When Wilson came to California State University, Northridge in 1992, she was the first African American woman to become president of a large (over 25,000 students) American university. She was president of CSUN during the 1994 Northridge earthquake, one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history. Wilson oversaw the $400 million rebuilding of the campus over several years, where 107 buildings were damaged or destroyed, making it at the time the most expensive natural disaster to impact a university in the United States. While Wilson received local and national praise for her work in earthquake recovery at CSUN, she also was criticized for scandals that marred her presidency. During a time of severe budget cutbacks, she was criticized for planning faculty layoffs. She responded by telling the CSUN Faculty Senate that "This is not an employment agency, this is a university."