• Office of Diversity and Institutional Partnerships header image
  • Office of Diversity and Institutional Partnerships header image
  • Office of Diversity and Institutional Partnerships header image
  • Office of Diversity and Institutional Partnerships header image
  • Office of Diversity and Institutional Partnerships header image
  • Office of Diversity and Institutional Partnerships header image
  • Office of Diversity and Institutional Partnerships header image
Partnerships

Meet Sonia BasSheva Mañjon, PH.D.

Sonia BasSheva Mañjon, PhD, Vice President for Institutional Partnerships and Chief Diversity Officer.  In this role, Dr. Mañjon provides leadership in community collaborations, institutional partnerships and civic engagement activities. Her charge is to enhance the university's outreach and engagement with Middletown, Hartford, New Haven, and Middlesex county communities; local and state government; as well as public and private organizations.   As Wesleyan's Chief Diversity Officer, Dr. Mañjon works with Wesleyan's leadership team to develop initiatives and programs to attract, retain and inspire students, faculty and staff from groups currently under-represented on campus.  She is also actively involved in Connecticut's education reform debate with public, charter and magnet schools in Middletown, Hartford and New Haven. Dr. Mañjon advises the Connecticut Parent Union, serves on the leadership council of the Middlesex County Coalition on Housing and Homelessness, is a board member for the Middlesex Chamber of Commerce, and is a State Commissioner for Latino and Puerto Rican Affairs.

Dr. Mañjon is the former executive director of the Center for Art and Public Life, founding chair of the Community Arts major, and held the Simpson Endowed Professorship of Community Arts at the California College of the Arts (CCA).  She has more than 25 years of experience in higher education, nonprofit, and government administration.  Highlights of her tenure at CCA include the restructuring the diversity studies curriculum, executive leadership of a six-year campus-wide diversity initiative, and the establishment of the Community Arts Program, the first BFA program of its kind in the United States. She also created the Center's Visiting Artists and Scholars program; raised over $8 million dollars for CCA initiatives; and implemented 100 Families Oakland: Art & Social Change, a highly successful community program that engaged over 500 Oakland residents in art making and civic engagement.

Dr. Mañjon is a sought after public speaker on a wide variety of topics, including community collaborations, arts integrated education, cultural arts, identity, and intergenerational immigration issues.  She has presented research on marginalized and invisible immigrant communities at national and international conferences including the First Annual Women of Color, Mixed Heritage, Ethnicity, and Race Conference in Texas and the 2006 International Conference on the Arts in Society held in conjunction with the Edinburgh Arts Festival in Scotland. 

Dr. Mañjon earned a Ph.D. in Humanities and a Master of Arts in Cultural Anthropology from the California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco.  She received a Bachelor of Arts in World Arts and Cultures from the University of California, Los Angeles.