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Teacher-Scholar: The Journal of the State Comprehensive University

Abstract

In 2004, I made one of the most difficult decisions of my life: to leave behind a job that I enjoyed at an institution that I loved for the sake of personal and professional growth. I had spent thirteen years at California State University, Northridge (CSUN), had been with it through wonderful times and terrible times, and had forged some of the best friendships and most valuable professional ties of my life. I saw CSUN battered and broken after the 1994 earthquake and reborn and thriving a decade later. I was hired fresh from graduate school to the first tenure track position of my career in CSUN’s English Department and rose through the ranks to become department chair there. I met my partner, Bill, while working at CSUN and saw him embraced as family by friends and colleagues across the university. I worked under two extraordinary presidents (Blenda Wilson and Jolene Koester) from whom I learned life-changing lessons about the joys and challenges of an administrative career track. In sum, CSUN left a deep and lasting imprint on my life, one for which I am enduringly grateful.

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