Socha, Sonia, 2018

Sonia Socha is a past employee of SUNY Cortland. She worked in the student activities and admission offices between 1973-74. She grew up in North Tonawanda, a town north of Buffalo New York. She grew up in a musically talented household and had a huge extended family. Having only two older siblings herself, she often felt as the only child because of the decade difference between the three. Her parents both second and fifth generation immigrants, worked in the factories since industry was booming in her town. Growing up, Sonia attended public schools, and in high school, was a part of the NPP program, a program where they kept the top students in a classroom together where they learned at an accelerated rate and took intense courses, like German. Because of the lack of financial assistance from St. Bonaventure, Sonia attendee Erie Community College as a freshman and was engaged in student activities such as student government, the newspaper and a sorority. After graduating from the community college, she went off to pursue her bachelors at University of New York at Buffalo. It was in her early college years where she found the passion organizing student activities and was encouraged to pursue a degree in it. For her master’s degree, Sonia attended SUNY Albany where she partook in a newly developed program where they put SUNY graduates into their programs and would in turn have internships in the surrounding SUNY schools. Sonia completed her internship at SUNY Cortland and worked on campus for a year before accepting a position as student activity director at community college in Maryland, where she worked until retirement. While at SUNY Cortland, she helped bring many famous artists and bands to play on campus, such as Billy Joel.https://digitalcommons.cortland.edu/sunycortlandoralhistory/1009/thumbnail.jp