Cal State Northridge President to Quit

Blenda J. Wilson, who as president of Cal State Northridge guided the devastated institution back to its feet after the 1994 Northridge earthquake, announced Tuesday that she will leave her post in June to head a Massachusetts educational foundation.

Wilson, the third president of the 40-year-old campus, will serve as the first president of the Nellie Mae Foundation. The university said Wilson will remain on campus at least through spring commencement.

She was praised widely for reopening the university two weeks after the earthquake, which caused $393 million in damage to the campus.

“She was a superb leader of the campus through a very challenging time,” former Cal State University Chancellor Barry Munitz said.

Her tenure also was marked by a string of controversies, ranging from her handling of Cal State Northridge’s scandal-plagued athletic department to recent audits citing discrepancies in her use of Federal Emergency Management Agency funds. In addition, her recent job performance evaluation reported disunity among top administrators, two of whom resigned in the last three months.

“It is remarkable how far we have come,” Wilson, 58, said Tuesday. “It would have been even more remarkable, to be sure, if we had not made any mistakes along the way.”

Wilson drew sharp criticism in 1997 when she chose to eliminate four men’s sports teams to comply with gender equity laws and cope with a deficit-ridden sports budget.

State legislators eventually appropriated enough funds to rescue Cal State Northridge’s sports program, but Wilson’s critics said her action showed her disregard for public sentiment. That same criticism was renewed when Wilson announced plans to build a new stadium.

The university endured another hit last year when women’s basketball coach Michael J. Abraham was indicted on drug trafficking charges in Nebraska.

Wilson’s membership on numerous corporate and charitable boards--activity encouraged by Munitz but frowned upon by his successor, Charles Reed--contributed to her poor job performance review last year.

Reed wrote 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.”

As a result, Wilson’s 5% pay increase--boosting her salary to $181,172--was among the lowest awarded presidents in the Cal State system. In response, she resigned from some of the boards on which she served.

“We have a pay-for-performance,” Reed said Tuesday. “There were some things that . . . needed to be corrected. They were being corrected.”

Wilson was the target of a FEMA investigation last year, sparked by allegations that her husband, Louis Fair Jr., had used Cal State Northridge workers to move his office furniture and had paid them with FEMA funds.

The investigation eventually was closed, but not before a Cal State audit released in October concluded that Wilson exerted “undue influence” over campus laborers who moved her husband’s furniture on days that the workers were being paid by the school.

“It appears that a gift of the movers’ time may have been conferred by the campus,” the audit said.

The Nellie Mae Foundation, with a reported $555 million in assets, was created last year after a 1996 federal law allowed nonprofit student loan organizations to give money to charity.

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