CSUN Head Criticized Over Outside Engagements

A performance evaluation released Friday criticizes Cal State Northridge President Blenda J. Wilson for having too many outside commitments that have kept her from building an executive management team that has “the confidence of the campus community.”

The suggestion that Wilson curtail her outside speaking and board commitments--and make them more relevant to CSUN--was included in an otherwise positive review from Cal State University Chancellor Charles Reed.

Written as a three-page open letter to the CSUN community, Reed’s evaluation praised Wilson as a “charismatic leader with an eloquent speaking style. Community and media relations did not exist materially before Dr. Wilson arrived.”

The letter cited Wilson for her response to the 1994 Northridge earthquake, putting the North Campus development project back on track and joining the Big Sky Conference in athletics.

But Reed also wrote of the concern “that the executive management team does not have the confidence of the campus community. It has been suggested that the president reduce external speaking and board commitments in order to address this concern.”

Reed’s evaluation letter ends a process that started with comments from the campus and included a four-day campus visit in May by a team that interviewed staff, faculty, student and community representatives.

The chancellor was out of the state and unavailable for comment Friday, a spokesman said.

Wilson also declined to be interviewed. But CSUN spokesman John Chandler said Wilson has already started trimming her commitments in response to the evaluation.

Specifically, Chandler said, the CSUN president has said she will drop her involvement as a trustee for the Children’s Television Workshop and as a director of the Commonwealth Fund, a philanthropic group.

The release of the evaluation follows last week’s approval of raises for CSU presidents by California State University trustees.

Wilson, who has been CSUN’s president since 1992, was voted a relatively modest raise of 5% for an annual salary of $181,172. Her raise was one of the lowest of the 23 presidents in the system.

Other presidents’ raises averaged 10%, with more than half getting increases of more than 11%. Only the recently named interim president of the Dominguez Hills campus, who got no raise, received less than Wilson.

At the time, CSU spokesman Ken Swisher said the salary increases are based on performance, the size and complexity of the campus and an evaluation by Reed. He could not explain why Wilson’s raise lagged behind the others.

Chandler said the complaints on the executive management team center around the relationships among the university’s four divisions and their vice presidents and how they interact.

“The president has been aware of some of the concerns about those interrelationships, so for a fairly long period of time she has been working with the vice presidents to try to deal with those issues,” Chandler said. “That issue being called out was not entirely a surprise to the administration.”

Chandler also passed along a comment from Wilson, who was a finalist candidate for president of Wayne State University last year: “I’m very comfortable with my job here at Cal State Northridge and I’m very comfortable with the raise that the Board of Trustees and the Chancellor granted me this year.”

Wilson’s current roster of directorships and trusteeships includes the J. Paul Getty Trust, Union Bank of California and the James Irving Foundation. Late Friday, Chandler said he could not immediately determine how much Wilson is paid for her outside commitments.

* HAZING ALLEGED: A CSUN fraternity faces a disciplinary hearing. B4