Zakery Mu\u00f1oz never expected to become a professor.<\/p>\n
Growing up, he attended six different high schools and dropped out of college twice. He spent years working in grocery stores, hotels and coffee shops and said he believed school wasn\u2019t for him.<\/p>\n
Mu\u00f1oz began teaching at Lehigh last fall. He arrived with a set of unconventional academic experiences and a teaching philosophy shaped by an untraditional path.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel it is truly a miracle that I now call Lehigh my home,\u201d Mu\u00f1oz said. \u201cI can\u2019t make sense of how I got so lucky.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mu\u00f1oz grew up in a Spanish-speaking household but was expected to use English in school. He said he struggled with the language barrier and that his love for reading and writing didn\u2019t align with his teachers\u2019 expectations.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After leaving college twice, Mu\u00f1oz said he believed he was finished with school, though his love for reading and writing remained. While working at a Starbucks in New Mexico, a regular customer who knew about his interests encouraged him to return to school.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mu\u00f1oz said the advice led him to enroll at Central New Mexico Community College, where he earned an associate of arts degree in English in 2015.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cCommunity college gave me a chance, and that\u2019s where I met the professors who changed my whole life,\u201d Mu\u00f1oz said. \u201cThat\u2019s how I got involved with tutoring kids to read.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mu\u00f1oz went on to the University of New Mexico, earning a bachelor\u2019s degree in English and history in 2017. Despite having a GPA below the university\u2019s minimum requirement for its master\u2019s program because of earlier academic struggles, Mu\u00f1oz said he wrote a personal statement arguing for his admission.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He earned a master\u2019s degree in English with a concentration in rhetoric and composition from the University of New Mexico in 2020. His first teaching experience came in 2017, when he taught Accelerated Composition as a graduate student.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He completed his doctorate in composition and cultural rhetoric at Syracuse University in 2025. Mu\u00f1oz said teaching throughout graduate school was both a necessity and a passion, as graduate instruction is how many students in his field fund their education.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
These experiences shaped his teaching style and influenced how he approaches his students.<\/p>\n
Mu\u00f1oz\u2019s field is rhetoric and writing studies. In spring 2025, he said he began applying for jobs and was drawn to Lehigh\u2019s position because of its prestige and alignment with his specialty.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201c(Lehigh) seemed like a dream job,\u201d Mu\u00f1oz said. \u201cThey were not only hiring in my sub-field, but the position was tenure at an R1 school, which was my dream.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Rojin Tamsen, \u201829, a bioengineer and cognitive science major who took First-Year Writing with Mu\u00f1oz, said she\u2019s grateful for the class. Tamsen said she disliked writing in middle and high school but found Mu\u00f1oz\u2019s class refreshing because of the freedom students have to choose their topics.<\/p>\n
Tamsen said Mu\u00f1oz\u2019s approach taught her that writing is subjective, and that writing without the pressure of grades gives her more freedom to express herself.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy number one priority in the class is to create a sense of community where people feel like they belong,\u201d Mu\u00f1oz said. \u201cAll I want from them is to write anything, and one thing that I do to help the students is to show them that being a writer or learning how to write in college isn\u2019t just about writing a good essay.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tamsen said the class is interactive, engaging and refreshing. She said the lectures feel\u00a0 \u201cmagical\u201d and that Mu\u00f1oz\u2019s passion for rhetoric is evident.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Zach Bennett Weltman, \u201829, a mathematics major who also took the First-Year Writing with Mu\u00f1oz, said free-writing time in class is helpful and therapeutic.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think his teaching style is definitely not similar to other professors at Lehigh,\u201d Weltman said. \u201cHe is a lot less formal, but I think he is just as effective, if not more.\u201d<\/p>\n
Weltman said Mu\u00f1oz\u2019s assignment prompts are vague compared with those in other writing classes, which often have strict guidelines. He said Mu\u00f1oz trusts his students\u2019 abilities and gives them greater individual freedom.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As a professor teaching a course required for all students, Mu\u00f1oz said he wants students to understand that failure and mistakes are part of learning.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are a lot of ways to live life,\u201d Mu\u00f1oz said. \u201cWhatever you want, whatever you pick, or whatever path that you\u2019re taking, just know that there are many other options to be happy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zakery Mu\u00f1oz never expected to become a professor. Growing up, he attended six different high schools and dropped…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":110357,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[48710,119,121,120,28383,523],"class_list":["post-110356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-3-min-read","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-class","tag-people"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110356\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}