ODU president reaches out to local leaders

NORFOLK

Buffeted by bad economic news on multiple fronts, Old Dominion University President John Broderick reached out to state and community leaders Tuesday with a plea for mutual aid and support.

Historically, the ODU president's State of the University address has been an inwardly focused affair, directed primarily at faculty. This year's speech, coming a year after Broderick assumed the presidency, had a broader audience.

Prominent among the 1,000 invited guests at the breakfast event in the Ted Constant Convocation Center was a large delegation of state legislators and local elected officials.

One of his key goals as president, Broderick said, is to "build strong civic and community partnerships."

At a time when the national recession is driving increasing numbers of people into ODU's classrooms to retool and upgrade their credentials, the university's state funding has been slashed by $30 million over the past three years.

The Norfolk school now enrolls nearly 25,000 students, 87 percent of them Virginians, but has the lowest level of state funding among Virginia's doctoral institutions.

On top of that, ODU's burgeoning programs in modeling and simulation technology have been put at risk by Defense Secretary Robert Gates' plan, announced earlier this month, to close the Joint Forces Command.

The Norfolk-based military command has been a major catalyst for ODU's Virginia Modeling, Analysis and Simulation Center in Suffolk, which has more than $40 million in JFCOM contracts.

ODU is now the only school in the country to offer modeling and simulation curricula from undergraduate through post doctoral levels.

"Clearly, the proposal to close the Joint Forces Command would be a blow to our region," Broderick said. "We have worked very hard in the last couple of years at diversifying our efforts in modeling and simulation. Still, it does remain critical to the region, the commonwealth and the nation that the mission and capabilities of JFCOM remain here in Hampton Roads."

If there is an upside to the economic hardships facing ODU, Broderick said, it is that they have prompted a hard look at the university's academic offerings - what to advance, what to put on hold and, in some cases, what to abandon.

"The bright light of this economic picture," he said, "is that it forces us to confront the most essential questions of who we are and what we want to be."

Bill Sizemore, (757) 446-2276, bill.sizemore@pilotonline.com