Local CSUN Graduation Held : Commencement: For first time, Ventura campus students collect diplomas in their home community.

In a colorful commencement held for the first time in Ventura, more than 200 students from the Ventura branch of Cal State Northridge collected degrees Friday as friends and family members cheered them on.

About 1,500 people filled the Ventura College gymnasium to watch graduates pick up bachelor’s and master’s degrees in the community where they earned them. It was the first time in the 20-year history of the tiny campus that a formal graduation ceremony has been held in Ventura.

“We are celebrating a family milestone together,” CSUN President Blenda J. Wilson told the assembly. “It signals the maturing of the institution.”

During the 90-minute ceremony, the prospective graduates smiled proudly, wiped tears from their eyes to the strains of “Pomp and Circumstance,” and waved to family and friends in the stands.

And they listened as Wilson delivered the keynote address, speaking to students about what she called the “new world order.” She urged students not to fear changes in technology and to embrace ethnic diversity in their communities, which she said will become more pronounced each year.

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She told students that with the fall of communism in much of the world, they will be the leaders that other counties will look to as models.

“Educated Americans will be expected once again to be the models of leadership,” Wilson said.

Friday’s commencement exercises were the first this year that Wilson has presided over. Eight other graduation ceremonies at CSUN have been delayed because of the Jan. 17 earthquake, a disaster that the main campus is still trying to overcome, she said.

Another speaker, Ventura campus alumna Aline Yee Grossman, noted that 71 of the graduates were receiving teaching credentials. Grossman received her teaching credential in 1990 and has since won three awards as a bilingual teacher for a fifth-grade Ventura class.

She first learned about the Ventura campus after looking for colleges in a telephone book, Grossman told the students.

“If that campus had not been there, if I had not found it in the phone book, I would not have fulfilled all of my dreams,” she said. “And I wouldn’t be here before you today.”

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While many in the audience listened intently, some, such as 6-year-old Felipe Pech, impatiently waited to catch a glimpse of their graduate.

“Grandma? Can I take a picture of my mommy?” said Felipe, clutching an Instamatic camera.

“Yes, you can,” said Dale Avila, Felipe’s grandmother and mother of graduating sociology student Julie Pech.

Pech’s two other children, 4-year-old Veronica and 10-month-old Ernestina, her husband and three brothers were also on hand to watch the first person in the Avila family of Oxnard to graduate from college receive her degree, family members said.

“We’re all very proud of her,” said Jose Pech, Julie’s husband. “She’s worked very hard for this day.”

Pech, 30, is typical of a Ventura campus graduate. She is a mother who would like to change careers, from social worker to probation counselor. She worked full-time while taking classes, rushing to school after finishing work, her husband said.

It took her five years to complete her undergraduate degree in sociology.

“There were lots of times I wanted to quit, believe me,” Julie Pech said after the ceremony. “But this degree will mean more money for our family.”

About 90% of Friday’s graduates were women.

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The Ventura gymnasium was decorated in bright sprays of spring flowers atop white wicker stands, and the podium area was colored by a plum tree and red bougainvillea vines. Graduates lined up on the stage to have their names read aloud and be handed a degree. They then shook Wilson’s hand.

Master’s degree graduates were draped with a colorful stole-like garment in a traditional “hooding” ceremony. The hoods are made distinctive for various degrees by color, trimming and lining.

Faculty from the Ventura and Northridge campuses wore traditional academic robes and colorful hoods, adding to the event’s traditional tone.

“For the first one, it was really well done,” said former Rep. Robert J. Lagomarsino, a member of the campus’s advisory committee. “I was really impressed.”

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Master’s degree graduate Jeri Johnston, 41, said she was also impressed.

“I thought I was going to miss being at the main campus,” said Johnston, a Newbury Park resident. “But I didn’t. This was much more intimate.”

After the rites ended, the graduates and their families were invited to eat finger sandwiches, crackers and cheese, and drink sparkling juices laid out on tables in the quad area of Ventura College.

Jose Pech, who works as a housing inspector for the city of Oxnard, said now that his wife has her degree, he is thinking about enrolling at the Ventura campus to get his bachelor’s degree.

“Now that she’s out, it’s my turn,” said Pech, 29. “I was Mr. Mom in the evenings when she was gone.”