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 to a city-wide school or college board office in San Diego. She was first elected in 1990 and re-elected in 1994, 1998 and 2002. In that position, and in the community work she has done, Marìa has been an advocate for children 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 sets 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 a full professor in the Department of Counseling and School Psychology at San Diego State University where she teaches in and directs the Community Based Block (CBB) program. The CBB specializes in preparing counselors from diverse ethnic groups to be multicultural specialists and over the last 32 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. She comes from a long line of Texans on her father's side. Her mother's parents were from Chihuahua, Mexico. Marìa's father, Pedro Nieto, received a third grade education, her mother, Josefina Galindo Nieto, completed the eighth grade but that did not diminish their goals and expectations for their children. Her brother, Pedro, is an attorney in Uvalde, Texas, her brother, Jesus, is a professor at San Diego State University, her sister, Andrea Rebecca, is a businesswoman in San Antonio.

When Marìa was 14 her family moved to Detroit, Michigan where, after attending three different Catholic schools, she graduated from 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.

Marìa has carried her family's educational tradition to her two children. Andrea, 34, a graduate of UC Berkeley, studied Spanish in Cuernavaca, Mexico upon graduation. Jon Carlos, 32, also graduated from Cal and studied Spanish in Guanajuato, Mexico. Denny Ollerman, Marìa's husband, is a retired private practice psychologist. Her parents returned to San Antonio on their retirement where her mother completed her G.E.D. in 1994 and took community college classes.