Manuel Bersamin appointed to Cabrillo board

The Cabrillo College Board of Trustees voted unanimously Sept. 9 to appoint Manuel Bersamin to the trustee Area V seat. 

The area includes the City of Watsonville and the southern portion of Freedom. Bersamin will fill the seat that was vacated in July when Martha Vega resigned.

Bersamin will be the first Asian American and Filipino American to serve on the Board of Trustees in Cabrillo’s history, college spokeswoman Kristin Fabos said.

He formerly served on the Watsonville City Council from 2003 – 2011, including one year as mayor and one as vice-mayor.

Bersamin has served for 18 years as the Director of the Hartnell College Student Support Services programs.

Before that, he worked as the director of the College Assistance Migrant Program at CSU Monterey Bay, as the Director of the Early Academic Outreach Program at UC Santa Cruz and as an Adjunct Professor of Chicano and Latin American Studies at CSU Fresno.

“I’m so grateful to have someone on our Board of Trustees  who has dedicated their entire career to serving first-generation, low-income students,” said Trustee J. Dan Rothwell. “As a Community College administrator and the second former Governing Board Chair faculty member to serve on our Board, Manuel knows firsthand what it means to really serve students, and I’m looking forward to working with him steward the College through transformational and challenging times, while advancing the success of Cabrillo’s students.”

Bersamin attended Cabrillo College in 1982 as a first-generation, low-income student. From Cabrillo, he transferred into UC Irvine, where he earned his Bachelor’s degree in social ecology. 

He devoted his career to the education of first-generation, low-income students and to assist them with entering higher education, he worked as a migrant education counselor in the K-12 schools. 

Later deciding to work in post-secondary education to pull students into higher education, he was accepted into Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education, where he focused on becoming an administrator in colleges and universities. While at Stanford, he earned fellowships for Ph.D graduate studies in Higher Education that he pursued at the University of Arizona, so he could focus on researching how to improve access, retention, and graduation rates for Latinx, Black and indigenous students. 

“I’ve worked in higher education for 30 years, but what makes me unique is that I’ve also studied it as a student of higher education,” Bersamin said. “I was a student at Cabrillo, and as a Watsonville resident, have watched Cabrillo for several years now. As it enters a perfect storm of declining community college enrollments statewide and rebounds from the CZU fires and the Pajaro floods, I know I have the expertise to help Cabrillo through these tough times, expand adult and noncredit education, and help the residents of Watsonville.”

Bersamin will be sworn in at the October regular Board of Trustees meeting. He will fill the position until the next regular election of the Board of Trustees in November 2024. Bersamin is running unopposed on the November 2024 ballot.