As president of an institution with an abundance of high achievers, I could easily come to take excellence for granted. But my Midwestern roots go deep; they’ve given me a profound respect for diligence and a belief that excellence is possible only with hard work and commitment.

This year, as in so many years past, many of our students gave up time with their families and friends—in some cases even time to eat and sleep—to pursue what they love and to fulfill their academic and professional goals. But with another academic year behind us, and most students’ work on projects and research completed for the year, they are preparing for new challenges.

As they do so, I’d like to acknowledge a few who are representative of our many high achievers at Cal State Northridge. Our Model United Nations team, for example, has often brought top awards home to Northridge. This year was no exception. The students competed in April against 340 schools from five continents to earn the first place “Outstanding Delegation Award” at the National Model United Nations conference in New York, as well as the “Outstanding Position Papers Award.”

In the Associated Schools of Construction Student Competition in Reno, one of our students scored a first place win in the Project Management Challenge event (see the story in this issue) despite holding down a full-time job.

In September, audiences at the famed Monterey Jazz Festival will hear the sounds of the students in our Jazz “A” Band and a Northridge student jazz combo, The Josiah Boornazian Group. They earned the Monterey berth by going up against the nation’s top college bands in a pre-festival competition.

For their work in “Sounds of Silence,” their 2009 culmination film project, film graduates Ryan Carmody and Masaki Imai recently became the first Northridge students to be honored by the American Society of Cinematographers. Another first: 2010 grad Hitomi Kalemkarian’s artwork was among the few selected by the Society of Illustrators from a field of 6,205, for exhibition in New York as part of the Society’s Student Scholarship Competition (Hitomi’s story is in this issue).

The amazing young broadcast journalists in our KCSN News Department continue to excel, adding three more regional Edward R. Murrow awards and two more Golden Mike Awards to their cache. And Northridge Magazine soon will bring you the story of our Theatre students’ performance for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other world leaders at the World Expo in Shanghai.

The pride I feel for the achievement of these and all of our students is shared by my colleagues here on campus. One in particular, however, not only shared that pride but gave his all in support of these students through his leadership and excellence, and in the form of scholarships and of programs and services he headed. I am speaking of Dr. Terry Piper, Vice President for Student Affairs since 2001, who passed away on May 13, 2010, shortly before commencement week, after a courageous battle with cancer.

As I shook the hands of so many whom Vice President Piper championed during his years here, his absence at commencement—ceremonies in which his beloved students shone brightest—made this year’s celebrations bittersweet. The legacy he left to them, and to all of us in the campus community, helped us carry on.

Please read more about our beloved friend and colleague elsewhere in this issue of Northridge Magazine. I invite you also to visit www.csun.edu/presofc/presletters/presletter-2010-05-13-piper.html for my tribute to Dr. Piper that was shared with the campus community to announce his passing.

Jolene Koester

President, California State University, Northridge

Keep up with the president by visiting her blog, http://blogs.csun.edu/president/

— Brenda Roberts

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