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Margarita Benítez
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Margarita Inés Benítez Martínez (born 1949) is a Puerto Rican educator and education policy expert. After completing a bachelor of arts degree at Vassar College, she earned a master's at Middlebury College and a PhD at Columbia University. She taught Spanish and literature classes at the University of Puerto Rico at Cayey in the 1970s. Moving into administration in the 1980s, she was rector and then president of UPR Cayey while simultaneously serving as the acting chancellor of the University of Puerto Rico at Humacao. In 1986, she founded the first women's studies program in Puerto Rico.
Margarita Benítez | |
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![]() Benítez, 2014 | |
Born | Margarita Inés Benítez Martínez 1949 (age 74–75) |
Other names | Margarita Benítez Martínez |
Occupation(s) | Educator and education policy expert |
Years active | 1977–2022 |
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In 1998, Benítez moved to Washington, D.C. to work for the United States Department of Education and implement Title V, government funding designed to eliminate under-representation of Latinos in higher education. After six years, she moved to the Institute for Higher Education Policy and worked with other NGOs to improve access to higher education for Latino students and coordinate tertiary education activities for a network of universities. She co-founded the Women's Knowledge International project in 2011 and has since served as its co-director. The project aims to improve scholarship on women and their involvement in global peace initiatives. She returned to Puerto Rico in 2018 as the first woman to head the Fundación Puertorriqueña de las Humanidades (Puerto Rican Endowment for the Humanities). Under her leadership the organization created both an on-line encyclopedia of Puerto Rico and a digital cultural archive.