Originally from Puerto Rico, Dr. Meléndez came to the United States in 1978 after receiving a bachelor's degree from the University of Puerto Rico. He earned a master's degree in economics from the University of California at Santa Barbara, and in 1985 received his Ph. D. in that subject from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He began his teaching career at Fordham University in 1984, teaching economics and Puerto Rican studies.
Dr Meléndez has been appointed to the Boston School Committee (1995) and to the Mayor's Blue Ribbon Commission (1994-1995) on capital investments for the Boston School system. He is also a co-Director of the Inter-University Program for Latino Research (1994-present), a consortium of the nine largest Latino research centers, and the co-Chair of the Latino Task Force of the Latin-American Studies Association (1992-present).
Dr. Meléndez held the Mitsui Professorship at MIT from 1989 to 1991. While at MIT, he was the only junior faculty at the institution to have received the Graduate Student Association Teaching award on two separate occasions. He has received numerous fellowships including the ASPIRA National Fellowship, the President's Fellowship from the University of Puerto Rico, and graduate studies fellowships from the University of California and the University of Massachusetts.
Dr. Meléndez has conducted considerable research in the areas of economic development, labor, and poverty. In addition to numerous scientific papers and other publications, he has coauthored In the Shadows of the Sun: Caribbean Development Alternatives and U.S. Policy (Westview Press, 1990), and coedited Hispanics in the Labor Force (Plenum Press, 1991), Colonial Dilemma: Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Puerto Rico (South End Press, 1992), and Latinos, Poverty, and Public Policy: A Case Study of Massachusetts. Some of his work in progress includes: La Empresa Comunal: Lecciones de Casos Exitosos en Puerto Rico, and The Economic Impact of Puerto Rico's Political Alternatives.
In 1988 and 1989, Dr. Meléndez was a National Research Council and Ford Foundation postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College. He has served as a consultant to several organizations including the Institute for Puerto Rican Policy in New York City and the Hispanic Office of Planning and Evaluation in Boston, and he serves on the editorial board or is a reviewer for the Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Science, International Migration Review, Latin American Perspective, and World Development.