Melissa Rivera has been Associate Director of the National Latino/a Education Research and Policy Project (NLERAP) since 1999. Currently she is also the Co-Principal Investigator of A Study of Integrated Arts Curricula in Two Urban Schools, a project at the Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños of Hunter College, City University of New York.

With P. Pedraza, she is the editor of Latino Education: An Agenda for Community Action Research, a volume of the National Latino/a Education Research and Policy Project, published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates (NJ) in 2005.