DATE: Friday, October 17, 1997              TAG: 9710170003

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B10  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Editorial 

                                            LENGTH:   47 lines

ODU TURNS 67 SPLENDID VARIETY SCHOOL HAS INTERNATIONAL FLAVOR, WITH 1,400 STUDENTS FROM 110 NATIONS

Old Dominion University turned 67 this fall, and today the Norfolk school is marking the occasion with a Founder's Day celebration.

This year the university is bigger, with 18,300 students, and to its credit more diverse than ever before.

It is international, with 1,400 students from 110 foreign nations, and racially mixed: 23.8 percent of freshmen are African American. Its Teletechnet distance-learning program is beaming 150 courses to more than three dozen sites in the commonwealth as well as in other states.

At a recent media day luncheon, President James Koch noted that only 15 of every 100 college students nationwide are full-time undergraduate students actually living on campus. The typical college student isn't typical anymore.

At the luncheon, four student speakers represented the variety of college students today.

First came Todd Stafford, a 17-year-old senior at First Colonial High School in Virginia Beach. He attends a Calculus III class at ODU three nights a week. He plans to major in English, he said, but added, ``I am here because I love calculus.'' He concluded, ``Learning is something everyone should love.

Stephanie Stockdale, an ODU graduate student, is seeking a career in criminal justice. She described internships in the offices of the Norfolk commonwealth's attorney and Gov. George F. Allen.

Carlene Shores, a math teacher on Tangier Island for 20 years, told of her longtime dream of being a special-education teacher helping students with special problems. She fulfilled her dream by commuting by boat to take ODU Teletechnet courses at the Eastern Shore Community College. This fall, she said, she is teaching a class of students with disabilities.

Finally came 78-year-old Kathryn Ogg, who, after a long career as a nurse, earned undergraduate and master's degrees at ODU in the '80s. Now she is working on a doctorate at the university. She said no one should ever stop learning. Certainly she hasn't.

ODU still has 7,000 students living within walking distance of its campus, but the new ODU is more interesting than ever before, because of the variety of its far-flung student body.

Stafford was right. ``Learning is something everyone should love.'' Ogg was just as right when she said that no one should ever stop learning. And at today's ODU, there's room for both.

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu