Alicia Rojas
Alumni Placement: I work full time at Stars Therapy in Salinas, CA, as a Child Developmental Specialist (CDS).
Year of Graduation: 2021
Testimonial: I graduated in June of this year and I received my Bachelor of Art's in Psychology and Spanish. Since my graduation, I have been working full time at a company called Stars Therapy in Salinas, CA which is my hometown. My job title that I hold at this company is a Child Developmental Specialist (CDS). What this title means is that I am a specialist who works with children with autism and any other mental health issue such as ADHD, Cerebral Palsy, Down syndrome, etc. I work with parents as well as their children in coaching them on how to apply the programs that we teach them which is in the form of applied behavior analysis therapy. Spanish has helped me an immense amount because I learned how to properly conduct myself, in Spanish, in a professional setting, which applies a lot in my job because I interact with psychiatrists, occupational therapists and board certified behavior analysts. All of these professions, including mine, work with the community of Salinas which is about 90% latinx and therefore I am required to know how to speak spanish, as well as write it. The spanish major has given me the confidence to speak spanish in my field and give me the opportunity to understand a higher academic Spanish that I can then read, understand, and translate for the parents that I work with.