
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, August 17, 1995                   TAG: 9508170020
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A14   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

TO THRIVE, TECH MUST REACH OUT

BLACKSBURG depends on Virginia Tech. On this point, the town's business leaders are correct. It's one reason why their opposition to Tech's expanded presence in Roanoke and elsewhere is shortsighted.

In a resolution Tuesday, the Blacksburg Chamber of Commerce opposed a $150,000 state grant to fund new continuing-education programs at the Hotel Roanoke's conference center, and a $100,000 program, funded by an anonymous private donor, to help Tech faculty lure professional conferences to the hotel. The chamber's view fails to recognize that:

Blacksburg is part of an increasingly regionalized economy. The town's future is tied not only to Tech but to the Roanoke Valley.

Tech must adapt to changing demands of a changing world. If the university is content to sit in splendid isolation on a traditional campus, insufficiently aware of its broader duty to the commonwealth, its future is dim.

The question for the Roanoke and New River valleys is not whether they're part of the trend toward an economy of regional city-states, trading goods and services all over the globe. They are. The question is where our region's niches should be.

While nobody knows the answer in full, surely it involves keeping pace economically by using rather than losing the quality of life valued by the region's residents. That in turn involves an interdependence of city and countryside, so both the health of the former and the character of the latter can be maintained. Regional collaborations of all sorts are needed, with perhaps none as significant as between a major research university and its neighbors.

Tech cannot stay healthy without changing its traditional land-grant outreach mission. Agriculture's importance in Virginia has long been in decline relative to urban-centered service industries. An advanced economy today requires continual updating of workers' skills, which a university like Tech often is well-suited to provide. The acquisition of new knowledge for its own sake should never be undervalued; neither should the practical applicability of new knowledge.

All of which argues for strengthened connections between Tech and urban Virginia. Roanoke is hardly a giant metropolis. But it is close to Blacksburg and is the largest metro area in Virginia without a state-supported four-year college or university. And so it offers Tech special opportunities.

The university can't afford to be a fortress in Blacksburg. If it tries to be, it won't thrive. Among those first to suffer the consequences would be Tech-dependent businesses in the university's headquarters town.

by CNB