Utah Valley University President Welcomes Students Using 6 Languages in Crazy Impressive Video

Dr. Astrid Tuminez, Utah Valley University’s new Filipina-American president, is going viral on social media with a video where she welcomes students to the university fluently speaking six different languages with hundreds of thousands of views in just a few days.

The clip, which was posted by the university’s Facebook page on Monday, September 17, started off with Tuminez welcoming the students and introducing herself as the new president of the institution in Spanish – then briefly in English.

Tuminez, who is the first-ever female president of UVU, then continued to give her background from when she was still living in the Philippines using Ilonggo, a Hiligaynon language that is commonly used in the province of Iloilo and other parts of Western Visayas, the Philippines.

Born in a village called Pali in the municipality of Tagbuan, Iloilo, Tuminez was brought to the city along with her siblings and lived in the slums as she grew up, she recounted in Tagolog. There, she met catholic nuns who invited her and her sisters to study in their school.

“Even though we had no money, they (the nuns) let us study for free,” she continued. “During recess time, when I had no money, I always spent time at the library to read a lot of books and because I read so many books, my brain improved and got better.”

Tuminez encouraged students to read books so that they could finish what they want to accomplish when they enter UVU.

“What I want to say to all the students is work hard, study hard, and read a lot of books so you can finish what you set out to do at UVU,” the new female president of the university said.

Then later on in the clip, which has now garnered more than 195,000 views as of the time of writing, she started speaking Russian. It turns out that Tuminez also went to Brigham Young University to study both Russian literature and language, and continued to finish her doctorate degree at MIT.