Senior Specialist, Maria Alvia

Maria is the Director of the Center for Community Based Learning at Occidental College in Los Angeles, California, where she also teaches a class in Academic Community Engagement. During her time in Ireland, she conducted a workshop addressing the role of higher education in society's wellbeing by sharing information on several approaches through which higher education institutions engage with the larger community.

Maria is originally from Northern Mexico, and has been a community organizer for most of her life in Mexico and in the United States. From 1992 through 2000, Ms. Avila was an organiser with the Industrial Areas Foundation in Los Angeles and in Northern California.

She earned a degree in Social Work at the Universidad Autonoma de Ciudad Juarez, in Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico, a BA in Psychology at the University of Illinois in Chicago, and an MA in Social Service Administration and Community Organizing at University of Chicago.

Her approach to civic engagement from a community organising perspective has taken Ms. Avila to present at various conferences throughout the US, in Mexico and in Ireland. Ms. Avila's community organising model to institutionalising civic engagement at Occidental has been referred to in several books and articles.