CSUN May Lose Wilson to Detroit’s Wayne State

Cal State Northridge President Blenda J. Wilson, a rising star in higher-education circles widely praised for guiding the campus back from the crippling Northridge earthquake, said Tuesday she is one of five finalists to become president of Wayne State University in Detroit.

Wayne State officials are expected to release the list of names today. Wilson, who came to CSUN nearly five years ago from the University of Michigan at Dearborn, a Detroit suburb, said she expects to visit and interview at the urban campus within the next month.

One of two African American presidents in the 22-school Cal State system, Wilson could become the latest high-profile loss to California’s public higher education system and the second major departure from Cal State this year. Last week, Cal State Chancellor Barry Munitz announced he is leaving to head the $4.2-billion J. Paul Getty Trust.

“If she goes, it will be a tragic loss, and they will have gotten one of the great educators in the country,” Munitz said Tuesday. “We don’t have a stronger president. . . . There are ones as strong, but not many. She accomplished miracles after the Northridge earthquake.”

Wilson, 56, has been a seemingly tireless pitchwoman for the San Fernando Valley’s only public university. But her tenure has not been without controversy, and she recently came under attack for cutting four men’s sports teams in response to budget constraints and to comply with gender-equity laws. Soccer and swimming have been revived thanks to pledges of private donations, and the state Legislature, reacting to the public outcry over the cuts, has earmarked funds for baseball and volleyball in its pending budget.

But Wayne State officials approached Wilson in the spring, well before the sports controversy, she said, asking if they could nominate her for the post.

The well-spoken and politically astute Wilson has been frequently courted by other universities, according to Munitz and other Cal State officials. But she had neither applied for nor allowed herself to be nominated for another position since arriving at Northridge. And in a Times interview last year, Wilson said she doubted that she would take another job in higher education but might one day consider moving into the world of philanthropy.

The idea of leading Wayne State, however, is appealing for several reasons, she said in an interview Tuesday, not the least of which is that a move to Detroit would mark a homecoming of sorts. She and husband Louis Fair Jr. have many friends in the area from their years at Dearborn, where they enjoyed “a very, very deep and rich community experience,” Wilson said.

Additionally, unlike CSUN, Wayne State is a full-fledged research institution, complete with a school of medicine. Founded in 1868, the public university is located in downtown Detroit, has an annual budget of $542 million--compared to CSUN’s $164 million--and 31,000 students compared to CSUN’s 26,000.

“In my mind, Wayne State is the model of a national research university with an urban mission. It is in the city and of the city,” Wilson said. “It is very much like Cal State Northridge in being committed to serving . . . students who might otherwise not have an opportunity to go to college.”

If Wilson were to leave, however, it would be at a time when community relations are at their lowest point of her tenure and when several major projects remain unfinished.

Wilson was still enjoying something of a honeymoon period since the Northridge earthquake of January 1994. Her efforts to reopen the school just a month later garnered her rave reviews that seemed to further burnish her image. In the last couple of years, relations with the faculty have waxed and waned over issues of tenure and a controversial system of merit pay Wilson introduced, but she encountered little criticism from the community.

Tensions with neighbors rose last year, when Wilson proposed building a shopping complex on 20 acres on the north end of campus as a source of revenue for the cash-strapped institution. But still, Wilson seemed immune from serious criticism--until earlier this summer, when she abruptly announced that she was cutting four men’s sports programs.

In addition to dealing with the athletics brouhaha, CSUN’s administration has come under attack recently for financial irregularities, reported in The Times, in which campus officials mistakenly garnished nearly $70,000 in state income tax refunds owed to more than 700 students. CSUN claimed the money to collect alleged student debts, even though the students owed nothing, administrators later acknowledged.

Campus officials also acknowledged the discovery of more than $500,000 in salary advances that staff had not repaid, also reported in The Times, which prompted changes in their accounting procedures.

The administration is in the midst of drawing up a strategic plan that will define the school into the next century. The final phase of earthquake reconstruction is also set to begin, with the entire campus about to be reorganized in addition to the individual buildings to be put up. And the school still lacks a vice president for university relations, making it one of only two campuses that have yet to fill a post Munitz has called crucial.

After a six-month search, Wilson said this month that neither of two finalists was right for the newly created, powerful post and ordered that a new search be initiated.

“Personally, I hope she doesn’t go,” said faculty senate president James Goss, who added that he met with Wilson for an hour Tuesday to discuss her status as a finalist for the Wayne State job. “It’s the timing. We’re in the middle of some things that I think she could help with. I’d like to see her stay two or three more years.”

Wilson, too, said she’d like to see the projects completed, but “the university can achieve those goals whether I’m here or not.

“Opportunities come--or they don’t,” she continued. “This is one I feel I need to explore.”