New CSUN President Known as Mover and Shaker : Education: Former colleagues in Michigan call Blenda J. Wilson a visionary. But they’re not sure about the long-term effect of her changes.

Charismatic, smart, black and credentialed, Blenda J. Wilson was so popular a prospect for top posts in higher education that she kept a form letter respectfully declining such inquiries during her four years as chancellor of the University of Michigan at Dearborn.

Even so, campus leaders say they knew Wilson--now president of Cal State Northridge--was not going to stay long.

The prevailing opinion was that Wilson’s vision and leadership, her ability to shake things up and persuade community and political leaders to pay attention were qualities bound to carry her from the 8,000-student Dearborn campus--kid sister to the more famous university at Ann Arbor.

Whether her work will result in positive long-term changes is less clear, say students, faculty and administrators interviewed this past week at the Dearborn campus.

Wilson, for example, raised tuition to make up for cuts in state funding, and was accused by some of paying more attention to the community outside the campus.

And some say the school now needs a different kind of leader.

What is certain is that Wilson, 51, came in like a Midwestern tornado.

In four years, she replaced the school’s deans and top staff, introduced modern budget and planning methods, commissioned opinion surveys and hired marketing consultants. She is credited with getting the school mentioned in the 1991 U.S News and World Report guide to top regional colleges.

Donations during her tenure increased from $840,277 in 1988 to last year’s $2.2 million. Michigan lawmakers also became a bit more generous with state money to the 33-year-old Dearborn campus, in part because of her persuasive speeches at the Lansing Statehouse.

“She was an activist, brought change and in my view was the best thing to happen to this campus,” said Bernie Klein, acting chancellor and the former city controller for Detroit.

Many also say they wished she could have stayed at least until the dust settled.

But others, including admirers, say the school now does not need another Blenda Wilson, who left one year short of the end of a five-year contract.

“She provided what the University of Michigan needed at the time,” said Donna McKinley, vice chancellor of student affairs, who was hired by Wilson three years ago. “She was good at shaking things up. Her strength is formulating a vision, articulating a vision, and she used her strength.

“The stuff that comes after that--the slogging it out--she doesn’t enjoy that. She is the charismatic leader type. She needs to be followed by someone who enjoys carrying out the vision.”

Wilson’s ability to steer a new course is needed at Cal State Northridge, according to many students and faculty.

State budget cuts are forcing more and more students to compete for fewer classes, teachers have been laid off and many are asking whether the school should reduce its enrollment or eliminate courses of study should the state continue to cut funding.

Private donations to CSUN have increased over the past several years, but the total amounts, as well as the percentage of alumni contributors, is small compared to institutions of similar size. The hope is that Wilson will loosen the purse strings of big donors.

Many at CSUN have also questioned whether the school can afford its athletic teams to compete in the NCAA’s Division I.

At Dearborn, Wilson turned down a proposal to expand the school’s athletic program because it was too expensive and instead pared down competitive sports to three varsity teams: men’s and women’s basketball and women’s volleyball.

Amid the frustrations and uncertainty felt among CSUN’s students and faculty, Wilson has so far been received warmly.

And few at the Dearborn campus were surprised to hear that Wilson received a standing ovation following her first public appearance on the Northridge campus, a student news conference that drew an audience of more than 300.

“You cannot talk with her for more than five minutes without getting a sense that this lady is with it,” said Richard Krachenberg, a Dearborn faculty member who has taught business policy, planning and organizational behavior. “She is savvy, sensitive and tough underneath.”

Wilson needed those skills to win the confidence of the Dearborn faculty, many of whom were skeptical of her hiring because she lacks the academic credentials traditionally held by campus leaders. Some of those same feelings are held by members of the CSUN faculty.

Wilson, who received her Ph.D. in higher education administration and organizational studies from Boston College in 1979, has no scholarly publications aside from a book review and the reprint of two of her speeches.

