County Drive for CSU Site to Continue

Minimizing the significance of the recent departure of the point man who headed the effort to develop a Cal State University in Ventura County, the university system’s top administrator said this week that a replacement could be hired by the end of the month.

Chancellor Barry Munitz also said in an interview that the controversial reassignment of David Leveille--criticized by some as a divisive force in the drive for a new campus--will not stop the forward momentum toward a new campus here.

Among the most important characteristics the new person must have is political acumen and the ability to form partnerships with local officials, Munitz said.

“This person will have to be skilled in everything from planning to raising a bond issue to working with architects . . . and then finally, disengaging from the Northridge campus,” Munitz said.

Munitz’s comments came after the abrupt departure late last month of Leveille, who inspired both loyalty and distrust in the community, sources said.

Two community leaders, who both requested anonymity, said Leveille’s presence was divisive, splitting the community apart rather than bringing it together.

Instead of using the existing Cal State Northridge satellite center in Ventura as a stepping stone on which to build a new campus, Leveille was stepping over the center to build his own domain, complete with a new advisory board, they said.

Leveille had declined to use an office offered to him at the satellite center on Alessandro Road in Ventura, preferring instead to work out of his Volvo until funds were available for a completely separate office elsewhere in the county.

Some contended that Leveille had left both the main Northridge campus and the Ventura satellite center out of the information loop, leaving his colleagues and superiors uninformed of his efforts in the county.

That will change with a new appointment, officials said.

“I think he had a personal sense of wanting to be separate,” said Louanne Kennedy, provost and vice president for academic affairs at Cal State Northridge. “But this has to be a joint effort. We are a single system with the same goal--educating the young people of California.”

Supporters said Leveille was forced to try to separate himself and the new university from the main campus because Northridge secretly wanted to keep the Ventura area as part of its domain as an enrollment base to gain more students.

But Joyce M. Kennedy, director of the Cal State Northridge satellite center in Ventura, called any talk in the community about Northridge wanting to hold back the development of the new campus “utter nonsense.”

“It’s heartbreaking to me to hear rumors that there is the slightest notion that Northridge would not be fully cooperative,” said Kennedy, who is unrelated to the provost. “I know that [Cal State Northridge President] Blenda Wilson is fully and completely and wholeheartedly supportive of a four-year university in Ventura County.

Kennedy and Provost Kennedy said that Northridge’s interest in becoming the founding university for the new campus is evident in the support the satellite center has enjoyed.

“We need to do more aggressive recruiting in our own region,” the provost said. “But we are not looking to Ventura to keep us alive. We have plenty of students in the San Fernando Valley and surrounding valleys and the greater Los Angeles area.

“Northridge was begun as a spinoff of Cal State Los Angeles [in 1956], and we will do the same for Ventura,” she said.

Leveille, who has worked in various capacities for nearly 10 years to bring a four-year campus to Ventura County, declined to comment on the charges and countercharges, saying only that he requested a reassignment to the California Post-Secondary Education Commission. His reassignment was announced late last month.

“Some organizational changes were made in the chancellor’s office, and I felt that I had been there a long time and it was about time for me to move on,” Leveille said.

But Munitz strongly disputed the notion among some in the community that Leveille was fired or that his departure signals a diminishing commitment to building a four-year university in the county.

“There is nothing that should be read into this except a greater and stronger commitment to move forward,” Munitz said. “No one can fire him but me. He was not dismissed.”

Munitz added that whether or not Leveille had stayed, the person charged with putting together a new university in the county needs some working cash.

“We will give this person some planning money so there is leverage in getting the job done,” he said. “You can’t say to someone, ‘Move ahead, but if you need a consultant or someone to review the infrastructure, we don’t have the money to pay them.’ ”

He said he already has two or three candidates in mind for the job.

The successful candidate is expected to be chosen by Cal State trustees when they meet in their regular session Jan. 23 and 24 in Long Beach.

The person chosen for the job, which carries a salary ranging roughly from $80,000 to $120,000, must understand higher education, though not necessarily be a career educator, and must be politically savvy, Munitz said.

Leveille’s reassignment came as a surprise and a blow to some supporters in the community.

State Sen. Jack O’Connell (D-Santa Barbara) said he hoped the effort to build a campus here would stay on track.

“The campus is bigger than any one individual,” he said. But crucial to a new campus here is a bond measure to provide needed capital funds, he said. O’Connell is working with Assembly members to get a measure on the March primary ballot.

O’Connell said Leveille had done “an excellent job at laying the necessary ground work for the new campus,” and that he “worked with great distinction and dedication.”

Other supporters said Leveille was being hampered in his work by the main Northridge campus, which they contend did not want to let the Ventura campus develop into its own entity.

“David was forced into seeking reassignment because he clearly became a threat to those who did not want to change the status quo,” said one supporter who asked not to be identified.

Northridge wants to hold on to the Ventura campus because Ventura County is an area of growing enrollment while the base of enrollment in the San Fernando Valley has declined in recent years, some said.

Wally Beck, who was working with Leveille to form a type of hands-on business school at the new campus, said he believed Leveille was unfairly treated.

Beck said he is committed to continue working toward a university. He and a group of four other Camarillo business leaders are holding informational meetings with local legislators to determine whether there is interest in building the new campus at Camarillo State Hospital, which may close in the next two years.

Munitz acknowledged that the new Ventura campus and the founding campus at Northridge will gradually separate more as the university moves closer to opening a new campus, but he said he will depend on his staff to tell him when that time is right.

“I think we have to begin to move in that direction,” he said. “And Blenda Wilson will be critical in telling me how that will happen.”

Munitz said that anyone in such a high-pressure position is bound to draw some criticism from the community, and that Leveille was no exception. He said that Leveille could continue to help Ventura County achieve its goal through his new position, where he will help assess the need for new university facilities on a statewide basis.

Munitz credited Leveille with helping pave the way for the new campus, getting paperwork complete and on the system’s books as a planned campus.

That should help keep the university on track to open within four or five years, he said.

“I’m still optimistic for the first kid cracking a book at the turn of the century,” Munitz said.