CSUN Director Stepping Down After 22 Years

After 22 years as one of the top advocates for higher education in Ventura County, the longtime director of the Cal State Northridge Ventura campus announced Friday that she will resign her post next spring.

Joyce Kennedy, who rose from an assistant of the tiny Ventura Learning Center to run one of the largest satellite university campuses in California, said she will retire in March to dedicate more time to personal pursuits.

“I’m 62 now and I will be 63 early in the new year,” Kennedy said. “It’s time to make some decisions, so I have. But I did so with very mixed emotions.”

Word of Kennedy’s pending retirement surprised many of those with whom she has worked over the past two decades.

But Cal State University officials as well as personal and professional friends said they understand the decision, and remain confident that Kennedy’s drive to open a four-year university in Ventura County will not fail.

“It’s not a surprise, but I’m certainly not happy,” said Louanne Kennedy, the Cal State Northridge provost who served as Kennedy’s immediate superior.

“I think Joyce has been an incredible power in Ventura, fighting so long for a new campus,” said Kennedy, who is not related to the retiring director. “The Ventura site is now larger than some colleges on our campus.”

A native of Canada, Joyce Kennedy arrived in Ventura in 1974 to accept the position of assistant director of the Ventura Learning Center, a joint educational project between the Cal State and UC systems.

She was named director of the center in 1982, and six years later the institution was officially dedicated as a satellite campus of Cal State Northridge.

The learning center attracted just 75 students in 1974, but has blossomed under Kennedy’s direction, rising steadily year after year.

When state funding was cut by budget writers in Sacramento, Kennedy chopped administrative costs and supplies, steering every available dollar into educational programs to attract more students.

Then she pioneered a series of private fund-raisers that raised tens of thousands of dollars for the Ventura campus.

Enrollment this semester reached an all-time high, surpassing 1,500 students and boasting a full-time equivalency--the all-important numbers that administrators use for budgetary purposes--of nearly 800 students.

Through all of those years, Kennedy worked tirelessly to open a four-year college in Ventura County, the most populated county in California without a public university.

“What started out as a relatively simple challenge, to fill the classrooms, became an Olympian struggle,” she said. “A very difficult thing to do in Ventura County.

“Ultimately it meant we were trying to build a university and then we got into long-term budget battles and political battles,” she said.

Cal State officials first targeted Ventura County for a university in 1963. But a series of setbacks, including the rejection of the hillside Taylor Ranch site near Ventura in 1990, slowed plans for the campus.

Kennedy’s struggle to bring a full-fledged public university to the county reached perhaps its lowest point in 1994, when she told The Times that she doubted the school would get built during her career.

Weeks later, however, university officials announced that they had acquired a 260-acre lemon grove outside Camarillo for the campus, although they conceded that there was no money for construction.

The latest proposal is to convert Camarillo State Hospital, which is scheduled to be closed next July, into a state university. The Ventura satellite campus would move its classes to the new site.

J. Handel Evans, president of the yet-unbuilt Cal State Channel Islands who is spearheading the proposed conversion, praised Kennedy on Friday for her long dedication to public education.

“She’s had a long and illustrious career with the Ventura off-campus center,” Evans said. “She has brought it to a level where we’re now ready to bring it to the next step.

“I don’t think the Ventura center would be where it is today without her,” Evans added. “She has nursed it through all sorts of trials and tribulations, and made it what it is today.”

Sheila Cluff, who served on an advisory committee aimed at bringing a public university to Ventura County, called Kennedy’s retirement a great loss to the community.

“Joyce is an absolutely dedicated, talented leader who brought the campus from an embryo stage to the state of the art it is today,” Cluff said. “She managed the campus with focus on the best for the students.”

Carolyn Leavens, another advisory board member who has worked closely with Kennedy for years, agreed with Cluff.

Kennedy has well prepared the Ventura campus and its staff for the eventual conversion to a 23rd Cal State campus, Leavens said.

“She’s laid a fine foundation,” she said. “But whether or not there is enough leadership and what CSUN will decide to do is still a question.

“Those decisions will be crucial to the transition to a four-year university,” Leavens said. “There is so much ground preparation that must be done.”

Louanne Kennedy said university officials already are considering a replacement, but that a decision would take some time.

For her part, Joyce Kennedy said she wants to do nothing for several months except take care of herself.

She was hospitalized last year with ulcers, a condition she attributed to long hours and stress, and wants to avoid any further complications.

“I want a clear agenda with nothing on it for several months, then I want to turn to writing, which has always been a love,” Kennedy said. “I want to write a book based on my father’s experience in World War I.

“The information on Canada’s contribution is so paltry that I want to do something about it,” said Kennedy, who earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Carleton University in Ottawa.

“My father spent four terrible years in the trenches in France. I found his war diaries and I’m completely undone by them.”