Luis Ricardo Fraga is Associate Vice Provost for Faculty Advancement, Director of the Diversity Research Institute, Russell F. Stark University Professor, and Professor of Political Science at the University of Washington. He has the responsibility for developing strategies and policies with the Provost, Vice Provosts, Deans, and Department Chairs to recruit, promote, and retain faculty at the UW. He has been on the faculty at Stanford University, the University of Notre Dame, and the University of Oklahoma. He is a native of Corpus Christi, Texas, where he attended public schools.
He received his A.B., cum laude, from Harvard University and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Rice University. His primary interests are in American politics where he specializes in urban politics, education politics, voting rights policy, immigration policy, and the politics of race and ethnicity. He has two recent books: United States Government: Principles in Practice (Holt McDougal 2010) and the co-authored Latino Lives in America: Making It Home (Temple University Press 2010). He has also published the co-authored book Multiethnic Moments: The Politics of Urban Education Reform (Temple University Press 2006). He was a member of the APSA standing committee on Civic Engagement and Education that co-authored the recently published Democracy at Risk: How Political Choices Undermine Citizen Participation, and What We Can Do About It (Brookings Institution Press 2005) . He is also co-editor of Ethnic and Racial Minorities in Advanced Industrial Democracies (Greenwood 1992). He has published extensively in scholarly journals and edited volumes including the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, Perspectives on Politics, The Journal of Politics, Urban Affairs Quarterly, Western Political Quarterly, Dubois Review, Journal of Women, Politics & Policy, and the Harvard Journal of Hispanic Policy. He is also completing the manuscript The Changing Urban Regime: Toward an Informed Public Interest, a history of the political incorporation of Tejanos in San Antonio city politics from 1836-2009.
He is currently the co-chair of the Presidential Task Force on Political Science in the 21st Century of the American Political Science Association (APSA). He was Secretary of the APSA in 2006-07. He served as president of the Western Political Science Association in 1997-98. He served on the Executive Council of the APSA in 1998-2000.
He is on the board of directors of the Public Education Network (PEN), a national community empowerment and school reform organization in Washington, DC. He is also on the board of New Futures, a family empowerment and after school enrichment organization, and OneAmerica, an immigrant advocacy organization, both in Seattle, WA. He was appointed by Governor Christine Gregoire to serve on Washington’s New Americans Policy Council. This Council gives recommendations to the Governor as to how the state can better integrate immigrants within its public life and institutions.
In 2003-04 he was a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, where he worked on a study entitled “Gender and Ethnicity: The Political Incorporation of Latina and Latino State Legislators,” based on the first-ever nationwide survey of Latina/o state legislators in the U.S. In 1989-90 he was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University.
Fraga is also one of six principal investigators on the Latino National Survey (LNS), the first-ever sixteen state-stratified survey of Latinos in the U.S. The LNS asks questions regarding political attitudes, behavior, and beliefs. This project has received $1.5M in support from major foundations and universities.
He is also one of three principal investigators of the project “The Politics of Education: The Impact of Latino School Board Representation on School Policy.” This project recently received a $40,000 grant from the Spencer Foundation.
Fraga received a number of teaching and advising awards at Stanford including the Rhodes Prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching (1993), the Dinkelspiel Award for Distinctive Contributions to Undergraduate Education (1995), the Allan V. Cox Medal for Faculty Excellence Fostering Undergraduate Research (1997), the Faculty Award from the Chicano/Latino Graduating Class (1993, 1996, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2001), the Undergraduate Faculty Advisor of the Year Award (2001), and the Associated Students of Stanford University Teaching Award (2003). He was also given the Adaljiza Sosa-Riddell Award for Exemplary Mentoring of Graduate Latina/o Students by the Committee on the Status of Latinos in the Profession of the American Political Science Association (2001) and this same award for mentoring junior faculty (2004). The Luis R. Fraga Fellowship in Institutional Transformation was established in his honor at the Haas Center for Public Service upon his departure from Stanford University.
Fraga is married to Charlene L. Aguilar, the Director of College Counseling at the Lakeside School in Seattle, WA. He has three children: Bernard, 24, a graduate of Stanford and a second-year PhD student in Government and Social Policy at Harvard University; Isabel, 21, a senior majoring in psychology at the University of Notre Dame; and Tomás, 8, a third grader at St. Benedict School. Fraga and his family live in Seattle.
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