University of Virginia Library

'Soundings'

U.Va. Branch College Examined

By John Casteen

You approach the Eastern Shore
Branch of the University's School
of General Studies from the west,
driving toward Chincoteague and
the ocean through flat, regular potato
fields. You pass a few houses,
an occasional country store, and
billboards advertising Chincoteague's
motels and restaurants, then
you turn off the Chincoteague road
onto a side road that leads to the
branch college and N.A.S.A.'s Wallops
Island research station. There
are pine woods, a gentle dip in the
road, a land-bound pond on the
right, and finally the college, alone
and rather unexpected, standing by
itself with fields around the missile
station just beyond.

We met Mr. William Pogue, the
college's Director, and Mr. Richard
White, Superintendent of Buildings
and Grounds, on a cold, windy
Sunday morning during the semester
break. There were no students
around then, but Messrs. Pogue and
White agreed to show us the campus
and answer our questions about
the college. As we walked through
the empty buildings, Mr. White
talked about the college's beginnings.
"These buildings were built
as dependents' housing by the Navy
at about the time of the Korean
War," he explained. "They were
originally apartment buildings, very
like University Gardens in Charlottesville.
The Navy left Wallops
Station during the mid-fifties and
abandoned these buildings. When
the space program became active in
the late fifties, N.A.S.A., which had
operated a missile station for quite
some time down south of here on
what is actually Wallops Island,
moved its administrative and research
functions from the island to
the abandoned naval station. People
on the Shore had realized for a long
time that the area needed higher
educational facilities. And
N.A.S.A.'s need for highly trained
technicians, engineers, and other
employees underscored the problem.
Eastern Shore civic leaders and
N.A.S.A. officials, working together,
persuaded the University that a
branch college was needed to supplement
an extension center that
was already here. In 1964, with
acquisition of the campus, things
got started.

"Adapting the buildings to college
needs has not always been
easy," Mr. White told us as we
stood in a shining new 50-student
lecture hall. "This room is actually
four large rooms with walls removed,
reinforcement pillars added
to support the upstairs, and specially
designed floor, ceiling, lighting,
and furniture. We have worked with
the University's planning department
on adaptation, and rooms like
this are one result." The room was
large, well arranged, and comfortable
- it seemed as suitable for
lectures as any in Charlottesville.
We followed Mr. White to another
building. "This is our biology building,
which we converted two years,
partly with federal funds. Here we
left the building's center walls in,
using a long, open front room as
the laboratory and several smaller
rear rooms, with kitchen plumbing,
as preparations, specimen, and
equipment rooms. Faculty offices,
seminar rooms, and rest rooms are
upstairs, and a large lecture hall is
at the other end of the building."

We asked Mr. White whether
adapting apartment buildings to
school use is expensive. "No, it's
not," he answered. "Our cost figures
for a lecture hall run to less
than one-fourth the usual cost, and
we have just finished converting
another building into a large, fully
equipped auxiliary library with
reading rooms, seminar rooms, and
preparations rooms at an even
lower cost. Since we already have a
sound physical plant with plenty of
room for expansion (the college
currently uses fewer than half of its
48 buildings), our actual cost is
simply to adapt and finish interiors.
So far, our only outside jobs have
been normal periodic maintenance."

We followed Mr. White through
several other buildings, seeing,
among other things, a language laboratory,
a small bookstore, more
lecture halls, the new library, and a
student union building recently
completed with funds made avail
able by the counties of Accomac
and Northampton. Several facilities
were either under construction or
recently completed. Mr. White's
staff, which includes several part-time
student employees, had obviously
been busy. "In addition to these
academic buildings, we have residence
halls for students, and apartment
houses for married students,
faculty, and official guests, as well
as a central heating plant." He
showed us a map of the campus.
"We have two major streets. One is
a large horse-shoe, and the other is
a straight street that divides the
horse-shoe and the long way. The
two sides of the horse-shoe have
separate utilities systems. Right
now we use only the smaller,
western side, but we could move
into the other side simply by
throwing the switches. Around the
rim of the horse-shoe" - he
pointed to a double row of buildings
on the outer street - "are
residences, and clustered in the
center are academic and administrative
buildings. No one has to
walk more than a block to get from
where he lives to where he works or
studies, unless he happens to have
business in the single classroom