Ana Munro

Ana Munro has a Bachelors in French from Kings College London, a Masters in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University and is a graduate of Harvard University Graduate School of Education’s Closing the Achievement Gap Institute. Ana is also currently a student, completing her Doctoral Degree in Higher Educational Leadership at St Cloud State University. Her research focuses on the impact of place-based, immersive educational experiences on students’ academic success and identity. She is a NOLS (National Outdoor Leadership School) alumnae, a NOLS Leave No Trace Level II Instructor and is also certified through the NOLS Risk Management Training for Administrators. Ana is passionate about collaborating, building community, and creating systemic change in higher education for BIPOC students.

Classes 

Ana teaches Creative Writing, Nature and Literature, College Writing I and II, Global Literary Perspectives and Global and Cultural Studies 1970 Environmental Justice and Nature Immersion, GCST 2970, Outdoor Experiential Program Leadership, GCST 2017 Outdoor Leadership and GCST 1320 Community Organizing at North Hennepin Community College in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota. She has recently created an AA Degree in Outdoor and Environmental Leadership with Exercise Science faculty Missy Lott. This program won the 2023 Environmental Initiative’s Innovation Award.

Previously, Ana taught Creative Writing at Bath Spa University in England and English as a Second Language in Christchurch, New Zealand and Lyon, France.  Ana also worked as an investigative journalist for many years in the United States and the UK. Her book of poetry Above the Dance of Clouds, was published in 2014, and she is the recipient of the Wisconsin News Association Award for Journalism for her series on the theft and return of Strawberry Island to the Lac du Flambeau Nation, the UK’s Orange Prize for Fiction-Short Story, the James R. Carlson Fellowship from Eckerd College for innovation and creativity in fiction, and the 2017 James Farrell Re(Cognition) Award, which honors individuals who have made outstanding contributions towards advancing sustainability efforts in the Upper Midwest. In 2023, she was awarded the Minnesota Environmental Association Award for Outstanding Environmental Educator, and was named an Edina Home Town hero for her environmental justice work with young people.

Ana co-founded North Hennepin’s Sustainability Committee and American Indian Education and Advisory Groups, and coordinates NHCC’s Outdoor and Environmental Leadership Program,  nature-based,  immersion program in collaboration K-12 schools and the DNR, YMCA of the North, Three Rivers Park District, the National Parks Service, The International Wolf Center, Wilderness Inquiry, Hennepin County Green Partners, and Save the Boundary Waters,  designed to bring college and high school students into the wilderness. She co-created GCST 1490, the l Dave Larsen Annual American Indian Civil Rights Immersion Experience, a five day-immersion tour for American Indian high school and college students to learn about their identity, culture and heritage.

Ana has facilitated multiple sustainability, diversity, equity and inclusion trainings, events and workshops, including presenting at AEE’s (The International Association of Environmental Education), AASHE’s (The Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education), AWP’s (Association of Writers and Writing Programs) and ASLE’S (Association for the Study of Literature and Environment) annual conferences, the New Zealand’s Association for Research in Education 2015 and 2018 Emancipation through Education Conferences on Māori Homelands, and the Australian Research in Education Aboriginal Education Conference in Brisbane, Australia in 2019. 

Ana loves reading books, looking for frogs, snakes and salamanders with her children in the forest, going for very long walks, traveling to remote places and is happiest outside in the middle of nowhere. Ana is always planning her next adventure - ask her where she is going next!