Alumna Gives $1.5-Million Gift to CSUN

Cal State Northridge has received a $1.5-million gift--the largest from an alumnus in the school’s 42-year history, university officials announced Monday.

The Abbott and Linda Brown Foundation donated the funds to help build an aquatic therapy component for the school’s Center of Achievement for the Physically Disabled, which provides student training and therapeutic assistance to 600 disabled patients yearly.

“The school has meant a lot to me,” said Linda Brown, a 1973 graduate. “I believe in CSUN. It’s the workhorse school of the Valley.”

Brown said she discussed the gift for a year with her husband, an executive with a global telecommunications company. She said she thought the program is especially beneficial because it often supplements treatment for people who have exhausted their health insurance benefits.

“It’s a dream come true,” said Sam Britten, CSUN professor of kinesiology and director of the physical therapy center that treats students and nonstudents with spinal cord injuries, multiple sclerosis and cerebral palsy, among other disabilities.

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Four pools will be built with the funds, providing an alternative to patients who cannot undergo treatment because they cannot hold themselves upright.

“We deal with people who are in pain. We know warm water . . . and the buoyancy of water will help them,” Britten said.

The pools will also enable the university to treat younger children with disabilities and “essentially wipe out” the three-year waiting list, officials said.

Linda Brown received a bachelor’s degree in history, CSUN officials said.

“She just felt she really wanted to do something as an alumni,” said Suzanne Hackett, director of CSUN’s campaign to raise $10 million by year’s end.

The Browns decided to donate the money after Linda was deeply moved while touring the facility last year and talking with students and patients, university officials said.

“This will help people,” Britten said. “And she understood that. She had deep compassion and concern for what these people are going through.”

School administrators expect construction of the pools--known as the Western Center for Adaptive Aquatic Therapy--to be completed by the fall of next year.

The new aquatic center will cost an estimated $3.4 million, and be funded in part by a nearly $1 million federal appropriation and other private donations.

The $1.5 million gift comes at a critical time in fund-raising at the Northridge campus and throughout the Cal State University system. Over the last decade, public universities have increasingly sought donations from the private sector as state funds have dwindled.

Ken Swisher, a spokesman for the university system, said fund-raising for the 21-campus system reached a record $860 million this year--a 33% increase over last year.

Three-quarters of the money came from endowments. Private giving--including funds from individuals and organizations--amounted to $232.5 million--compared with $98.7 million a decade ago, Swisher said.

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State universities are expected to continue relying heavily on private donations to keep them competitive with private institutions.

“[Private money] will give us things like the new aquatic center that we couldn’t get otherwise,” Swisher said.

“It would have been difficult for us to get funding for something like that through the state and keep [student] fees down.”

The foundation donated 30,000 shares of stock in Global Crossing Ltd.--a Bermuda-based company that is developing a global telecommunications fiber optic network--in which Abbott Brown is a director.

CSUN sold the stock last December for the $1.5-million profit.