Mangan/Christensen Endowed Scholarship in Musical Theatre

The Mangan/Christensen Endowed Scholarship in Musical Theatre will provide support for students in the MFA-Musical Theatre program.

If you do not meet all of these requirements in a given term, you may lose your scholarship eligibility and your scholarship may be canceled.

Requirements:

• Recipients must have a GPA of 3.20 or better out of 4.00, or the arithmetic equivalent.
• Recipients will be enrolled full-time at SDSU as graduate students pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in Theatre Arts with a concentration in Musical Theatre.
• Recipients will be enrolled in the second year of the Musical Theatre Program at the time scholarship funds are disbursed.
• Preference will be given to applicants who are the first in their immediate family to attend a four-year university.
• This scholarship requires a letter of recommendation/reference. Referees must submit letters of recommendation/references by the application deadline in order for your application to be complete and considered by the committee. Referees cannot log into Aztec Scholarships until you submit your application.

Donor Profile:

Dr. Kenneth R. Mangan had a long and successful career in the education of the deaf. He began his work at Michigan School for the Deaf as a teacher and coach. He was soon promoted to Dean and then moved to administrative positions in Wisconsin, Missouri and Illinois, where he was Superintendent of the Illinois School for the Deaf. He retired as a professor in the Education of the Deaf credential program at California State University, Northridge and moved to Escondido. In retirement, he taught as an adjunct professor in the Education of the Deaf program at San Diego State University, along with his daughter, Dr. Kathee Christensen. Throughout his life, Dr. Mangan was an inspiration to many. One of his passions was to see and appreciate musical theatre, and this scholarship not only honors him and his work, but his great love of the arts, and musical theatre, in particular.

Dr. Kathee Mangan Christensen was an inspirational educator and indefatigable advocate for inclusion, diversity, and social justice.

Kathee was born September 11, 1940, in Flint, Michigan, the only child of Kenneth and Katherine Mangan. Her father was Dean of Boys at Michigan School for the Deaf, where her mother was a teacher. There, Kathee developed her first languages: spoken English and American Sign Language.

Kathee earned her BA degree in English from MacMurray College (Jacksonville, IL), her MS at the University of Wisconsin (Milwaukee, WI), and her PhD at Claremont Graduate School (Claremont, CA). In 1978, she joined SDSU’s School of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, where she led the deaf and hard-of-hearing credential and master’s degree program until her retirement in 2006. At SDSU, she met the love of her life, Spanish professor Clay Ben Christensen, and they married in 1980.

Kathee and Ben later collaborated on multiple projects and co-authored Educación Trilingue: Languaje de Señas, Español, Ingles (Trilingual Education: Spanish, Sign Language and English, 1985). Kathee also developed quadra-lingual programs for the Spanish speaking population and was appointed the campus Affirmative Action Coordinator in 1994. She wrote grants and articles and edited books that brought together deaf and hearing scholars who were developing programs for DeafDisabled and DeafBlindness.

Kathee and Ben thoroughly enjoyed teaching at SDSU, and they were active supporters of all things Aztecs. They were football and basketball season ticket holders and greatly enjoyed attending games with their colleagues. Kathee also was an ardent fan of the SDSU Musical Theater Program, and created the Mangan/Christensen Endowed Scholarship for Musical Theatre to provide support to master’s students majoring in theatre arts. Kathee was also deeply interested in multiculturalism and the arts. Her outreach to the Deaf community extended into Mexico, and as far away as Taiwan, where she worked with three Deaf schools for over three decades. She collaborated with the American Speech and Hearing Association (ASHA), the International Association of Ligopedics and Phoniatrics (IALP) and the Council on Education of the Deaf (CED).

After her retirement from SDSU, Kathee became a full-time docent at the San Diego Museum of Art. Her lifelong work with the Deaf, Hard-of-Hearing, and Blind communities inspired her to develop the Vision Workshop, providing museum docents with guidance and resources for tours for the Blind. She accepted a seat on the Board of Trustees of the SDMA, developing more diverse and inclusive policies, and she was the Board Liaison to the Docent Council.

Kathee was an active member of the San Diego First United Methodist Church, where her commitment to social justice led her to share her time and talents with St. Paul’s United Methodist Church of San Diego, working on the Unity and Diversity Committee and with St. Paul’s Food Pantry, and organizing events such as a soul-food dinner, a live theater excursion with a follow-up discussion, a series of lectures, and a gospel music concert.

Kathee’s legacy is her life-long devotion to diversity, inclusion, and equity. As her close friend and colleague Lilly Cheng writes, “Kathee not only talked the talk and walked the walk, but she signed the sign.”