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California State University, Northridge

Encyclopedia : C : CA : CAL : California State University, Northridge

California State University, Northridge (also known as CSUN, Cal State Northridge, or "C-Sun") is a public university in the San Fernando Valley, within the city limits of Los Angeles, California, USA. Part of the California State University System, CSUN was founded in 1958 as San Fernando Valley State College. Since then, it has grown into one of the largest universities in California. CSUN is the only state university serving the Valley's 1.8 million residents.

One of the few remaining orange groves in the San Fernando Valley is found on campus. The large eucalyptus trees at the edge of the campus have survived development attempts by campus designers.

CSUN offers a variety of programs leading to bachelor's degrees in 61 fields and master's degrees in 42 fields. The university has over 150,000 alumni.

Cal State Northridge is home to the National Center on Deafness, and each year the university hosts the International Conference on Technology and Persons with Disabilities.

Contents

Envision 2035

California State University trustees on March 15, 2006 voted their unanimous approval of Envision 2035, the Cal State Northridge planning initiative that will help frame the university’s physical development for the next several decades. The vote approved the revised master plan as well as an increase in the campus’ master plan enrollment capacity from 25,000 to 35,000 fulltime equivalent students (FTEs). That growth is equivalent to 1.6 percent annual growth over 30 years. The trustees also certified the final environmental impact report on the plan. 

Specifically, the plan defines sites for about 1.9 million square feet of future campus academic and support facilities to accommodate the increased FTE enrollment. Near-term projects will include a 1,700-seat performing arts center; a 163,000 square foot arts, media and communications complex; a parking structure for nearly 2,000 spaces and a centrally located mass transit hub for students, faculty, staff and community members. It also proposes the development of about 600 on-campus faculty/staff housing units, mostly on the North Campus, and allows for student housing, parking and transportation sufficient to handle enrollment growth while maintaining desirable open space.



Academics




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Instruction at CSUN is offered through [nine colleges]: 


Cal State Northridge faculty have been recognized for their high quality. Eight faculty members have been awarded prestigious Guggenheim Fellowships for research and creative activity, while 59 have won Fulbright awards to conduct research or teach abroad.  


The university draws its freshmen from the top one-third of California high school graduates. CSUN's admissions program is rated as "less selective" in most major fields, but admissions to "impacted" majors, such as accounting, finance, cinema and television are more selective. Nearly eight in 10 CSUN students rate the university's quality of instruction as good or excellent, and the same share say CSUN was their first choice of a university to attend.



Library




Oviatt Library

Oviatt Library






The California State University, Northridge's [Oviatt Library] provides educational, cultural and information services and resources to the students and faculty. Its primary mission is to support and supplement classroom and independent learning; facilitate student and faculty research; and provide students with lifelong skills in identifying, locating, evaluating and synchronizing information.


All library materials are housed in the Delmar T. Oviatt Library, a 234,712 square foot state-of-the-art facility. There are over 1,600 seats for in-house study. Of note are the Collaboratory with its 170 multipurpose computer workstations, 3 computer equipped library instruction labs, and 120 computer workstations devoted to library information resources. Specially equipped computer workstations are located throughout the Library for individuals with disabilities, including four assistive technology equipped study rooms for students. During Fall and Spring semesters, the building is open 90 hours a week. The Library maintains its own server and web pages providing access to electronic information 24 hours a day.


The Oviatt Library has a physical collection containing 1.3 million volumes, of which over one million are books, and over 240,000 bound periodical volumes. The Library subscribes to 20,000 online journals, 2,100 print journals, 200 online databases and 11,000 ebooks. The microform collection contains 3.1 million pieces. There are over 11,600 sound recordings, 9,200 film and video recordings and nearly 60,000 pictures and other graphic materials. The Special Collections & Archives' holdings exceed 4,000 linear feet of materials. The library has a large collection of materials on Human Sexuality, which is frequently simplified as "pornography" by students. There is a very rampant "urban legend" on campus that the library contains "one of the largest collections of pornography", though it is unclear against what metric this is measured. In addition, the Teacher's Curriculum Center provides a circulating collection of curricular materials for education students and local educators.


The Library is heavily used with 8.2 million uses of its web pages annually, an annual gate count of 1.4 million, and over a half a million interactions per year with Library personnel. 



