page_title: Maria Guajardo
section_title: Early life and education
hierarchical_section_title: Maria Guajardo / Early life and education
caption_attribution_description: California's San Joaquin Valley and Central Valley.
context_page_description: Maria Guajardo Lucero is an American educator and advocate for children and the Latino community. Born to illiterate Mexican migrant workers in California, she earned her undergraduate degree in psychology and social relations at Harvard University and her master's degree and doctorate in clinical psychology at the University of Denver. From 1988 to 2013, she worked in several state and national government-level positions to increase opportunities for low-income children and Latinos, and served as executive director of the Latin American Research and Service Agency. In 2013 she moved to Tokyo, Japan, to develop a new degree program in international liberal arts at Sōka University. She served as dean of the program from 2013 to 2016, when she was promoted to deputy vice president of the university. She is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, and was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame in 2010.
context_section_description: Maria Resendez Guajardo was born in 1959 to Mexican immigrant parents who were migrant workers in California. Guajardo was the fifth in a family of six children. Both her father, a former peasant farmer in Mexico, and her mother were illiterate. She grew up in migrant camps in the San Joaquin Valley and attended three different elementary schools. Though her home was Spanish-speaking, she was conversant in English by second grade. Her parents placed a strong emphasis on education, and took their children to the library to encourage reading. The family moved out of the migrant camps when the older children were ready to attend high school.
  Following her junior year in high school, Guajardo joined a Massachusetts summer program that introduced her to several Ivy League colleges. She applied to–and was accepted at–all of them, ultimately choosing Harvard University for her undergraduate studies. She pursued her interests in children and education through extracurricular activities such as tutoring in an African-American high school and volunteer work at Massachusetts General Hospital. She earned her bachelor's degree in psychology and social relations at Harvard in 1982. 
  She received her master's degree in clinical psychology at the University of Denver in 1985, followed by a doctorate in clinical psychology from the same institution in 1988. For her doctoral dissertation, she studied the reasons for educational attainment and school dropout rate among Latina teens, focusing on the question, "What is it that allows students just like me to succeed in education?" Her research, which included interviews with approximately 600 students and their families, pointed toward "strong relationships with encouraging figures, particularly mothers" for those who succeeded in school, and dissatisfaction as early as elementary school for those who dropped out.
caption: San Joaquin Valley
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