The view of Norfolk State University's 120-acre campus, as seen from the ceiling-to-floor window in the office of the president, is deceptive. In the foreground, sit the neatly, manicured lawn and sparkling aquamarine pool of the school's red-brick presidential residence. The scene reveals nothing to suggest this is an institution struggling to recover from a multimillion-dollar fiscal deficit.

Dr. Marie Valentine McDemmond moved into this cozy fifth-floor presidential office on July 1, 1997, becoming not only the first woman to lead this sixty-three-year-old university, but the first to become president of a public four-year university in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Little did McDemmond know when she began her new job that the verdant vista from her office window would become a thorny symbol of the perception problems she, and the university, must now overcome.

Details about Norfolk State's financial woes began to make headlines locally and nationally within months of McDemmond's arrival. She was prompt to implement a cost-cutting strategy that included the unpopular decisions of laying off 116 employees and increasing student fees by 27 percent. Then, this past July, McDemmond -- who perhaps ironically, has built a career as a prudent higher education fiscal manager -- found herself in the awkward position of having to explain to Virginians why the house she lives in was renovated to the tune of more than $200,000 at a time when the university was facing a $4 million deficit.

In her own defense, McDemmond maintains that the university's fiscal difficulties were incurred prior to her taking office. Her predecessor, Dr. Harrison B. Wilson, is a well-heeled, politically-connected, mammoth of a man whose twenty-two-year imprint is found in facilities, programs, and systems throughout the NSU campus. He has rebuked McDemmond's assaults on his legacy and continues to linger at the university as a president emeritus with an on-campus office and a three-course teaching load in the School of Education.