CSUN professor of real estate and department chair, Donald Bleich, died May 18 in his Los Angeles home. The cause of death was not available.

Bleich completed his Ph.D in real estate at UCLA before joining the CSUN department of finance, real estate, and Insurance in 1985.

Bleich had recently served five years as Department Chair and helped develop new programs in financial literacy and planning.

“He was a significant contributor to, not only CSUN, but the local real estate community as well,” said CSUN professor Jim Dow. “We are all going to miss his spirit. His students would constantly come back after graduation and tell him how much his classes meant to them.”

Bleich, who was active in the real estate industry, served professionally as an appraiser. He also served on the academic review board of The Appraisal Journal,  a publication of The Appraisal Institute.

The Appraisal Institute is a global association of professional real estate appraisers. The designated members must meet rigorous requirements involving education and experience.

“He was not only academically qualified but professionally qualified,” said CSUN professor and a former student of Bleich’s, Mohamed Afandi. “His personal experience taught what reality really was to his students.”

Although Bleich was greatly involved in his professional life he was very committed to his students. Apart from mentoring several CSUN students, Bleich spent several summers at New York University teaching real estate and appraisal at the graduate level.

“He had a gift,” said Afandi, “He had the ability to not only simplify the information that he was teaching but packaged it into a way that his students would not only understand it, but somehow become passionate about it.”

Bleich was born on the East Coast and worked as an appraiser in New York before he made the move to Southern California in the early 1980’s.

“With his knowledge and experience he could have done very big things,” said Afandi, “He could have been a CEO of a huge company if he wanted too. But he chose to educate, he chose to work with students. He loved his students.”

Bleich had a great interest in Real Estate and finance throughout his education. He wrote a thesis in 1986 titled The Decision to Spin-off Corporate Real Estate Assets: A Logistic Regression Analysis.

Bleich devoted all of his time to his students. He leaves behind no spouse or children.