Anita Contreras Cano, Professor of Spanish, is the senior member of the Foreign Languages Department.  She has a B.A. from Occidental College in Los Angeles, where she majored in English and minored in Spanish.  She graduated Phi Beta Kappa and Cum Laude as well as Alpha Mu Gamma, Departmental Honors.  Professor Cano received her Masters Degree with Distinction from the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at UCLA.  She is a Fulbright Fellow, having received the Fulbright Grant to study at the Facultad de Filosofía y Letras in Buenos Aires, Argentina for one year after receiving her B.A.  Professor Cano also holds a California Standard Secondary Life Time Teaching Credential in English and she taught high school English for many years at Lincoln High School in East L.A., the school from which she graduated.

She was born in Chávez Ravine, what is now Dodger Stadium.  She likes to remind everyone that she was born between third base and the Police Academy.  Her mother was born in Chihuahua, Mexico and her father was born in Los Angeles to parents of Mexican descent. She has one daughter, Andrea, who is also a Fulbright Fellow, currently teaching at the University of Atacama in Copiapó, Chile.  Her husband, Roberto, is a native of Argentina and they met when they were students at Lincoln High School.

Professor Cano taught for three years at UCLA and for three years at CSULB before coming to LBCC.  She loves the college as well as all of her students and she plans to "die with my boots on, right here at the podium".  She teaches several levels of Spanish and you can look her up in the Schedule of Classes.