Other campus departments and centers with collections:



Groups and Organizations




Sierra Tower

Sierra Tower







Traditional festivities

Native Americans have used the campus to converge on for ceremonies, on a yearly basis.


The drama department celebrates year-end by staging the local version of Yosemite's Bracebridge Dinner. The [artistic events] that occur on the campus are often very distinguished and popular. Also, the university has a prominent band, especially the jazz band.



CSUN Jazz Studies

As part of its [Jazz Studies] curriculum, CSUN's [Department of Music] features a world-class jazz band. The Jazz 'A' Band has garnered a reputation as one of the more prominent university jazz bands in the country. In recent years, the Jazz 'A' Band has made several overseas tours, including appearances in Europe and China, and has built an eclectic international following.



Community services

The Daily Sundial is the university's financially independent and student-run newspaper publication. Staff writers and editors of the 8,000-circulation daily publication are typically juniors and seniors in the school's Journalism Department, and the staff is generally around 50 people during the fall and spring semesters. The Sundial competes annually in the Society of Professional Journalists and Hearst journalism award competitions, where it has won several awards. The newspaper is criticized by some members of the campus population, and one of the school's most famous professors once called it the "Scumdial" — and the name stuck.
The Communicating Common Ground project is designed to alleviate tensions between the Latino and Armenian student populations. The community service learning project represents a coordinated effort between CSUN's [Communication Studies] department and Grant High School.



CSUN Speech & Debate

The [CSUN Speech and Debate Society] is an intercollegiate forensics program committed to excellence.  The team is comprised of both Inter-Collegiate policy debate and individual events and travels throughout the state and country.



Athletics


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CSUN fields [18 sports] at the NCAA Division I level. The mascot for CSUN is the Matador, which was suggested in 1958 by student submissions. The Matador was chosen over the other four finalists, the Apollos, Falcons, Rancheros and Titans. The Matador is said to reflect the region's Hispanic heritage. CSUN fields both men's and women's teams in basketball, cross country, golf, soccer, swimming, track and field, and volleyball. CSUN has a men's baseball team, and women's softball, tennis, and water polo teams. Currently, Men's Soccer is the powerhouse of the school, reaching the NCAA 3rd Round in the 2005-2006 season, knocking out Big West Conference rival UC Santa Barbara in the 2nd Round.


CSUN was a member of the Big Sky Conference until 2000. It joined the Big West Conference in 2001. It also dropped football in 2001. The football team played at the North Campus Stadium.


The Matadome, which has a capacity of 1,600 seats, is where the men's and women's basketball and volleyball teams play.



Student Organizations


CSUN is a very multicultural university, which is evident in the multitude of ethnic and cultural student organizations that have formed root nearly a quarter century ago. Some of them are the CSUN Armenian Student Association, founded in 1976; CSUN Movimiento Estudiantil Chicana/o de Aztlan, founded in 1968; and the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trasngender Alliance (LGBTA), founded in 1972.



Northridge earthquake


This campus was heavily damaged by the 1994 earthquake, including entire sections of the main library, art building, etc., but classes continued in alternative structures. The art courtyard survived. Among the structures that were considered too heavily damaged for repair were the Fine Arts building, which was designed by Richard Neutra, and the South Library, which was the oldest permanent building on campus.  The parking structure next to the Matadome was completely destroyed, and is currently a grass field used for kinesiology instruction, though the driveway formerly used to enter the structure is still visible from Zelzah Avenue. As of April 20, 2006, the University is nearing completion of the rebuilding project.



CSUN sculpture

Travellers approaching the campus from the east, (via the San Diego (405) Freeway, for example) will see an abstract sculpture at the edge of the orange grove at the southeastern corner of the campus, which can be read from several directions as an acronym for the university. This sculpture is an impossible shape, and does not read as CSUN from a northwest view, although that area is covered with trees and is not often walked upon.



Points of interest



CSUN in film

Because of its proximity to Hollywood, CSUN has been featured in dozens of films and television shows. You can see it in Commander In Chief, Van Wilder, Six Feet Under, The Karate Kid, Battlestar Galactica, McMillan and Wife, Son In Law, Bring It On Again, Legally Blonde 2, and Sky High (where the Oviatt Library is prominently featured).






Notable alumni



External links





















 





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