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FRIENDS OF THE OVIATT LIBRARY Summer 2009 OOviattviatt FrFriieennddss Oviatt Exhibit Marks CSUN’s 50-year Celebration ifty years ago it was farmland. Today it is a also found some unexpected historical gems that top-tier regional university with a multi- collectively highlight the institution’s triumphs and ethnic student population and thrills, trials and tumults, as it matured F global reach. In celebration of over the past half-century. Here I’ll focus its remarkable metamorphosis from on items that most caught my attention. agriculture to academe, CSUN on My first surprise was a photo of leg- September 22 kicked off a yearlong endary anthropologist, Margaret Mead. observance of its 50th anniversary with Although a member of the University’s the first-ever Founders Day celebration. faculty for more than 45 years, I was As part of the festivities, returning alum- unaware that in 1957 this remarkable, ni, former faculty and staff heard much-in-demand woman had expound- Professor Emeritus John Broesamle, ed on “Changing ideas of discipline” in author of the institution’s history, a temporary classroom on the Suddenly a Giant, expound on near-barren campus of a fledgling the campus’s coming-of-age, and San Fernando Valley State afterwards joined in dedicating College, the institution’s original the James and Mary Cleary Walk, name. But, I discovered she was named in honor of the institu- just one among many luminaries tion’s longest serving president to grace the young institution’s and his wife. At day’s end the halls of learning. I also found returnees were treated to a visual photographic affirmation of visits rerun of the campus’s bygone by: Pulitzer prize-winning poet times at the launch of the Oviatt Gwendolyn Brooks, who in 1972 Library’s exhibition, “Fifty and Images from the Fifty and Fabulous Exhibition enchanted a class with a poetry Fabulous,” in the Tseng Family recitation; actor Jon Voight, who Gallery.
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