Aned Y. Muñiz Gracia

Aned Y. Muñiz Gracia is an award-winning professor.

Early life and studies

Aned Muñiz was born in Corozal, a rural town in Puerto Rico.During her last year of high-school, Aned took part in an international cultural exchange program in Austria. She attended the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras campus and received a Bachelor of Arts in Modern Languages, and afterwards received the Master of Arts in European Languages and Literature from the Univ. of Hawaii. She was awarded a Fulbright grant to conduct research in Austria. Presently she is writing a dissertation at the University of San Diego, where she has completed all coursework leading to the doctoral degree in Leadership Studies and Educational Sciences. She started teaching at the University of Hawaii at 20 years of age.

Awards and accolades

Aned's roster of scholastic awards includes being named Outstanding Professor of the Year at MiraCosta College in 2006; being nominated every year since 2003 for a Teaching Excellence Award at Southwestern College; repeat nominations as a "Woman of Impact" at the University of San Diego; a Fulbright award; Scholarship from Cymdeithas Madog, the Welsh-American Society, to attend their 1996 Welsh seminar and summer language course in Vermont; Scholarship from the German Government's Academic Exchange to take part in the 1994 summer course for German language specialists at the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin; Second Prize, University of Hawaii French poetry contest, 1994; Poetry Award, Association Portoricaine des Professeurs de Français, 1995; Hawaii Newspaper Agency Award for Excellence in Commentary/Analysis in 1998.

Having lived, studied or worked in different parts of the world enabled her to learn various languages such as Russian, German, French, Spanish, Italian, English. She has also studied Welsh, Serbo-Croatian, and Arabic, among other languages. She is also an avid swimmer and was named "Surfer of the Month" by El Nuevo Dia newspaper, September 1996.