Leadership Spotlights 2013

I came to the United States when the war ended in 1975, as a refugee from Vietnam. After much difficulty trying to adjust to this new and unfamiliar cultural environment, I earned my bachelor’s degree in Biology from California State University, Fullerton. Working at various jobs and interrupted by bouts of unemployment, I still found the opportunity to continue my education. In a span of about 15 years, my efforts resulted in three graduate degrees, a Master in Public Health from Loma Linda University (with emphases on Nutrition and Health Education), a Master in Education from UCLA, and a Master in Counseling from California State University, Dominguez Hills.

On one hand, those academic achievements reflected my multi-directional search for a suitable and sustainable career path. On the other hand, the common thread found in all those seemingly diverse academic majors seemed to relate to working with and helping others, to transferring of knowledge and experience, and to enabling some to believe in themselves. Consequently, in 1996, when I started with the school of Guidance and Counseling at Irvine Valley College, I found myself looking forward every day to help students facing their academic, career, and personal challenges. Counseling is a career that I have come to love.

While at Irvine Valley College, I completed the UCI/UCLA Joint Ed.D. program in Educational Administration in 2005 and remained a faculty of the College’s School of Guidance and Counseling. With almost 400 international students enrolled at the college at the time, I was asked to split my counseling time and responsibility, half for the general student population and half for the international students.

To enrich my knowledge and broaden my involvement with the college, I volunteered to represent our School of Guidance and Counseling as a member of the Curriculum Committee. Together with faculty representing all subject matters, I was responsible for maintaining the high quality of the college’s curriculum and expanding its Distance Education curriculum to include online courses.

At the beginning of the 2009-2010 academic year, I was nominated and approved by the Academic Senate to be the College’s Articulation Officer. In that capacity, I became the main school official connecting Irvine Valley College to other higher education institutions in California, both public and private. One of my main tasks was to work with the faculty to design and modify courses that would help establish articulating agreements, ensuring the transferability of our students to four-year universities. Facilitating and improving the rate of transferring for our students has always been one of the principal missions of my institution. Additionally, as part of the articulation officer’s responsibilities, I chaired the General Education sub-committee to address and resolve all general education matters of the college. Recently, due to the partial loss of my hearing, I have devoted fully to providing only counseling services to the general student population at Irvine Valley College.

Being in positions that gave me the opportunity to affect the college’s functions, I increasingly came to believe that there are always consequences resulting from decisions that we educators make that, in many cases, seriously impact our students and their future. I reminded myself to be constantly mindful of my decisions and actions, no matter how minor or irrelevant they may seem at first.

In the spring 2012 semester, I took my four-month sabbatical leave in Viet Nam to study the articulation process of that nation’s higher education system. The result of my study was a two-part report that included a detailed description of and a point-by-point comparison between the articulation practice in higher education of Viet Nam and California.

Toward the end of that sabbatical, I started to work on the first draft of my Vietnamese book, “An Overview of the California Community College System.” My intention was to apply my knowledge of and experience in our California community college system to contribute to Viet Nam’s current effort of renovating its higher education. The book offered an overview of the historical development of the college system since 1960s, when California’s Master Plan of Higher Education came into existence, the philosophy behind its function, the advantages and disadvantages of its organizational structure, its relationship with the other two higher education segments (the California State University and the University of California), and its current fiscal related challenges. I recently finished the last draft of my book and it is now awaiting approval to be published in Viet Nam.

My next possible project is to cooperate with a few colleagues at Irvine Valley College to write about our experience in college counseling.

Though a former refugee from Viet Nam, I have returned to my native country several times since 1997. I spent the first few trips traveling all over the country, taking in the beauty of the land and its people after being away for more than a quarter of a century. But from the beginning of 2000s, I decided to do something concrete and practical to improve the quality of life of the people, particularly of very young children, in impoverished areas of Viet Nam.

I volunteered to work for Giao-Diem Humanitarian Foundation (GDHF) as a co-Director of its Pediatric Nutrition Project (PNP). This non-profit foundation is based in California and has engaged in humanitarian work in Viet Nam since 1991. Its Pediatric Nutrition Project started as a pilot endeavor in 2003, aiming to improve the nutrition of 300 malnourished preschoolers in underserved and remote areas of Hue, Central Viet Nam.

With our background in Public Health and Education, my wife and I have worked with other foundation members to encourage local school personnel and parents to produce peanut-enriched soymilk for their malnourished children. In cooperation with a number of other local NGOs, our foundation provides cooking tools and funding for the purchase of essential ingredients as well as vitamins and minerals. We have also conducted annual training workshops on nutrition and child development education for the school staff and parents. The children’s progress in their anemia and nutritional status is monitored by quarterly measurements of their height and weight and their hemoglobin level.

As of the beginning of the 2012-2013 school year, our Pediatric Nutrition Project has expanded to serve almost 7,000 preschoolers at about 80 school sites in remote and impoverished areas in three provinces in Viet Nam.

Looking back at all these years, I have always believed that this nation has offered me safety, security, and great opportunities in education and employment, all of which continuously ensure my wellbeing. Over the years, I am happy to have been given the opportunity to give back by working for the advancement and well-being of our young college students.

The United States has always been like a caring foster mother looking after her adopted son from a far away country. The greatest lesson I learned from her is her spirit of volunteerism, which the world at large undeniably looks up to. So at this stage in my life, when I increasingly feel the pull of my other mother, my country of birth, I find myself most motivated more than ever to respond to the humanitarian needs in Viet Nam, particularly in the areas of health and education. I am inspired to personally engage in and devote the remaining years of my life to this quest.