Dr. Veronica Salinas holds a Bachelor of Music degree in Violin Performance and a Master of Music degree in Orchestral Conducting from Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, TX. In 2012, she earned her Doctorate in Musical Arts in Viola Performance at Texas Tech University under a full scholarship as an AT&T Chancellor’s Fellow. She has taught at all grade levels from elementary to the collegiate level, most recently having served as the Associate Professor of Strings at Texas A&M University in Kingsville, Music Director for the Kingsville Symphony Orchestra, and Director of Mariachi Javelina. 

While in Kingsville she implemented the first ever Strings Project called JAVELINA Strings Youth Orchestra. In this Strings Project, KISD students attend free after school classes to learn to play in orchestra. This also serves as a training ground for college students to gain experiential learning in the orchestra classroom. In her first four years in Kingsville, she secured over $150,000 in funding through grants and fundraising efforts to promote this program as well as outreach initiatives and community programming with the Kingsville Symphony Orchestra. 

She maintains her performance skills on and off the podium by performing on the viola as the Assistant Principal Violist in the Victoria Symphony Orchestra as well as playing on the violin or viola in several other Texas regional orchestras. In the conducting arena, she has held conducting fellowships at the Los Angeles Conducting Institute in San Diego, California, the Allentown Symphony Orchestra in Allentown, Pennsylvania, the International Conducting Institute in New York City, and the International Conducting Workshop and Festival in Sofia, Bulgaria.

Currently, Dr. Salinas serves as the Director of Orchestras for Bush Middle School in the North East Independent School District. Most formerly, she was appointed as the Artistic Administrator for OPERA San Antonio where she managed daily operations for the company including marketing, grant research, financial management, and contracting.

Dr. Salinas also serves as a representative for the Texas Music Educators Association as the Region 12 Middle School Coordinator. In this role, she helps to support outstanding middle school orchestra students from all districts in Region 12, which include NEISD, Alamo Heights ISD, Comal ISD, Judson ISD and Schertz/Cibolo ISD by organizing performing opportunities for the Region 12 Orchestra Clinics and Concerts each fall. Region Orchestra is an excellent performance opportunity, as well as an honor, for those students who successfully audition to be members.

Dr. Salinas is thrilled to be selected as one of the three conducting finalists for the Music Director position at the Austin Civic Orchestra in Austin, Texas.