Lopez, Steven Regesser

Steven Regesser Lopez was born on December 14, 1953 in Tucson, Arizona, a city approximately 90 miles north of the Mexican border. Lopez has noted that ethnicity was not significant to him as he was growing up; however, when he entered Claremont Men's College in 1971 the civil rights movement and ethnic pride were salient themes which provoked him to seriously explore his ethnic background. In his junior year of college he designed an independent studies program, which involved taking courses in Mexican literature, Mexican history, and Anthropology, interviewing family members about his family history, and spending a summer in Mexico. When considering his academic major, Lopez selected psychology because he believed it would allow him to pursue his interests in ethnicity and culture. Later Lopez realized that he was personally “looking to psychology to shed further light on the meaning of culture and ethnicity”. His undergraduate efforts resulted in a senior research thesis that examined clinical stereotypes of Mexican Americans and was published in the first edition of Chicano Psychology.