Sonia Peterson
Sonia Peterson, Ph.D., CRC, LPCC
- Email: slpeterson@sdsu.edu
Sonia Peterson, Ph.D. CRC LPCC, is a counselor educator specializing in psychiatric rehabilitation. She serves as director of the M.S. Rehabilitation Counseling, Clinical Concentration leading to the Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor (LPCC) and the Advanced Certificate in Co-occurring Disorders. She joined the ARPE faculty full-time in 2019 after serving as adjunct faculty with ARPE and spending sixteen years with the California Department of Rehabilitation as a vocational counselor, counselor supervisor, and district operations manager in the San Francisco bay area and San Diego regions of California.
Dr. Peterson is a Certified Rehabilitation Counselor and a California Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor (LPCC); she holds a MA degree in Rehabilitation Counseling from the University of Iowa, a Certificate in Deaf-Blind Studies from Northern Illinois University, a Certificate in Rehabilitation Administration from San Diego State University, and a Ph.D. in Rehabilitation and Certificate in Educational Research Methodology from the University of Arizona. Her research interests include examining recovery-oriented mental health services for individuals with disabilities. She is presently researching the application of the Individual Placement and Support (IPS) model of supported employment and other evidence-based vocational counseling strategies for individuals with co-occurring substance use and other psychiatric disorders within the Federal-State Vocational Rehabilitation service-delivery system. She regularly publishes her research in peer reviewed journals and is invited to present at national conferences.
Dr. Peterson is a past president and member of the board of directors of the American Rehabilitation Counseling Association (ARCA) division of the American Counseling Association (ACA), Editor-in-Chief of The Rehabilitation Professional, and an ad-hoc reviewer for Journal of Rehabilitation, Journal of Methods and Measurement in the Social Sciences, and Rehabilitation Psychology. She is an active member of the LGBTQ+ recovery community in her home of San Diego.
