José Llanes came to Auburn in 2006 as Head of the Department of Educational Foundations, Leadership and Technology, which in 2008 was ranked 7th in the nation for faculty productivity. In the Spring 2010 he returned to teaching and research. He teaches Organization and Leadership in Higher Education and Cultural Foundations of Education. He is currently working on a study of competitive strategies in Higher Education, global academic accreditation practices, disadvantaged students' access to education and the retention and persistance of students in post secondary institutions internationally. He is also a consultant on strategic management with higher education institutions in the U.S. and abroad. (See Oohm, a weekly blog on this topic.)

He was born in Cuba and came to the United States as a political refugee settling in San Francisco, California. He joined Behavioral Research Laboratories a publicly-held educational research and publishing firm and there he rose to Division President and COO for Contracted Research and the International Division. He started his academic life in the United States when he was selected as Founding Director of the International Multicultural Program at the School of Education of the University of San Francisco.  That same year he proposed and negotiated an agreement for a strategic partnership with the San Francisco Unified School District, which lasted over ten years and educated over 1500 of the District’s staff. Two years after he joined the University of San Francisco, he was promoted to Associate Professor and tenured. Since then he has served in tenured positions at seven U.S. universities. He has lectured as visiting faculty in the U.S., Latin America and The Netherlands.

He has worked in administrative posts as Department Chair, Department Head and Associate Dean. He has worked in research and development projects in Mexico, Panama, Costa Rica, Venezuela and Colombia . in Latin America; Hong Kong and Shanghai in China; Kuwait, Egypt and North Yemen in the Middle East and Hawaii, Guam, Saipan, Ponape and others islands in the Pacific. He has attracted over $22 million in funded grants to the various institutions he has served. He has taught Organization and Leadership for over 30 years and has also taught in Economics, Management and Foundations of Education areas.

He is a member of the Governor's Commission on Teaching Quality and the Governor's Congress on Educational Leadership (Alabama), The Academic Quality Improvement Program of the Higher Learning Commission, The International Initiatives Team of the American Council on Education, The Association of Governing Boards in Higher Education and the Board of Trustees of Palo Alto University.