“The weaknesses expressed were that she didn’t spend her career in the trenches teaching, that she came in at the top,” said Klein, who has taught at Dearborn since 1971. “Also, some thought that she was so enamored of the corporate community and getting their support that she tried to introduce language that smacked of the advertising world: students became customers and donors became stake holders.”

Robert Simpson, Dearborn’s provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs, said Wilson’s administrative background was no handicap because she gave him broad powers to run the school’s academic operation.

“Our talents were complementary,” said Simpson, a traditional academician who was hired by Wilson and still publishes articles regularly in his field of ecology. “I would say to the CSUN faculty that she is able to build a team around her to provide leadership to run the campus. She gave us considerable latitude.”

Wilson, in an interview last week, said, “I am a serious scholar of higher-education management.”

Beginning in 1972, Wilson spent 10 years at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education--first as a lecturer, then as an associate dean--while pursuing her Ph.D. at Boston College. From 1984 to 1988, Wilson was executive director of the Colorado Commission on Higher Education.

She was hired to become the first woman--and the first African-American--to head a Michigan public university by Harold Shapiro, now president of Princeton University. He said he intentionally veered away from hiring someone with a traditional academic background.

“It was a time when the universities needed change in many ways,” said Shapiro in a telephone interview. “There are lots of talented people who are not part of that academic tradition, especially with respect to underrepresented minorities and women. If you stick with all those traditions, it would have taken much longer to expand the kind of people running the institutions.”

Expanding minority enrollment at Dearborn was one of Wilson’s goals, according to her 1988 inauguration speech. She strengthened ties with two public schools in Detroit in a program that provides tutors and other help to minority students.

Minority enrollment at Dearborn over the past four years increased from 12% to 14%, campus records show. The percentage of minority faculty members increased from about 15% to 19% during that time. Two of the four deans she hired at Dearborn belong to a minority group.

“She was phenomenal, and, of course, the idea of an African-American chancellor was appealing,” said Robert Adams, 22, a sophomore computer major and president of Dearborn’s Assn. of African-American students. “You come here and there’s a sea of white faces, but she made the small group of us feel more comfortable.”

The school, which sits on 200 acres of land donated by the Ford Motor Co. and is sandwiched between the Henry Ford Estate and Henry Ford Community College, was established initially as an upper-division school of management and engineering to serve the auto industry.

Even now, most of the school’s 300 MBA students are also Ford employees.

The majority of undergraduate students work part time. Since the campus dorms were converted to classroom space, all students are now commuters. The well-tended campus, on which there are some just-completed building renovations and expansions, has a serene, yet orderly, no-nonsense feel.

Tim Guthat, editor of the school’s weekly Journal newspaper, said many students were less concerned about Wilson’s ties to the business community than such bread-and-butter issues as student tuition, which Wilson raised to make up for state cutbacks and is now about $1,400 a semester.

“The major gripe about Wilson by students was that she wasn’t around here much,” said Guthat, a senior majoring in history. “Some of the other complaints were about the parking being overcrowded and the classes being overcrowded.”

Jeffery Holmes, 22, a senior studying mechanical engineering, said he was not sorry to see Wilson leave. “She was more concerned with the politics of running the school than student needs,” he said.

Some faculty members opposed Wilson’s attempt to restructure faculty salaries by reducing the pay for teaching spring and summer classes--taught by only a portion of the faculty--and using the savings to increase the base pay of all instructors.

Wilson eventually dropped the idea, a move supporters said illustrates her ability to compromise.

Chemistry teacher Charlotte Otto said, however, despite the respect Wilson earned at Dearborn, the school’s 10-member campus search committee has decided to find a replacement who has more established academic credentials.

“Sure, we should be involved with Detroit’s public schools and the business community, but our mission is really higher education,” said Otto, who is a member of the search committee. “How much of that work outside can you do and still carry out that mission? We’re here to train students.”

Added Otto: “Blenda is the visionary type and for her vision to work we need the top-notch people she hired to do the nitty-gritty work.”