CSUN President Seeks New Vision : Education: Blenda Wilson says the school must redefine its goals to confront a multitude of challenges.

Convening Cal State Northridge’s first campuswide faculty meeting in two decades, President Blenda J. Wilson warned Thursday the university must shape a new vision for itself to cope with dwindling enrollments and other sweeping changes--or face an inevitable decline.

Saying the university must prevail rather than just survive as it heads into the 21st Century, Wilson tried to drum up interest among a wary and earthquake-weary faculty in her initiative to draft a strategic plan for the campus. The plan would help define and guide CSUN’s future mission and programs.

“This is not a survival mission,” she told about 300 faculty members. “It’s a mission to be able to re-create as strong, as important, as high-quality an institution as was created by many of you sitting here in previous decades. The alternative, which is to do nothing or to continue what we do now, . . . is unacceptable. That alternative . . . inevitably is a decline.”

Wilson called the meeting in the wake of a projection by campus consultants that CSUN enrollments could decline another 13% over the coming decade because of a dwindling local population of college-age students. CSUN’s spring enrollment peaked at more than 30,000 in 1991, but has steadily fallen ever since to 23,600 this year, its lowest level since 1971.

The university must settle on a course for its future, Wilson told faculty members, to cope with the aftermath of the heavy damage inflicted by the Northridge earthquake, doubts by the public and politicians about the value of higher education, tight state funding, continuing Cal State tuition hikes and competition from other schools.

CSUN’s president did not lay out specific proposals Thursday for the direction she wants the campus to take.

However, in response to a faculty member’s question, Wilson acknowledged one issue likely to be debated is whether CSUN ought to strive for a return to huge enrollments or instead focus on becoming a smaller school with a renewed emphasis on quality.

Her remarks were politely received by those among the university’s 1,300 full- and part-time faculty who attended the hourlong afternoon session.

One longtime CSUN faculty member said he thought Wilson’s remarks helped drive home the importance of the process to his colleagues.

“I was actually impressed,” said Pat Nichelson, president of the Cal State faculty union. “I had expected more negative reactions. What I sensed in the room was people appreciated Blenda showing them some leadership.”

Nichelson, a professor of religious studies who also is heading CSUN’s strategic planning committee, said its members urged Wilson to gather the faculty because a series of meetings in recent months drew only sparse attendance. “At some point, the lights will turn on and people will realize” the planning process will help shape their and the campus’ future, he said.

Campus officials could not say precisely when CSUN had its last campuswide faculty meeting, though most placed it sometime in the mid- to late 1970s. Though the campus opened in 1956, CSUN officials said there has not been any kind of comprehensive master plan for the university hammered out in recent decades.

In a report this week, Santa Monica-based RAND researchers projected CSUN’s undergraduate enrollment could decline 13.3%, from 19,383 last year, to 16,813 by 2005. A main reason is that the county’s population of 20- to 24-year-olds is projected to decline by 26% between 1990 and 2000.

The latest enrollment loss estimate by RAND researchers, who have been hired as campus consultants, is more optimistic than the 17% figure they gave the campus last month for the year 2000.

RAND researcher Stephen Carroll sketched out other coming changes in a presentation Thursday that followed Wilson’s remarks. Those included growing shares of Latino and Asian enrollments, a declining proportion of whites, and transfer students gaining over traditional freshmen, as students opt to spend their first two years at less costly community colleges.