The Vietnamese-American dean of Catholic University of America’s School of Engineering has been honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the D.C. Council of Engineering and Architectural Societies, announced CUA’s public affairs office here.
Charles C. Nguyen, whose Vietnamese name is Cường, has been dean of the school since 2001. Before that, he was chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from 2007 to 2001.
Dr. Nguyen was the first and so far the only Vietnamese-American academic dean at a major U.S. university.
He graduated from Vietnam’s rigorous high school program at 16, received his engineering degree in Germany, and his Ph.D., magna cum laude, from George Washington University.
The D.C. Council is an umbrella organization for several engineering and architect societies in the Washington D.C. area, including Maryland and Virginia. The CUA’s public affairs office quoted the president of the council, Ruplu Bhattacharya, as saying, “Each year, DCCEAS recognizes outstanding engineers and architects who have distinguished themselves among their peers. The Lifetime Achievement Award is our highest honor, and is bestowed to those who have made deep, meaningful contributions throughout their lifetimes.”
Dr. Nguyen was named by President George W. Bush to the Board of the Vietnam Education Fund for a three-year term in 2004. Funded by the U.S. government, the VEF is an independent agency whose mission is “to strengthen the U.S.-Vietnam bilateral relationship through educational exchanges in science and technology.”
And he plays the guitar.
The journal Intelligent Automation and Soft Computing? Dr. Nguyen founded it. He was also vice-chair of the IEEE Conference on Robotics and Automation in 1997.
The DCCEAS Awards Banquet will take place (like a lot of D.C. events) outside the district, in Silver Spring, Maryland, on February 28.
Luckily, Dr. Nguyen does not live in OC, or the “freedom fighters” would protest in front of his house since he had worked to strengthen the US-Vietnam relationship!
Our achievements have been fewer and minor in comparison with other Asian American groups in America: Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Philippine, Taiwanese…
We might be better than Cambodian and Laotian, that is all.
** Nobel Laureate Steven Chu Named Obama’s US Energy Secretary
He was awarded the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics, former chairman of the Stanford University Physics Department and director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Per records of the Santa Clara County DA office several years ago, for the general population, the number of youths who were incarcerated was about 6 youths (or 6.5, I don’t remember exactly) per 1,000 people. Breaking down to ethnicity, the ratio for the Vietnamese was about 13 youths per 1,000 people.
Anh Cuong do Tu Tai nam 16 tuoi, do Thu Khoa Ky Su Dai Hoc (Dipl-Ing) tai Tay Duc, do Tien Si voi hang danh du (magna cum laude) tai George Washington University. Cac cong trinh nghien cuu cua Anh ve Robotics va Control cung Operations tai NASA va cac dinh che khoa hoc khac that xuat sac. Anh cung sang lap mot nguyet san chuyen mon ky thuat va lam chu but. Anh day hoc tai Catholic University of America (CUA) va da tu giang vien (assistant professor) that mau len pho giao su (tenured associate professor) roi giao su (tenured full professor). Cung luc do Anh len tu giao su toi truong hoi dong khoa dien (chairman of department of EE), roi khoa truong truong ky su (dean of the school of engineering).
Anh co nhung hoat dong ve van hoa giao duc khoa hoc ky thuat voi tam voc quoc gia (VEF) va quoc te toan cau voi cac lien ket giao duc khoa hoc cua CUA voi cac dai hoc noi tieng tai A Chau (Trung Hoa, Dai Loan, Tan Gia Ba, An Do ….) va tai Au Chau.
Khi con tre Anh choi dan Tay Ban Cam (guitar lead) cua mot ban nhac tre sinh vien va van thuong hay to chuc cac buoi van nghe o tu gia tai Virginia.
** Chinese-American Gary Locke for commerce secretary :
President Obama’s commerce secretary – a post that “likely” will go to former Washington Gov. Gary Locke, an official said Monday.
Gary Locke, a Democrat, was the nation’s first Chinese-American governor when he served two terms in Washington before leaving in 2005.
America is a nation of immigrants. From every corner of the world the tired, the poor, and the huddled masses have found their ways to American shores. They have earned advanced degrees in engineering, become doctors and lawyers, except for the most clever, who become Marijuana grower.
And so it is with Asian Americans. As a group, we are said to be hardworking, law abiding, and gifted in math and science, the model Asian myth. However, applied to an entire group, the myth is troubling because the stereotype obscures many realities, and oblivious to the negative consequences of a positive image. Perhaps, it is necessary to point out what is corrupting about the myth would be Asian Americans exalting in it, perceiving ourselves as smarter than other Americans. If we arrogantly tell ourselves and everyone else about our brain capacity and our cultural superiority, everyone else would resent Asian Americans for what we possess.
In 1996, the brutal ambush murder of a popular Vietnamese American immigrant, who had attended UCLA (United Caucasians Lost among Asians), by two “wiggers” (replace “n” by “w” meaning white teenagers who are copying black).
Here was the words: “…I stabbed him in the side about 7 or 8 times he rolled over a little so I stabbed his back out 18 or 19 times then he layed flat and I slit one side of … his jugular vain. I cut his other jugular vain I stabbed him about 20 or 21 times in the heart …”
In America, where race matters, words matter. Words can be innocuous to some and odious to others. The term Asian Americans should be included for coalition, not merely to gratify our ego. We must erase the line runs between an Anglo-Asian overclass and an African-Hispanic underclass and take responsibility to enhance our awareness, rather than devalue the anguish of others.
Back in those segregation days, Asians never rode the city buses. Whites rode in the front and colors rode in the rear, and where exactly did Asians fit in?. Nowadays, Asians don’t ride the city buses, but it has a whole new different meaning. Many privileges we can afford today came from the struggle of African American. We should emphasize on the solidarity of our history, our common values.
When we emphasize on our common values, we see ourselves as the obstacle of our own advancement since so many of us consider REVENGE as an indispensable value of our race…
A Vietnamese American professor has won the prestigious 2009 Sloan Research Fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
Nguyen Thuc Quyen, an assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Santa Barbara University in California, is one of selected 118 nationwide outstanding scientists, mathematicians and economists to be named an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow this year.
The winners are faculty members at 61 colleges and universities in the U.S. and Canada.
Fellows can use their two-year US$50,000 grants to pursue whatever lines of inquiry are of most interest to them.
Thirty-eight-year-old Quyen won the award for her research in chemistry, which focuses on organic semiconductor materials which could form the basis of new technologies.
After going to the United States in 1991, Quyen obtained her Bachelor of Science, Master’s of Science and doctorate from Los Angeles University in 1997, 1999, and 2001 respectively.
She received several awards in chemistry and became a research associate in the Department of Chemistry at the Nanocenter at Columbia University.
She also worked at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center before joining the Santa Barbara faculty in 2004.
Quyen is also the recipient of the Harold J. Plous Award, one of the university’s two most prestigious faculty honors.
She has returned to Vietnam three times for international chemistry seminars.
The Sloan Research Fellowships have been awarded since 1955. Since then, 38 Sloan Research Fellows have gone on to win the Nobel Prize in their fields.
http://www.chem.ucsb.edu/people/faculty/nguyen/index.shtml
http://www.ia.ucsb.edu/pa/display.aspx?pkey=1949
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