After successfully defending his MA in Spring 2020, Zakery Munoz recently accepted an offer at Syracuse University in the department of Composition & Cultural Rhetoric to complete his PhD with full funding and a University Fellowship, the most prestigious graduate award at Syracuse University.
Zakery was born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His educational journey was not linear or easy. He went to 6 high schools, eventually receiving his GED. After dropping out of the University of New Mexico many times, he completed his Associates Degree in English from Central New Mexico University in 2015. From there he would return to UNM with a new perspective on life, eager to prove that he could perform at the highest levels of academia. Shortly before finishing his double major in History & English, he was accepted into the Rhetoric & Writing program at UNM in 2017 to complete his MA. Here he excelled. He was a Project Coordinator for a nationally recognized research project, The Salt of the Earth Recovery Project. He grew a passion for the ancient texts in rhetoric and used his experience as a young student to influence his Composition pedagogy. His research on Octaviano Larrazolo, 4th governor of New Mexico, has afforded him scholarships including the Vicente Ximenes Scholarship in Public Rhetoric & Literacy and a fellowship with the Center for Regional Studies.
