VENTURA — With all the talk of a new era for Cal State Northridge as it pushes toward its 40th birthday, officials at the university's off-campus center in Ventura are plotting some changes of their own: They're trying to put the place out of business.
The satellite center, an extension of the Northridge campus since 1974, is scheduled to move next summer to the shuttered Camarillo State Hospital complex, the first step in a plan to turn the site into Ventura County's first four-year public university.
It's fitting that such a historic move should occur as CSUN launches into its yearlong 40th anniversary observance.
After all, just as the Ventura campus is expected one day to evolve into a full-fledged university known as Cal State Channel Islands, CSUN itself was born as an offshoot of a school that eventually became Cal State Los Angeles.
And it was under the care and guidance of Northridge's main campus that the Ventura center grew to become the largest satellite facility in the Cal State University system.
"I think both campuses have reasons to celebrate the past and the future," said Joyce Kennedy, who retired last spring after 23 years at the Ventura campus, the past 15 as its director. "The need for education is just so profound in this county, and I've always been very grateful for the nurturing attention [Northridge officials] gave to the Ventura campus."
Indeed, while Ventura County residents have waited more than three decades for a four-year college to call their own, the off-campus center has in the meantime helped fill the void.
Launched with 75 students nearly a quarter of a century ago, the center has helped lay the foundation for a local Cal State campus and keep that dream alive with a steady diet of academic programs and student services.
Now, with the center set to be swallowed whole by what is to become the 23rd campus in the CSU system, Northridge officials are scrambling to expand programs and boost enrollment in anticipation of shifting the operation to Camarillo in time to open for business next fall.
"We're getting close," said campus director Steven Lefevre, hired late last year from the Texas state university system to head the center and guide its transition to Camarillo. "This is the most exciting time anybody could be associated with a university."
The off-campus center has had to move before.
