Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, August 29, 1994 TAG: 9408290067
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By ALLISON BLAKE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
RADFORD - As puffs of fog move in off the Blue Ridge, talk among a decidedly baby boomer-ish collection of academics on retreat turns to what they saw in the most free and easy time of academe, the '60s.
Dropping eggs from multistoried class buildings in California, for instance. Pondering the egg-ness of it all. Four credits. No sweat.
"I don't want to do that," says a new professor. "Let's be clear."
Not to worry.
Chairs pulled into a conversation-friendly circle, the newly assembled faculty of Radford University's fledgling New College of Global Studies picks its academic way through endless teaching theory.
But even amid talk of values, methods and collaboration, nobody forgets that actual students will need actual jobs when they leave the ground-breaking new school.
The college is designed to help students do just that in a high-tech, global economy. This group of scholars is not deciding if students will learn a foreign language, but how. For instance, they may take two-way video classes and correspond through E-mail with a professor in another country.
The question is not whether students will spend time in a foreign country, but when and where. Perhaps as challenging as anything their teachers will decide is how students will be graded at a school that doesn't want grades - in a world that does.
These are some of the issues discussed at a retreat two weeks ago as the New College for Global Studies, nearly six years in the making, reaches critical mass. The experimental college that will wed technological expertise to global literacy takes off in the coming months.
Ground-breaking for the first building is set for 11 a.m. today on the edge of the Radford campus. The high-tech, $5 million building, at 32,000 square feet, boasts a total area only slightly smaller than that of a football field. Funded with general obligation bonds approved by state voters, it will be wired with fiber optics, with 24-hour video available. It will have only one traditional classroom.
The landmark day's speakers include Virginia Secretary of Commerce and Trade Robert Skunda and Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Abingdon.
In attendance will be six "founding faculty" members, chosen from 450 applicants. They started work this month and will be bolstered by a slate of RU professors who will work with the college on an associate basis.
There were supposed to be only five new teachers, but one Massachusetts-bound geography professor offered to tele-teach. "I couldn't resist," said Provost Meredith Strohm.
Their ranks include a political scientist just returned from a stint at the American University in Cairo and a former Juilliard student who left his job with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, where he was director of educational affairs .
The college is "a fairly direct response to the state's desire to see higher education both meet the needs of the turning century, and operating more effectively in doing that with decreasing resource space," said Margaret A. Miller, associate director for academic affairs for the State Council of Higher Education.
"It's combining efficiency with delivery in the kind of instruction students need in the 21st century," she said.
State legislators signaled their approval during the last General Assembly session by funding a budget of $1.2 million to hire faculty and launch the college and $700,000 to start planning the next buildings.
"It's a great opportunity, and I think what Radford is doing is excellent. But any new program - you have to prove the value, and that takes a lot of years," said Lyle Wilcox, provost of a similar new college at James Madison University.
Wilcox's up-from-the-ground College of Integrated Science and Technology opened last year with 61 students. About 50 are expected back as sophomores this week, along with more than 100 entering freshmen.
Radford's new college expects its first 50 students to enter next year. Like the JMU college, it will be a college within the university itself, said Radford's acting president, Charles Owens.
It's a creative approach to education that the future demands, Owens said.
It offers "a dream job for someone who's interested in innovative education," said Monica Bauer, the faculty member who just returned from Cairo.
It has been spearheaded for the last 18 months by Strohm, who, among other accomplishments, was an international trade adviser to former Gov. Gerald Baliles. She took the idea for the college and figured out how to make it work.
A network of committees throughout the campus, collaborating with the small global college staff, are on the springboard for further work on degree programs. The faculty will set up the curriculum for the first students, although, Strohm points out, as with any unfolding concept, "the curriculum won't be finalized for 15 years."
A glimpse of what's ahead comes from a pilot class to be team-taught during this year's second semester by a music professor, an art professor and an English professor. "Forms of Human Expression: Arts and Literature in the Contact Zone" will help students understand art, music and literature by understanding the artistic changes that occur when cultures meet, said Bruce Mahin, an associate to the new college and director of Radford's Center for Music Technology.
Students will communicate through E-mail with teachers around the globe and create a multimedia computer presentation that ultimately will be put on CD-ROM and filed in the university library, he said.
These approaches also may be used to teach the preliminary majors, which include global environmental management, international textiles and apparel, international education, global communication, and international travel and tourism.
Instead of grades, students must prove their competence in effective communication, analysis and problem solving, cultural literacy, and social interaction.
Under "effective communication," students must create at least one multimedia project to present to a group outside the university. To prove their skill at "cultural literacy," they must analyze the effects of technological and social change on selected cultures.
Since the whole idea of the college is to create a place where students will learn to work in a global culture, planners are trying to take the emphasis off the usual admissions standards, such as SAT scores and grade-point averages.
"None of those things, in our mind, necessarily predicts success in college or after college," Strohm said.
Strohm also is working to raise the profile of the college within the business community, where she hopes to find partners who can give students internships or speak to classes. The college ought to become a player in the region's economic development, too.
"What we know is, far too often, we define economic development as industrial attraction," Strohm said.
But if the college offers training or language services to those businesses, it can boost the region, as well as teach students.
"We want to set the expectations in the minds of [corporate] site-seekers that Southwest Virginia is not devoid of global communication," she said.
From his desk at Pulaski Furniture, where he's the chief executive officer, the rector of the Radford board of visitors sees a course of study unfolding that might be of use to his business.
"I think it would be a wonderful opportunity, [learning] the skills of dealing in international trade," said Bernard Wampler, whose company imports from several countries.
"That is a very broad field," he said, ``but I've seen the need in our little company.''
by CNB