Alan Kim | The Roanoke Times

Colleen Roberts, Radford University's new police chief, was certified as a bike patrol officer during her time at Christopher Newport College. Brad Bolen (right), is one of eight RU police officers certified for bike patrol duties.

RADFORD -- Colleen Roberts is having a little trouble getting used to seeing a river and a railroad track just outside the police department she now heads.

There are neither next to the campus of Christopher Newport University, where Roberts spent 15 years as a police officer.

She left CNU -- and life in the city of Newport News, where it sometimes took her 45 minutes to make the seven-mile drive to work -- just a few weeks ago to take a job as chief of the Radford University Police Department.

"I love it here," Roberts said.

After 15 years of putting on a CNU police uniform, she said, it felt a little strange to put on one from RU. But she was proud to do so, she said.

"I honestly think this department is one of the best-kept secrets in Virginia in law enforcement," she said.

Roberts, 42, officially took over the department Sept. 1, the first day of the fall semester.

In her new role, she is chief to 14 sworn officers at a university with 9,300 students.

By comparison, CNU has 4,884 students, and its police department has 23 sworn positions.

CNU was "a smaller university, but we had more police officers there than I do here," Roberts said.

RU's officers are overworked, she said. Thankfully, she said, Radford city police Chief Don Goodman "is so good about having his people work the area surrounding campus."

One of the first things Roberts said she wants to do for the RU police is get them some help.

"We need more people," RU Officer Brad Bolen said. "The more eyes and ears we have on campus, the better."

Help for the department could come either in the form of more officers or as a student Police Aide Program through which RU students would be trained to do some of the jobs officers currently do: lock and unlock buildings, help with parking at special events and escort students.

"I think it would be a great program," Bolen said.

CNU has from 25 to 40 student police aides at any time that "really freed up the officers," Roberts said.

She said she would also like to see RU officers have the opportunity to attend training such as the 10-weeks-long FBI National Academy for Law Enforcement Administrators in Quantico, of which she is a graduate, and a forensics academy in Richmond.

"She has come into the department and is quickly making it her own," said Roberts' boss, Vice President of Student Affairs Norleen Pomerantz.

Pomerantz said 60 to 70 people applied for the position to replace former Chief Granville Hampton, who announced his retirement in April.

"We had an incredible pool of candidates," she said. "She really did come out as the top of some very top people."

Roberts acknowledged that she is something of an outsider in the New River Valley, where most of the police chiefs and sheriffs know one another well and many of them have spent their law enforcement careers together.

The two other finalists for the RU job were from the Virginia Tech and Blacksburg police departments.

Still, Roberts said, the heads of other New River Valley law enforcement agencies immediately reached out to her when she was hired.

"It's very endearing to me. They've been wonderful," Roberts said.

Monday morning, Roberts met over breakfast with Goodman, Virginia Tech Chief Wendell Flinchum, Blacksburg Chief Kim Crannis, Christiansburg Chief Mark Sisson and Montgomery County Sheriff Tommy Whitt.

Roberts wasn't completely without ties to the group.

She already knew Flinchum because they both have worked at university police departments, and her former chief is a Radford University graduate and a one-time Blacksburg police officer.

CNU Chief Jeff Brown completed his graduate work at RU in 1992. He worked at the Blacksburg Police Department in the 1980s.

Brown laughed when told that Roberts had talked about the possibility of implementing the Police Aide Program at Radford.

He said it was no surprise that she would jump into the job headfirst.

"She's a very dynamic individual," Brown said. "She's very smart. She's very capable."

Roberts has been a police officer since she graduated from Old Dominion University.

She was recruited by the Virginia State Police while she was a sophomore there. A professor brought a trooper into class to talk to students, and the trooper kept in touch with her until she graduated in December 1988.

"I had no intentions of going into law enforcement," Roberts said. But she had put herself through college and needed a job.

The month after her graduation, Roberts took a job as a state trooper in the Richmond area. She worked there for about a year before moving to a position as a trooper in Newport News.

Four years later, she joined Christopher Newport as an officer. She worked her way to sergeant and then to lieutenant.

"Here I am 20 years later," Roberts said. "And it worked out for the best."

For seven years at CNU, Roberts did the jobs of both an operations lieutenant and a services lieutenant, supervising all the officers and working special events that included football and basketball games and events at the performing arts center, which has hosted national artists.

The department recently added a second lieutenant position.

Goodman said that although he has just started working with Roberts, he thinks RU made a good choice in hiring her.

"There's a good spirit of cooperation I've found in working with her," he said. "We certainly want to work cooperatively to make the campus and the city as safe as we can."

Roberts said that in her second interview for the RU job, there was "a fairly significant turnout of the police department."

It was an opportunity for officers to see if they liked her and for her to see if she thought she would be a good fit there.

At that interview, she said, "I knew this was the place I wanted to be."

She was impressed with the officers she met, she said, and they were impressed with her and her ideas, Bolen said.

Bolen, who has been an RU officer for about a year and a half, described Roberts as "a breath of fresh air."

"They all are behind her," Bolen said of his fellow officers.

Roberts said she was disappointed that she didn't get to meet any students during the interview process. So she came back to campus a couple of times, on her own time and dressed in shorts and T-shirts, to approach groups of students about their concerns and how they felt about the police department.

"I really wanted to get a good sense of what the community was like," she said.

Anyone with the proper training can be qualified for a job, she said, "but it comes down to really the fit."

For a self-described "city girl" who spent 15 years at the same department, she said, "This was a big move."