Cleary Receives Praise, Accolades for Bringing Prestige to CSUN

To the strains of jazz music and a chorus of good wishes, CSUN President James W. Cleary said farewell Tuesday to a university he helped transform from a nearly all-white suburban school to one of the largest campuses in the California State University system with an ethnically diverse student population.

“I’m so overwhelmed I might call the chancellor and tell him that it’s all off,” Cleary joked to an audience gathered at an outdoor reception in his honor at Cal State Northridge. “I’m staying another 23 years.”

Cleary announced his retirement last September and will step down officially June 30. His successor has not been chosen.

Standing on a university lawn beside an orange grove--one of the last remaining symbols of the area’s agricultural past--faculty, students and alumni spoke of Cleary’s role in “bringing the university into the 20th Century.”

“We’re no longer just the Valley school,” said Leonard Friedman, president of the school’s alumni association. “We’re part of that larger educational spectrum for all of Southern California. It’s a great school and I attribute that greatness to Cleary.”

Others reflected on the effect the growth of the school has had on the community as a whole. “The rise of this university has compensated many of us old-timers for the loss of the orchards and fields that once flourished here,” said Marge McGregor, president of the community advisory board, reading a statement from board member Catherine Mulholland.

Cleary came to the school in 1969 when it was still known as San Fernando Valley State College. The school was in the throes of riots and unrest, which Cleary is credited with ending.

“He was the right man at the right time,” said Joe Scheer, a member of the community advisory board.

Cleary is credited with diversifying the campus, overseeing the creation of Pan-African studies and Chicano studies departments and bolstering the athletic program, moving it from the National Collegiate Athletic Assn.’s Division II to Division I, except for football.

The campus houses the National Center on Deafness and is renowned for its programs for the hearing-impaired. The speeches delivered by faculty and students honoring Cleary on Tuesday were translated into sign language.

The president helped the school earn international prominence with missions to China that set up exchange programs with Chinese universities and by participating in projects in India and other countries. “It was important to me that CSUN not look provincial,” Cleary said. “I pushed hard for international attention. As a result, we developed continuing education, faculty sabbaticals and visiting professorships. I believe it was the right direction to take.”

Over the years, Cleary said he had seen “hard times and good times.” Recently, the pendulum seems to be moving “back toward hard times with the budget crisis,” he said. “I can assure you, if there’s one institution that will survive and survive with pride . . . it will be CSUN.”

Cleary was given several awards, honors and gifts, including a portrait of himself painted by a Chinese artist, and a faculty endowment in his name to promote research.

Cleary came to CSUN from the University of Wisconsin, where he was vice chancellor of academic affairs. He is an expert on parliamentary procedure and is co-editor of “Roberts’ Rules of Order, Newly Revised.” He and his wife, Mary, have three adult children.