Blanca E. Alvarado, MSW, PhD
Professor for  Sociology and Social Work
[email protected]
512.223.7149

I am a full-time faculty member at ACC since 2007. In terms of my educational background, I hold an Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Sociology and Social Work (Boston University), MSW degree from California State University at Long Beach (CSULB) and an undergraduate degree in Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley. After undergraduate school, I met several social workers and learned more about the profession of Social Work. I became interested in Social Work and decided to apply to graduate school for my MSW. While I was enjoying my experience at CSULB as a graduate student in Social Work, working with Children and Families (micro practice), I realized toward the end of my first semester that I wanted to focus more on Macro Social Work (looking at structures and ways to make systemic change). This led me to pursue my PhD in Sociology and Social Work.

The majority of my sociology and social work experience comes from working in K-12 schools in California, as a School Social Worker; working as a Middle School Teacher in the Mission District in San Francisco and in East Los Angeles, CA; as a Community Worker for Childrens’ Hospital in Los Angeles; working as an Advocate and Counselor in a domestic violence shelter with families and children in San Pedro, CA; as a Youth Worker in group-homes for youth (GLASS – Gay And Lesbian Adolescent Social Services and Hollygrove in Hollywood, CA); as an ESL Instructor and Community Builder for a non-profit community organization (Roca, Inc.) where I taught GED classes to gang members and ESL classes to recently arrived immigrants from Central America, in Chelsea, MA; as a Research Assistant working with the Wampanoag Tribe in Martha’s Vineyard; as a Program Evaluator for The Higher Education Coordinating Board in TX and for the last 14 years as a Professor in the Sociology and Social Work Department at ACC.