Josefina Arce received her BS in Chemistry and her PhD in Organic Chemistry from the Rio Piedras Campus of the University of Puerto Rico. She has been Research Associate at the University of Texas at Austin has collaborated with the Education Groups of Lillian McDermott at the University of Washington at Seattle and George Bodner's at Purdue. She has been part of the Chemistry Department of UPR-Rio Piedras since 1978 where she is currently Professor. Has published her research work in physical organic chemistry in journals like the Journal of the American Chemical Society and Journal of Organic Chemistry and since 1990 she has been more involved in science education at all levels. She is currently the PI of two NSF-funded projects: PR-Collaborative for Excellence in Teacher Preparation and AlACiMa (Puerto Rico Math and Science Partnership). Her education work has been published in the Journal of Chemical Education; she is principal author of a General Chemistry Laboratory manual in Spanish published in 2000 by McGraw Hill.
Since January 1, 2011 retired from UPR-RP.