Francisco Rios, Ph. D., is a Professor of Secondary Education in the Woodring College of Education at Western Washington University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in learning and instruction after having taught in secondary and technical schools for 12 years. Francisco then worked for 10 years at the California State University San Marcos teaching learning and instruction, multicultural education, and bilingual education. He worked for 11 years at the University of Wyoming where he taught courses in second language acquisition, foundations of education, and multicultural education as well as serving as department chair for more than six (6) years. He has worked with teachers in-service in California, Wyoming, Wisconsin, Colorado, Washington, and Kentucky.

His research interests include teachers of color, Latinos in education, and preservice teacher education with a multicultural focus. His most recent research has focused on teachers of color in rural, isolated communities. His works have appeared in Equity and Excellence in Education, Latinos in Education, Teacher Education Quarterly, and the Review of Educational Research. Francisco is the Senior Associate Editor of Multicultural Perspectives, the Journal of the National Association for Multicultural Education. He spent spring, 2005 as a Fulbright Fellow at the Pontifica Universidad Católica Valparaíso in Chile. Francisco served as program chair for Division K, (Teaching and Teacher Education) for the AERA Annual Program, 2007. Francisco served as the founding director of the University of Wyoming’s Social Justice Research Center. In 2008, he received the Distinguished Scholar Mid-Career Award, from the Committee of Scholars of Color in Education from the American Educational Research Association. The author of over 65 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, he has co-authored or edited 7 books. He has presented his works internationally in Chile, Guatemala, El Salvador, South Korea, and Australia.

Francisco will serve as President of the National Association for Multicultural Education from November 2014-November 2016.