Aned Y. Muñiz Gracia - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Background and studies

Aned Muñiz Gracia grew up in Corozal

Corozal

Corozal may mean:* Corozal American Cemetery and Memorial, Panama City, Panama* Corozal District, Belize* Corozal Town, Belize, capital of the district* Corozal, Puerto Rico* Corozal, Sucre, a city of Colombia...

, a rural town in Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...

. She started swimming competitively at age 10 and her first jobs were as a lifeguard and swim instructor.

During her last year of high school, Muñiz Gracia took part in an international cultural exchange program in Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

. She attended the University of Puerto Rico

University of Puerto Rico

The University of Puerto Rico is the state university system of Puerto Rico. The system consists of 11 campuses and has approximately 64,511 students and 5,300 faculty members...

, Río Piedras campus

University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus

The University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras , also referred to as UPR-RP, is a public research university located on a campus in Río Piedras, San Juan, Puerto Rico...

and received a Bachelor of Arts in Modern Languages. During her undergraduate studies, Muñiz Gracia studied one summer at the Far Eastern National University

Far Eastern National University

Far Eastern Federal University is an institution of higher education located in Vladivostok, Russia. Established in 1899, the university was closed in the late 1930s under Joseph Stalin, and reopened in 1956, two years after Nikita Khrushchev visited Vladivostok...

in Vladivostok

Vladivostok

The city is located in the southern extremity of Muravyov-Amursky Peninsula, which is about 30 km long and approximately 12 km wide.The highest point is Mount Kholodilnik, the height of which is 257 m...

, Russia, participated in a summer seminar at the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, and worked at Fersped Skopje, an import-export company in Macedonia.

She received the Master of Arts in European Languages and Literature from the University of Hawaii

University of Hawaii

The University of Hawaii System, formally the University of Hawaii and popularly known as UH, is a public, co-educational college and university system that confers associate, bachelor, master, and doctoral degrees through three university campuses, seven community college campuses, an employment...

.Professor Aned Muñiz started teaching at the University of Hawaii at age 20. Her Master's Thesis was titled "Music as a Mnemonic and Didactic Device for Language Instruction". Upon completion of her Master's degree, Aned Muñiz was awarded a Fulbright grant to conduct research in Austria.

During her second long-term residence in Europe, Aned Muñiz taught at
the Vienna Business Academies, the Handelsakademie I and attended the Universities of Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

and Klagenfurt.
She later moved to California, where she completed her doctorate in Leadership Studies and Educational Sciences at the University of San Diego

University of San Diego

The University of San Diego is a Roman Catholic university in San Diego, California. USD offers more than sixty bachelor's, master’s, and doctoral programs...

. Her dissertation research was about the factors that influence university attendance among high school graduating seniors in Puerto Rico. She also studied at the Università di Venezia (Cà Foscari) and presented at several academic conferences in the USA, Europe and Latin America.

Besides education and sports (she has practiced acrobatics, tandem surfing, swimming, and completed a marathon and several sprint distance triathlons), a big concern of hers is the well-being of Puerto Rico's stray animals. She has fostered or adopted several Puerto Rican stray dogs. She also has extensive work with youth as a mentor, swimming instructor, gymnastics judge, as a middle and high school teacher in Austria and at the San Diego German School. She has also been a summer camp director and children's program supervisor, as well as Assistant Director of the Middlebury College summer language academy.

Having lived, studied or worked in different parts of the world enabled Aned Muñiz Gracia to learn various languages such as Russian

Russian language

Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...

, German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

, French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

, Spanish

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

, Italian

Italian language

Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

, English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

. She has also studied Welsh

Welsh language

Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...

, Serbo-Croatian

Serbo-Croatian language

Serbo-Croatian or Serbo-Croat, less commonly Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian , is a South Slavic language with multiple standards and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro...

, and Arabic

Arabic language

Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...

, among other languages.

Awards and accolades

Aned Muñiz Gracia's roster of scholastic awards includes:

Fulbright award
Outstanding Professor of the Year at MiraCosta College
MiraCosta College
MiraCosta College is a community college located in the northern coastal region of San Diego County, California. MiraCosta College is located at 1 Barnard Drive, Oceanside, California 92056. It also has a campus in Cardiff-by-the-Sea and a Community Learning Center in Oceanside.- History :MiraCosta...

in 2006
Excellence in Teaching Award from Grossmont College
Grossmont College
Grossmont College is a community college located in El Cajon, California, in the county of San Diego. The campus sits in the Fletcher Hills community of El Cajon and is bordered by the cities of San Diego and Santee. Grossmont College is one of the two colleges that make up the Grossmont-Cuyamaca...

in 2007
One of San Diego's "Top 40 under 40" successful young people / community leaders in 2007 by San Diego Metropolitan Magazine
One of San Diego's "Hispanic Top 10" in 2007 by Nostika magazine
California Language Teachers' Association LangAbroad Award in 2009
Università di Venezia / Italian Government Grant
U.S. Department of State Critical Languages Scholarship
Hawaii Newspaper Agency Award for Excellence in Commentary/Analysis, 1998
German Academic Exchange Service
German Academic Exchange Service
The German Academic Exchange Service or DAAD is the largest German support organisation in the field of international academic co-operation....

Scholarship
Homecoming Scholar, University of Hawai`i, 1996
Surfer of the Month, El Nuevo Dia
El Nuevo Día
El Nuevo Día is a Puerto Rican newspaper based in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico and distributed daily throughout Puerto Rico and some parts of the United States.- History :...

newspaper, September 1996
Poetry Award, Association Portoricaine des Professeurs de Français, 1995
Second Prize, University of Hawaii
University of Hawaii
The University of Hawaii System, formally the University of Hawaii and popularly known as UH, is a public, co-educational college and university system that confers associate, bachelor, master, and doctoral degrees through three university campuses, seven community college campuses, an employment...

French poetry contest, 1994

Community service

Muñiz Gracia has volunteered as a Latina Youth Mentor with MANA San Diego, the House of Puerto Rico in San Diego, and as a swimming instructor in Austria. She has helped create or served as Faculty Advisor for various student clubs including the MiraCosta College Italian Club and started her own foundation to create additional educational opportunities in Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico

.

In 2003 Muñiz Gracia spent her summer in Stavanger, Norway

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

, volunteering 40 hours a week for Camp Adventure Youth Services as Camp Director for an international children's day camp. In the summer of 2009 she led 2 volunteer projects to the Dominican Republic organized by International Student Volunteers and returned to the El Castillo project in 2010. She is serving as Executive Secretary for the House of Puerto Rico in San Diego in 2009 and 2010.

External links

Newspaper articles

Aned Y. Muñiz started writing in the late 90s for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin

Honolulu Star-Bulletin

The Honolulu Star-Bulletin was a daily newspaper based in Honolulu, Hawaii, United States. At the time publication ceased on June 6, 2010, it was the second largest daily newspaper in the state of Hawaii...

and for Ka Leo O Hawaii

Ka Leo O Hawaii

Ka Leo O Hawaii is the student newspaper at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, founded in 1922 . Beginning in the fall of 2010, "Ka Leo" began printing every Monday, Wednesday and Friday during the fall and spring semesters, and only Wednesday during the summer semester...

in Honolulu, Hawai`i, among other publications. Here is a sample of her early work.

Recent English and Spanish language contributions published in Mexican, Puerto Rican and San Diego newspapers include the following:

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