Early Days of CSUN Recalled

(NORTHRIDGE, CA - April 13, 2012) — Sue Weitkamp remembers CSUN in the mid 1950s, before it was named California State University, Northridge in 1972, and even before it became San Fernando Valley State College in 1958. In the mid 1950s, it served as a satellite campus to Los Angeles State College, when a few small buildings sat on undeveloped land in the north San Fernando Valley.

"It was like a small town community. Everyone knew everyone else." Sue was one of a total of two secretaries on campus, working in temporary buildings for former CSUN dean Robert Lawrence. Dr. Lawrence often hosted lunch at his home for the college staff because the small campus on the former site of fruit orchards and vegetable fields had no eating facilities. Restrooms entailed a trek to the corner of Nordhoff Street and Reseda Boulevard to a local gas station. There was, however, plenty of parking, any time of day.

Her then-husband, Bob Binder, now deceased, was on the college's first football team in the 1950s, and Sue donated her football programs from those days to the CSUN archives, housed in the Oviatt Library.

After several years on campus, she left to raise her family but worked at home as a secretary for CSUN professors for the next 15 years. "I typed a lot of master's and doctoral theses," she says of the days when such work was accomplished laboriously on manual typewriters and corrections made with rubber erasers.

In the meantime, the "pioneer" days of CSUN progressed from the San Fernando Valley State College campus of 1958 on 165 acres with 2,525 students, to the CSUN campus of today, with nearly 36,000 students on 365 acres.

Sue now serves on the board of directors of New Horizons, a nonprofit dedicated to helping adults with developmental disabilities. Also on the New Horizons board are Tseng College dean Joyce Feucht-Haviar and Spero Bowman, who retired from CSUN as associate vice president of academic resources and planning.

In addition to community outreach, the Tseng College acknowledges nonprofit activities with its graduate certificate program in Nonprofit Sector Management, which provides advanced education for nonprofit managers.