Prator Led Evolving Northridge Campus

Before Blenda J. Wilson, before James Cleary, there was Ralph Prator, the first president of what is now Cal State Northridge.

The campus was created in 1956 as an outpost of Los Angeles College of Applied Arts and Sciences (now Cal State Los Angeles), gaining its independence on July 1, 1958, under the provisions of a 1957 bill in the state Legislature that split the institution into separate schools.

Born in 1907, Prator joined the fledgling campus in February of 1958, although his tenure as president did not begin until the same July day that saw the birth of San Fernando Valley State College. At the time, enrollment projections foresaw a population of 10,000 full-time-equivalent students.

After earning a bachelor’s degree in history at the University of Colorado, Prator started on a career in professional baseball, an aspiration that was cut short by injury. He later received a master’s degree in history and a doctorate in educational administration before joining the University of Colorado’s staff as director of admissions and records.

It was his role as president of Bakersfield College during the 1950s, however, that made him an attractive candidate to head Valley State. During his time in Bakersfield, Prator helped supervise the construction of a new campus, a situation similar to the rapid growth expected at Northridge in the 1960s.

Prator resigned Sept. 1, 1968, amid antiwar protests and growing tensions over the status of minority students. He later described the era as the close of the college’s first chapter.

“We had gained a status among the people of the San Fernando Valley and among our sister institutions that I felt was promising,” he told an interviewer in 1992. “And as I saw it, at that particular time we were ready to start the second phase.”