Vice President for Institutional Partnerships and Chief Diversity Officer Sonia BasSheva Mañjon has resigned, effective June 14, 2013. President Michael Roth announced Mañjon’s resignation in an all-campus email on Monday, April 22.

“Sonia’s participation in campus committees and organizations at the local, federal and state level is extensive,” Roth wrote. “From Wesleyan’s Accreditation Steering Committee and the Sexual Violence Task Force to the Middlesex County Coalition on Housing and Homelessness and the Hartford Consortium on Higher Education—and in many other organizations—she has represented Wesleyan’s interests superbly well.”

In his email, Roth wrote that he was reluctant to accept Mañjon’s resignation. Mañjon noted that the reason for her departure is her desire to return to a different type of work.

“Although I have enjoyed working with many individuals over the past 5 years and am proud of the work I’ve done in a number of areas, my passion is working in the arts and in the classroom combining art, education and community activism,” Mañjon wrote in an email to The Argus. “My decision to resign was very hard, but was due to wanting to get back to my art, research, national and international projects.”

Roth praised Mañjon’s work on projects such as the Making Excellence Inclusive (MEI) initiative, the campus-wide Climate Survey, the Beman Triangle Project, the University’s Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act effort, and the Student College Success program for Middletown and Meriden high school students.

Mañjon wrote that her most valuable accomplishment at the University is the MEI initiative.

“I’m most proud of my work with Making Excellence Inclusive and hope that the next Chief Diversity Officer continues the work and the many programmatic initiatives that have come out of it,” she wrote.

Roth wrote that the University will continue to focus on campus inclusion initiatives such as the MEI, with the continued help of Mañjon.

“Since then we have been discussing ways to maintain the momentum of MEI and of configuring our diversity work so as to address the real issues confronting our campus,” he wrote. “I know that Sonia will be a resource for us in the future.”

As for Mañjon’s professional future, she noted that she is unsure how she will proceed after leaving the University.

“I don’t have any immediate plans, but am exploring various options,” Mañjon wrote.

Roth commended Mañjon’s service to the University.

“I am deeply grateful to Sonia for accomplishing so much in her time at Wesleyan,” he wrote. “Her gift has been to help us become a better community.”