CSUN’s Dean of Business Resigns Post

The dean of business at California State University, Northridge, has resigned after only six months on the job.

The dean, Andrew F. Sikula, 42, whose performance had been scrutinized by a faculty committee, quit effective June 1. Sikula will give up the dean’s duties immediately, however, and instead teach and conduct research during the spring semester, after which he will leave CSUN.

Both Sikula and the CSUN administration confirmed his departure but would not say why he resigned from the roughly $70,000-a-year post.

However, David Hornbeck, a faculty member who is CSUN’s director of business research, said the dean alienated some faculty and lacked support from the administration, which initiated the faculty review of his performance last fall even though he had only been in the job since June.

“He was trying to make changes, and the faculty had a tendency to resist that,” Hornbeck said. “He just got off on the wrong step, and it simply accelerated.”

Hornbeck said Sikula had the most trouble with the economics department, but that he did not know details. Before he resigned, Sikula was evaluated by a panel of three professors--a process that more normally occurs up to 18 months after a dean’s appointment. Results of that evaluation were not available.

In a statement Monday, CSUN President James W. Cleary said, “It was determined by mutual agreement that it would be in the best interest of the university as well as Dean Sikula that he tender his resignation.”

The statement said that for about three months the School of Business Administration and Economics will be headed by an acting dean, for whom a search has begun. Meanwhile, associate dean James Manos will head the department.

Sikula, who submitted his resignation Dec. 19, said he was not asked to leave. “It never got to that point,” he said. “Things were not falling into place. I thought it was in the best interest for me to resign.”

A burly former college football player, Sikula was previously dean of the business school at California State University, Chico. He held that post for six years, earning a reputation as a sometimes controversial figure who was unafraid to shake things up. For example, he fired a number of faculty members at Chico, saying they were underqualified.

Sikula came to Northridge intending to make changes there too. He said in an interview in October that he wanted to stress research and publications, for example, and get the business community more involved.

“I’ve already ruffled some feathers around here,” he said at the time.

The job is an important one at CSUN, a 30,000-student institution where business is the most frequently chosen major and the MBA is the most popular graduate degree. CSUN is the major provider of business education in its section of metropolitan Los Angeles.

Since its founding in 1958, the program has grown to become America’s 24th largest as measured by 1985 total enrollment. In the fall semester, it had 3,374 full-time and 2,251 part-time majors taking business courses from 190 faculty members.