Patricia Arredondo will become  the first Latina to serve as president of The Chicago School of Professional Psychology next month, acording to Michele Nealon-Woods, national president of the school.

Arredondo has been an associate chancellor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She's also the interim dean of the School of Continuing Education, professor of educational psychology.

She serves as the vice chair of the Social Development Commission.

Nealon-Woods said: "She brings academic and entrepreneurial expertise, in addition to multilcultural acumen and social advocacy, that this leadership role demands as we move the institution and the field of psychology forward.:"

A licensed psychologist in English and Spanish, she formerly worked at Arizona State University. Her focus is on multicultural counseling competency models, immigrants and life changing processes, Latino issues in counseling, social justice advocacy and organizational diversity assessment.

Born in Lorain, Ohio, Arredondo said her father was a Mexican immigrant who worked in a steel mill. Her U. S.-born mother was a housewife. She'e sone of seven kids, five of whom are college graduates. Two graduated from high school.

She said she left Ohio in the 1970s for Boston. She has degrees from Boston University and Boston College in counseling and a degree in Spanish and Journalistm from Kent State University in Ohio. 

She's taught at Boston University and the University of New Hampshire.

Her focus, she said, is women's programs and women leadership, particulary in the areas of science.

From 1985 to 2000 she was founder and president of Empowerment Workshops, Inc., a business management consulting company serving