ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : Chapman’s New Foreign Policy

For a small college in suburban Orange County, Chapman College always has had a world view well beyond its landlocked campus. It was known for its innovative World Campus Afloat, an ambitious twice-a-year study program abandoned after 10 years in 1975 because of skyrocketing costs. Now the 2,200-student college is again placing itself on the cutting edge of international affairs in the wake of a remarkable year in which much of the Soviet bloc has disintegrated.

As announced last week at the United Nations and at Chapman, the college will be part of an innovative consortium of four U.S. colleges and universities and five Eastern European universities. That consortium will allow American business, technical and financial know-how to be shared with Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Hungary.

The consortium grew out of talks among a delegation of Eastern European academics, Chapman College’s new president, Allen E. Koenig, and David Hake, director of business and economic research at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, which is also a member of a consortium. The Eastern Europeans were especially impressed with Chapman’s economic forecasting capabilities, which they may want to copy in their own countries. Other American schools involved are the University of Indiana at Bloomington and the University of Utah at Salt Lake City.

With its membership in the consortium, Chapman College has an opportunity to offer nuts-and-bolts advice to Eastern Europe as it makes the difficult transition into a free-market system. The new president hasn’t wasted any time getting his college in step with important change.