About the Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculty
As vice president for academic affairs and dean of faculty, Sonia Cardenas is Trinity College’s chief academic officer. She is responsible for academic leadership and planning; curricular direction and innovation; academic resources and budgeting; and faculty appointments and promotions–all foundational to Trinity’s mission of engaged teaching and scholarship.
Among the many academic programs and co-curricular initiatives in Cardenas’ portfolio are more than a dozen academic centers and institutes, including most recently a college-wide Center for Entrepreneurship. In addition to supporting faculty and students in navigating the pandemic, she succeeded in increasing the diversity of the faculty and introducing creative programs to advance equity in workloads alongside launching the new Trinity Plus curriculum. Engaged in raising funds for Trinity’s academic priorities, Cardenas has also expanded opportunities and enrollments in Summer Sessions, Graduate Studies, the college-wide Grants Office, and a January Term that she has overseen since its inception in 2013.
Cardenas continues today the work she started as vice president for strategic initiatives and innovation in 2018. This includes programming at the Trinity Innovation Hub, a 13,000 square-foot facility in downtown Hartford, whose development she spearheaded. Notably, she is the founder of an innovative workforce development partnership with Infosys, the global technology company, focused on business analysis and digital transformation. Beyond her Hartford-based leadership, Cardenas oversees the Trinity College Campus in Rome, a renowned global learning center.
Her broad experience includes key institutional initiatives. For example, in 2017, Cardenas co-chaired Trinity’s successful accreditation process, serving as principal author of the college’s self-study. She also played a leading role in designing and launching the Bantam Network, a program for all incoming students offering an integrated living-learning experience.
Cardenas joined the Trinity College faculty in 2001 and has been a dean since 2013. Currently the Scott M. Johnson ’97 Distinguished Professor of Political Science, she held a Charles A. Dana Research chair from 2011 to 2013 and is former director of Trinity’s signature Human Rights Program. She is the author of more than 50 publications, including four books from the University of Pennsylvania Press. Her op-eds and essays on academic freedom, faculty diversity, design thinking, academic innovation and the liberal arts can be found in the Chronicle of Higher Education, The New York Times, Hechinger Report, and Diverse: Issues in Higher Education, among other publications.
Cardenas earned a B.A. in international relations and French from Tulane University, an M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from the University of Virginia, and a certificate in international human rights law from Oxford University. Before joining Trinity, she held visiting appointments at the University of Cambridge, Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, and the University of Notre Dame.
