Cal Lutheran Names USC Official as New President

A University of Southern California administrator will be the new president of Cal Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, officials announced Thursday.

Luther S. Luedtke, 48, was approved by the board late Wednesday, said Jack Wise, chairman of the board of regents of the private university.

Luedtke was chosen from a field of about 100 applicants, Wise said.

“We think that Dr. Luedtke fits virtually all of our predetermined criteria for a new president,” he said. “He’s a lifelong Lutheran, he’s a scholar, an author. We believe his experience at the University of Southern California has prepared him well for this opportunity to become a university president.”

Luedtke has spent 22 years at USC, where his last posts included directing the graduate studies program in English and the School of Journalism.

A resident of South Pasadena, Luedtke is scheduled to assume the presidency Aug. 1 and will be installed as Cal Lutheran’s fifth president at a formal ceremony in October.

Luedtke assumes the leadership of the campus from President Jerry H. Miller, who will become chancellor in charge of development and fund raising.

At a small gathering of faculty, students and other administrators at Cal Lutheran on Thursday morning, Luedtke said he was “tremendously elated” to move on. He also vowed to maintain high academic standards at the small, close-knit campus.

Cal Lutheran represents “the middle ground between the heart of the big city and the kind of pastoralism of small-town America that’s part of our national heritage,” said Luedtke, a native of Minnesota. “There’s an energy here that most parts of the country have envied. Cal Lutheran deserves a much higher profile than it already has.”

Luedtke said he was lured by the cozy atmosphere of the Thousand Oaks campus. It has about 3,000 undergraduate and graduate students.

Luedtke said it will take time to evaluate what direction he will take in his administration.

But he expressed a strong commitment to pursuing long-range projects already under way, including a program to recruit more minority students and a $70-million expansion that is expected to double the size of the campus. The student body is now about 15% minorities.

Luedtke said he is also committed to seeing the construction of a 150-foot-tall radio tower as part of a plan to establish a public broadcasting station on campus.

The university on Tuesday announced that it has postponed plans to build the radio antenna on Mt. Clef ridge after hundreds of Thousand Oaks and Santa Rosa Valley homeowners protested.

Without acknowledging that relations have been damaged, Luedtke said he wants to improve communications with residents and community leaders in hopes of gaining support for a new broadcasting station and for fund raising.

“The town-gown relationship should be important,” Luedtke said. “I don’t know that there needs to be repair, but certainly a higher appreciation of the university.”

Luedtke earned his bachelor’s degree at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minn., in 1965 and his Ph. D. in American civilization at Brown University in Providence, R. I.

Luedtke headed USC’s American Studies program from 1972 to 1978 and served as interim director for the journalism school from 1981 to 1984, officials said.

His other teaching and research posts were at the University of Kiel in West Germany in 1968 and 1969, the American Studies Research Centre in Hyderabad, India, in 1984 and 1985 and a stint as resident scholar at the U. S. Information Agency in Washington in 1979.

Luedtke is also active in the Lutheran church, where he serves on the church council.