Area Boosters Pin Hopes on New CSU Chief

Community leaders expressed optimism Monday at the selection of Charles B. Reed as the new chancellor of the Cal State University system, saying they believe he will push forward with plans to launch a public university in Ventura County.

Still reveling in last month’s decision by Cal State trustees to convert Camarillo State Hospital into a college campus, university boosters said they are eager to have Reed tour the budding campus to see for himself the potential of the site.

“It’s important that we continue the momentum,” Ventura business leader Carolyn Leavens said. “But I think he knows his position is to serve all the people of the state, and we have definitely been underserved.”

In an interview with The Times, Reed spoke only in general terms about the trustees’ decision to take over the now-shuttered mental hospital, the first step to possibly launching the county’s first four-year public university.

But he went on to say that the educational needs of local residents should drive the decision to funnel resources to any given area.

“It depends on what is the need and how best can you serve that need to people in the Ventura area,” said Reed, head of Florida’s public university system.

“The board decided that one of the ways it could do that was to create this campus and let it grow under the [Cal State] Northridge leadership,” he added. “Why not let the citizens in that area have the access and opportunity?”

That is an argument local leaders have been making for more than three decades.

Ventura County is the most populous county in the state without a four-year public university. And despite its relative affluence and top-caliber schools, it lags behind counties of comparable size and wealth when it comes to shepherding students to college.

However, Cal State trustees last month took a giant step toward curing that problem by agreeing to convert the Camarillo hospital into the new home for the Ventura campus of Cal State Northridge.

The plan is to expand curriculum and boost enrollment until the campus can stand on its own as an independent four-year university, known as Cal State Channel Islands.

The trustees’ vote, contingent on the governor’s willingness to contribute $6.5 million next year for operating expenses, comes more than 30 years after Cal State University officials first targeted Ventura County as the future home for a four-year campus.

And it comes partly as a result of aggressive lobbying by current Cal State Chancellor Barry Munitz, who departs in early January to become president and chief executive officer of the J. Paul Getty Trust.

Local leaders expect Reed to take over where Munitz left off, pushing hard to find the millions of dollars that will be needed to transform the hospital’s Spanish-style buildings into classrooms and administrative offices.

Handel Evans, president of the developing Ventura County campus, said he believes Reed is uniquely qualified to help the local university get off the ground. He is familiar with running a large university system, Evans said. And he helped launch a new campus in Florida.

“This is not a new thing for him,” Evans said. “His experience running a large system and starting a new campus kind of tells you that he has been prepped for this job.”

In coming months, Ventura County legislators will be lobbying Gov. Pete Wilson, asking him to earmark $6.5 million in the fiscal 1998-99 budget to operate the Camarillo campus.

At the same time, civic leaders say they will be busy drumming up local support to keep the conversion project moving forward. A community party is planned for mid-November to aid that effort. And one party invitation will have Reed’s name on it.

“We would love to have the new chancellor come,” said Leavens, an organizer of the event. “Everybody who makes it out here just falls in love with the place.”

Times staff writer Kenneth R. Weiss contributed to this story.

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