Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, December 19, 1993 TAG: 9312190105
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ALLISON BLAKE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
"He asked if he could drive down to Johnson City and discuss a fund-raising plan he had in mind," Gordon said. "I think that was one of the things that impressed me - he took the initiative on how to improve the college.
"He drove on down, and we had a nice conference in my office. I just kind of got caught up in his enthusiasm."
So caught up, in fact, that the young department head, Paul Torgersen, walked out of Gordon's office with a pledge for $100,000 - a donation that endowed the first of 40 professorships at Tech's College of Engineering. Later, as dean of the College of Engineering, Torgersen filled those chairs, some worth $1 million, with top-flight professors - one tactic in his drive to leadthe college to national prominence.
Gordon says he made his contribution because he liked Paul Torgersen.
"He has a good personality," Gordon said. "He's warm and friendly."
Torgersen's personality seems to be universally noted, helping drive a home-grown Virginia Tech career that is respected internationally. This month, during remarkably upbeat proceedings, Torgersen, 62, was installed as Tech's 14th president.
"I expect . . . he knows more about Virginia Tech, from bottom to top, than any man living today," mused John Hancock Jr., a Tech alumnus and founder of Roanoke Electric Steel Corp.
In 1988, the Roanoke industrialist endowed a $1 million engineering chair that Torgersen still occupies.
"I had been saving money, putting it in a special fund," explained Hancock, for whom the engineering department's Hancock Hall is named. "It just so happened that Paul Torgersen was there, then dean of the college, one of the closest friends I ever had. It's only natural it would go to him."
The high-rolling days of the '80s are over, though, and Torgersen knows that makes his new job harder.
"We need to economize, we need to tighten our belt, probably further," Torgersen said. "We probably need to start from the top down. The last place weneed to economize is where the student meets the professor in the classroom."
Tall and lanky, with professorial wire-rimmed glasses, Torgersen moved to Tech from a professorship at Oklahoma State University in 1967. He and his wife, Dot, have three children and six grandchildren, and he's a devoted tennis player. A mean forehand and an accurate serve propel him regularly into the seniors rankings.
He's got a decent sense of humor, too.
"He's informal chairman of a group that roasts outgoing deans," said former Tech Provost John Wilson, now president of Washington and Lee University. "It's a secret society, and they have great fun with each other and meet once a month. I think it has a Latin name, but it's secret, so I don't know for sure."
Dot Torgersen will be half of the family's new enterprise - a busy, if low-key, hostess who says she is thankful there's a skilled entertaining staff in place at The Grove, the presidential home. She expects there will be four events a week in the elegant old home that sits on a knoll above the Duck Pond.
As for her husband, "he's traveling a lot more."
If there's one thing you have to do to raise money, it's travel. And when the cause is improving Virginia Tech, Torgersen's not known to be selfish with the contacts he has made during his journeys.
"He helps me have access to senior decision-makers throughout the commonwealth," says Joe Meredith, hired in February to direct the university's Corporate Research Center, where Torgersen is president.
But beyond his fund-raising skill, the appointment of Torgersen, who will earn $153,800 a year, seems to have populist appeal. There's something for everyone.
Students have a friend - 80 seniors are signed up for Torgersen's industrial engineering course next semester.
Blacksburg business owners have a friend - a local customer they say might help negotiate plans for their sought-after parking lot near campus.
Forty miles away in Roanoke, power-brokers are comfortable with Torgersen, who will direct Tech's part in efforts to create closer economic ties between the Roanoke and New River valleys. Key projects include the proposed "smart road" linking Blacksburg and the Roanoke Valley, Tech's redevelopment of the Hotel Roanoke into a hotel/conference center, and the New Century Council.
"He's very well-liked and bright and understands the problems," said Gordon Willis, chief executive officer of Rockydale Quarries Corp. and a leader in the drive to build the smart road. "I think he will be outstanding in that connection."
All of the projects were initiated by Torgersen's predecessor, James McComas, who found success in only five years at Tech. Torgersen already sits on the board of Hancock's company, Roanoke Electric Steel. The quietly powerful company has strong ties to Tech.
Even inside the university, where academic fiefdoms compete for funding and attention, Tech's liberal arts corner seems unruffled that the new president hails from engineering - arguably the strongest of Tech's colleges.
"We feel some departments get a little more frosting, and that may be one of them, but that says nothing for the way I feel toward Torgersen and the job he'll do as president," said William "Wat" Hopkins, assistant professor of communication studies.
"I have never met him, but everything I have heard about him is positive," he said.
Torgersen's appointment to Tech's top post, just two months after McComas resigned, came - at least in part - because he'll be needed in Richmond. Soon. Dwindling state funds may pit the state's universities and colleges against one another as they compete for money.
This year, the fourth in the continuing drain on state higher education funds, is a grab bag:
Outgoing Democratic Gov. Douglas Wilder has said cuts to higher education probably won't be the drastic 15 percent forecast in September, but state funding for higher education already has shrunk by $440 million during his recession-strapped administration. Wilder releases his final budget Monday.
Meanwhile, Republican Gov.-elect George Allen promises to keep tuition for new freshmen in line with the low rate of inflation.
And what the General Assembly will decide to do is anybody's guess.
The good news? Torgersen knows a lot of these guys.
"I'm a great admirer of Paul Torgersen," said Hunter Andrews, D.-Hampton, Senate majority leader. "I remember well the great drive he put on to increase the size of the buildings and coordinate the efforts. He really had the support of other state institutions, and anybody who can do that deserves a lot of credit."
Although nobody single-handedly extracts money from the legislature to expand university space, it was Torgersen who went to the General Assembly in the early 1980s with this proposal: If legislators would kick in some funding for buildings, he would figure out how to raise the rest to expand Whittemore Hall, an engineering building. From that grew a team effort of university administrators that produced not only expansions to Whittemore and Pamplin halls but a new chemistry building, Hahn Hall.
Whittemore Hall's 150,000 square feet were built with $1 million in private funds and $6 million from the legislature, said Larry Hincker, Tech's director of university relations.
University of Virginia President John Casteen was the state's secretary of education at the time.
"Paul was very effective," Casteen said. "He had an excellent relationship with key legislators."
The reason for his success?
"It's his personality," Hancock said. "Period. That's all it takes."
Organizational skills don't hurt, either - Torgersen is the kind of guy who clears his desk off at the end of the day. His laser-sharp focus is legend around his old college. He drove the college's research budget from $2 million to $32 million, said Hincker.
There was no getting in his way, said former colleague J.B. Jones, retired head of the mechanical engineering department.
"He is very intense on what he thinks is most important, and therefore he doesn't let other things distract him," Jones said. "He wanted to raise the research funding; and, by gosh, we did it, all working together."
And, says his secretary of 20 years, he's delightful, too.
"Like a little boy when he got his first Mercedes," recalled Peggy Porterfield.
But, she said, "He has his likes and dislikes."
"When he first came to work, he said, `I like coffee, I like it black, and I like it in a china cup.' "
The affable, Mercedes-driving academic has his standards.
"None of this styrofoam stuff," Porterfield said.
by CNB