Carolina Contreras was born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico. As an undergrad she was a Ronald McNair Scholar and studied the effects of technology on society and education. She earned her BA in Mass Communication and MA in Organizational Learning and Instructional Technology from UNM. She has been an instructor in the Department of Communication and Journalism since 2011 and was awarded the Outstanding Part-time Instructor of the Year award for 2013.

Carolina is also a full time Information Technology instructor at CNM in the School of Business and Information Technology. At CNM she worked to design and develop the Faculty Feedback Program which utilizes technology to enable instructors to identify struggling students and connect them with CNM support services in order to increase student success and retention. The tool can also be used to provide encouragement to excelling students.   Carolina uses her classroom to practice kindness, humor, creativity and inclusiveness of individual thought and ability. She believes that education should be a tool to promote peace, increased self-awareness, personal growth, professional development and civic responsibility. Her teaching experience includes computer concepts and software applications, computers in the medical office, telephone skills, time management, public speaking, business english, interpersonal, nonverbal, and persuasive communication, interviewing, design and visual communication, Adobe InDesign, EPIC Healthcare software, Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

Carolina has been married for 18 years to her husband Gabriel and has a son, Roman, and a daughter, Ciana. She enjoys teaching, reading memoirs, hip hop music and dance, art, and spending time with her large extended family.