said, ``We would still be waiting (for the school) if your Norfolk (legislative) delegation had not sprung into action.''

Moss reminded the gathering that after Gov. George F. Allen cut funding for campus in 1995 ``the General Assembly put the money back and added another $400,000 for debt service on $2 million of needed equipment.''

In 1996, when the governor provided no money to operate the Norfolk campus, ``it looked like we would have a building but no staff (but the legislature) provided $2 million for staffing and another half million for equipment.''

In 1997, said Moss, Allen proposed ``that funds to operate the Norfolk campus be taken from other community colleges.'' Moss sponsored the House bill to remedy that. The legislature came through with $2.5 million.

Gov. Mills E. Godwin Jr. fathered the community-college system because Virginia desperately needed it. He instituted the sales tax to underwrite it. The system now has countless supporters - people who understand, as Moss said in May, the ``well-established link between education and economic development'' and ``education and crime prevention.''

TCC's Norfolk campus - the Thomas W. Moss Jr. Norfolk Campus - arrived late. It is underfunded. Its full-time faculty - fewer than a dozen - is small. But its courses, many taught by part-time and adjunct instructors, are many. And its students, who will number 1,300 next fall, are increasing.

The school ``provides opportunity and hope,'' as Moss said, to residents of the city with the next-to-lowest average household income in South Hampton Roads. And how sweet that is.

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