ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, February 9, 1997 TAG: 9702100006
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG
SOURCE: ALLISON BLAKE STAFF WRITER
MEMO: ***CORRECTION***
Published correction ran on February 12, 1997.
The name of Harry Temple, a historian of the Virginia Tech Corps of
Cadets, was incoreectly reported in a Sunday Roanoke Times story about
Tech's planned new skybridge.
A fall groundbreaking for Virginia Tech's futuristic, $25 million "bridge to the future" spanning the campus mall could be postponed after state legislators last week proposed less money for the project than the university had hoped.
"If we don't have the project fully funded, we won't be able to begin construction," said Ray Smoot, Tech's vice president for finance.
Tech had asked the General Assembly for $5million but now has its sights set on $2.5 million for a proposed skybridge and advanced communications building.
A legislative conference committee starts work on the state budget this week, and will compromise between what the House recommended for the project - $500,000 - and the Senate's $2.5 million recommendation. The joint budget proposal will be finished Feb.18.
"Obviously, we're going to be presenting our case for the full $2.5 million" recommended by the Senate, said Minnis Ridenour, Tech's executive vice president. "We'll work hard on that."
The state budget proposals leave university planners looking for at least $2.5 million from another source. One option is to delay the project until next year, so the school can return to the assembly with another request. But Tech officials hope legislators will approve the $2.5 million, which in turn could be leveraged to obtain $2.5 million from private sources - and keep the project on schedule.
"We are very anxious to break ground this fall," said Ralph Byers, Tech's director of government relations.
First unveiled nearly three years ago, the signature communications complex for the university - to be built of limestone "Hokie stone" - will be unlike anything else on campus. The combination high-tech building and bridge, totaling 150,000 square feet, will bring students together with researchers to test new learning techniques.
The 15,000-square-foot bridge, an electronic reading room, doubles as a campus gateway. Proponents call it a portal that will frame the War Memorial, although some people wonder if it's too big. At least 100 computer stations will fill the room, to be open 24 hours.
The bridge will connect Newman Library to the communications building, which will be built across the street.
The center - its full name will be the Advanced Communications and Information Technology Center - is roundly applauded by faculty looking for new ways to teach in a high-tech world.
"It's going to be a magnet for students," said Tom Head, director of media services. "This is going to be an extremely popular space, with a lot going on."
In addition to the center's 11 classrooms, researchers will put the building to use studying such things as wireless communications, fiber-and electro-optics, and computer-student interaction that will develop new ways to teach. Then, those professors will train teachers throughout the university and beyond.
Look also for a digital library, for use by people throughout the region.
"There's a real sensitivity that has developed not to have a class get into that building that can't take advantage of the space," said John Moore, director of educational technologies.
And it's unlikely - at least at the moment - that any faculty member or academic discipline can stake an unwavering claim to space in the building. Professors and projects may rotate in and out of the building so nobody gets entrenched.
"There's a huge potential for the thing to pull together a lot of activity in the university," computer science professor John Carroll said.
Students will discover classrooms likely to be different from any others they've encountered.
"It's very difficult to do the kind of work we'd like to do with rows and columns and one-armed bandit kinds of desks that face one way," said Terry Wildman, a faculty member who specializes in educational psychology.
He has helped design classrooms to enhance group interaction among students - not the professor's lecture.
That could be assisted in a number of ways, such as: quiet rooms, allowing more than one conversation to be held at a time; one wall lined with study carrels, designed to hold a cluster of people; flexible walls, for different space configurations.
Administrators started cobbling together $25 million in total funding more than a year ago. Last year's assembly approved $10million as part of a bond package for state university capital projects. In addition, Tech has raised $2 million in private funding and $5million in nonstate funding from university coffers, administrators say. Private fund raising also is under way.
Originally, Tech had hoped to ask the federal government for the $5 million it now seeks from the state. The federal government, however, wants to fund equipment, not buildings, Ridenour said, so the university will look there for $5 million to $7 million for equipment.
Whether the university fund-raising office is called on to make up the $2.5 million that could go missing from the state remains to be seen. But Charles Steger, Tech's vice president for development, is concerned about the success of private fund raising for a building - as opposed to equipment. Corporations also prefer to underwrite equipment rather than bricks and mortar, he said.
"There's still a broadly held public sentiment that with a state institution, the state should provide the building," he said.
The university is calling the window-lined skybridge the "bridge to the future," and the symbolism of bridging the old-style library to a high-tech, digitally oriented research building is unmistakable.
"I think it is a cool idea," said Professor Carroll, referring to the idea of an all-night reading room.
"Of course, you could have a basement room and open it all night, but it's symbolic. A bridge between the two sides of the mall, a beacon. You have to look at it that way.
"I think on those grounds, it could be a symbol of the future for the university."
LENGTH: Long : 118 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Virginia Tech. An architectural rendering (in lighterby CNBgray) of the proposed bridge across the Tech Mall shows the Newman
Library (in darker gray) at left. The bridge is also envisioned as a
huge computer work space for students. color. KEYWORDS: GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1997