Candidate for
Trustee; San Diego Community College District; Trustee Area A

Dr. Marìa Nieto Senour is a member of the San Diego Community College District Board of Trustees, the first Latina elected (along with former senator Denise Ducheny) to a city-wide school or college board office in the city of San Diego. She was first elected in 1990 and re-elected in 1994, 1998, 2002, 2006 and 2010. In that position, and in the community work she has done, Marìa has been an advocate for children, for students of all ages, and for increasing staff and student diversity in education.

Marìa also served as the 2002 chair of the San Diego Convention Center board of directors. Her selection came after her unanimous appointment by the San Diego Mayor and the San Diego City Council to serve an unprecedented third term on the Corporation board to which she was first appointed in 1996. In her role as chair, Senour led a nine-member board that set policy allowing the Corporation to achieve its goal of bringing economic growth and development to the San Diego region.

A former elementary school teacher and counselor, she is currently an emeritus professor in the Department of Counseling and School Psychology at San Diego State University where she taught in and directed the Community Based Block (CBB) program for over 37 years. The CBB specializes in preparing counselors from diverse ethnic groups to be multicultural specialists and over the last 41 years has graduated more people of color with masters' degrees in counseling than any program in the state. Marìa was named Professor of the year by San Diego State in 1993.

Marìa was born in San Antonio, Texas to a working class family. When she was 14 her family moved to Detroit, Michigan where, after attending three different Catholic schools, she graduated from high school. (Maria attended 10 different schools before graduating high school.) She received her bachelor's degree from Marygrove College in Detroit, her master's degree from the University of Toledo in Ohio and her Ph.D. from Wayne State University. She was an elementary school teacher and a junior high school counselor in Michigan. She was an elementary school counselor in Redlands, California, a psychologist at the University of California, Riverside, a visiting professor at the University of Redlands and she founded the counselor education program at California State University, San Bernardino before assuming a position at San Diego State in 1977.

Marìa has written several professional articles and chapters and has presented at numerous conferences on such topics as Loss and Grief; Working with Mexican American Students and Parents; Gender Roles and Ethnicity; and Do You Really Need a Boyfriend? She has done extensive volunteer work in the community. She is a past Board member of LEAD, San Diego, has served as a consultant on race relations to the San Diego Housing Commission, a trainer to numerous departments of probation across the state of California on how to work with Latino offenders, and a consultant to various educational and community organizations on women's, cross-cultural and Latino issues. She serves as a facilitator with Viewpoint Learning, an organization that conducts day-long dialogues with citizens on controversial issues and important topics related to the future of the region.