Sonia BasSheva Mañjon, Executive Director of Center for Art and Public Life, to Step Down
San Francisco, January 22, 2008
Sonia BasSheva Mañjon, executive director of the Center for Art and Public Life (CAPL) at California College of the Arts (CCA) and founding chair of CCA's Community Arts Program, has accepted the newly created position of vice president of diversity and strategic partnerships at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. She will be charged with enhancing the university's outreach and engagement with the greater Middletown community and serve as Wesleyan's affirmative action officer and director of the Office of Affirmative Action. She formally joins Wesleyan on July 1.
Mañjon will work with Wesleyan's leadership team to develop programs to attract, retain, and inspire students, faculty, and staff from groups currently underrepresented on campus. She will be an advocate for the interests of students in such areas as recruitment, curriculum development, campus culture, and career planning. She will partner with the director of human resources to increase diversity within candidate pools and to support programs of thoughtful outreach. As a member of the president's cabinet, Mañjon will provide advice, guidance, and support to the president and the other vice presidents. She will also bring her expertise to bear on strategic planning for the Green Street Arts Center and other Wesleyan projects and programs within Middletown.
Mañjon has more than 20 years of experience in higher education and nonprofit administration. Highlights of her tenure at CCA include the establishment of the Community Arts Program, the first BFA program of its kind in the United States; the revival of the Subject Matter Art (SMART) teaching concentration program; the restructuring of the diversity studies curriculum and leadership of the Campus Diversity Initiative; creation of the Visiting Artists and Scholars program; establishment of the Art in Education Teaching Institute; direction of 100 Families Oakland: Art & Social Change, a highly successful community program that engages families in art making; and significant fund-raising for CAPL initiatives.
At CCA, Mañjon worked closely with Michael S. Roth, who became Wesleyan's 16th president on July 1, 2007. "I am very excited to work with Michael Roth once again," says Mañjon. "He has been a tremendous colleague and leader. I look forward to joining the rest of the team at Wesleyan as we seek to implement civic engagement and service learning in a wider arena that incorporates community arts within the liberal arts more generally. I also feel proud to have the opportunity to work at an institution that has such a strong history of affirmative action and diversity."
Michael Roth says, "I am delighted to have Sonia join our efforts at Wesleyan. She is a tireless innovator with a very sophisticated sense of how to nurture existing relationships and create new partnerships with communities and constituencies of all sorts. She also has keen insights on how to use art and performance to forge new community relationships."
Mañjon has a PhD in humanities, transformative learning, and change in human systems and a MA in cultural anthropology and social transformation from the California Institute of Integral Studies. She holds a BA in world arts and cultures with a dance emphasis from the University of California, Los Angeles.
In addition to her work at CCA, Mañjon has served as executive director of the city of Oakland's Craft and Cultural Arts Department, director of the Community Arts and Education Program for the San Francisco Arts Commission, and executive director of the San Francisco National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.
Mañjon currently lives in Oakland with her sons, Zyan and Ezra.