Nomination Is Another 1st for Wilson

Blenda Wilson has made a lifetime of firsts.

“I have been the first woman or first black woman or first black in most of the roles of my life,” said Wilson, who as president of Cal State Northridge is the only African American woman to head a university of more than 25,000 students.

In August, Wilson became the first African American woman to be nominated for the Fernando Award. “But clearly, I will not be the only, or the last, as the Valley becomes more Latino and Asian and African American,” Wilson said.

The Fernando Award has been presented every year since 1959 to the person deemed to have contributed the most to the Valley through community involvement and volunteerism in a lifetime of service.

Wilson and four other finalists are vying for the award, to be given at a formal dinner Nov. 3 at the Warner Center Marriott in Woodland Hills. Wilson said when she saw the long lists of accomplishments by other finalists who have decades of community activism in the Valley, “I took my hat off to all of them.”

She moved to the Valley only three years ago, leaving her position as chancellor of the University of Michigan at Dearborn to become president of Cal State Northridge.

Her Fernando Award nomination cites her role in leading the $350-million recovery of the school from the Jan. 17, 1994, Northridge earthquake. A New Jersey native, Wilson had nothing in her life to compare to the power of the temblor.

“One of the things that made a difference was the support of the community and the Cal State system,” Wilson said. The campus was reopened only two weeks late that semester, and prompted Vice President Al Gore to visit.

CSUN’s damage has been called the costliest ever for a U.S. university. Nearly every major classroom building was at least temporarily put out of use. The experience has taught Wilson that in preparing for a disaster, “you have to assume that you start with nothing,” she said.

Wilson also got involved in the community early in her tenure as president. She is a director on the J. Paul Getty Trust and is a trustee on the Northridge Hospital Medical Center. She is also involved in the Achievement Council in Los Angeles and on the advisory board of the Valley Cultural Center in Woodland Hills.

“I’ve always been taught and believe deeply that one of the obligations of a privilege of an education is to give back to your community,” Wilson said.

Those beliefs come from her parents, who are in their 80s but still are involved in cultural groups and a senior center in Woodbridge, N.J.

Her father was a presser in a tailor shop and her mother worked a variety of jobs, all to make the sacrifices for their children’s education. “I was born in the ‘40s, when opportunities for African Americans were very limited,” Wilson said.

Wilson earned a master’s degree from Seton Hall and a doctorate at Boston College. She also had held administrative posts at Harvard and Rutgers universities.

“I moved around a lot, as you know,” Wilson said. But her parents “come to every graduation and every inauguration. The sense of support and pride and high expectations have been a part of what my parents gave me.”

This is the last column in a series on the Fernando Award nominees.

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