Hi, I’m Amy Reichbach. I am an alum of Cal State University Northridge. I graduated in 1977. I now work here as a health educator in the Klotz Student Health Center. I love being a health educator. I have contacts with students from – I’ve been here 19 years now as a staff member – I still have contacts from at least 12 to 15 years ago. Students stay in touch with me. People still say, you know, “You made a difference in my life,” and that’s what I like about my job.
I think the other thing that helped motivate me was when I came here, one of my mentors was the woman for whom the Health Center is named, Addie Lou Klotz, and I met her through my journalism teacher . . . I met her when I was still in high school, and she encouraged me to come here too, and she encouraged me to be in Health Sciences. She was the first director of the Student Health Center here. And so she was the first director. She mentored me, she taught me a lot about being in health education. She was the first person I knew that had an MPH, a masters in public health, along with her MD degree, and I adored her. I was here for groundbreaking [of the Klotz Health Center], I wanted to come and work for her.
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[Even though CSUN has grown] there are things that galvanize the community. In 1992, I think and again in ’95 I spearheaded a drive to bring the Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt to campus, and it was a collaborative effort. The premise had to be that nobody got charged any money to come view the quilt. So everything had to be donated, and what I found in terms of building relationships — from President Blenda Wilson on down, in those days — is it’s still possible to do that, no matter how big you are. I got to know people on all levels, from the custodial staff up to the president’s office, to make this event happen, and everybody cared about it and everybody came. It was possible, even in those times, to build relationships that cross all levels of campus and everybody knew everybody for a common goal. I think those things are still possible, despite how big we are.
CSUN Stories – Ed Reichbach Interview
I am Dr. Edward Reichbach (I differ with my daughter, I go with the original Austrian pronunciation). I graduated with a Master’s. I went on and got my doctorate and wound up teaching at Florida International University in Miami, and I credit Cal State Northridge — now — with getting me into administration because that’s what my degree was in, and that helped me immeasurably.
When I first came here this was a branch of L. A. State College [now CSU Los Angeles]. It was orange groves and Devonshire Downs which was a state or county fairgrounds. It was large tents, tentlike buildings, and all of a sudden there were portables dropped. There were many veterans like myself attending. There were also people who lived at this end of the valley who didn’t want to go all the way back to Vermont Ave. to go back to L.A. State and since the branch was open and it was accredited, we could finish our degrees. All this — there were wheat fields along Sepulveda Blvd. and as you climbed the hill, it was ranches, cattle. . . And to see a small college starting here was just amazing to me. I always thought this would be rural for the rest of my life.
I remember Delmar [Oviatt]. He was the first Dean of the College of Education — I think it was the School of Education, because there were no doctorates at the time. He was open. You could talk to him anytime, because we were small enough. And I remember going up the first time and seeing him and I said “Dean how are you?” and he says “Wait a minute I remember you, you were down on Vermont,” “yeah right,” and it was just an open, because we were small, everyone knew everybody, so it was really a nice way to fall into graduate school.