Dr. Bernardo Rios
Assistant Professor of Anthropology

Dr. Bernardo Ramirez Rios is a product of a Mexican American Family from California with a rich history of community organizing and teaching. His father was a Professor of Anthropology and Chicano Studies at California State University, Sacramento who worked closely with community organizers and the United Farm Workers Movement. His mother worked for many years at the only Native American University in California. Growing up, he was exposed to grassroots developments and various other programs for disenfranchised community members.

"I am grounded by my personal experience in education and community programs. My childhood learning experience inside my household and community often challenged teachers materials and approaches to learning in classroom settings. I've taken that experience to create a pedagogical approach to teaching. Now as a professor, my primary teaching goal is to make a humanistic connection with my students to let them know I care about them as members of our university community and society. I feel this is important because students can apply this long after my course ends."

Dr. Rios' commitment to community learning impacts his participation in student-based initiatives and professional working groups at the collegiate level. Dr. Rios promotes diversity in education by incorporating themes of equality into his research, teaching, professional practice, and works with communities that extend beyond the university campus. Dr. Rios is currently working with minority male students as a professional mentor and is part of a research team that examined the Opportunity Program of Alumni at a historically white Liberal Arts College. Also, he has a long-term ethnographic research project working with Mexican migrant communities from Oaxaca, Mexico in the Capital Region of New York.

Dr. Rios offers cultural anthropology courses at all levels that include topics such as Visual Ethnography, Urban Anthropology, Sports in the Americas, Cultural Anthropology, and Latin American Regions.