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CSU Dominguez Hills Hearst Scholar Overcomes Adversity

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Phuong Nguyen and CSUDH President Mildred Garcia

Despite much adversity in her life, a South Vietnamese immigrant has been undaunted in the pursuit of her academic dreams and is now one of the California State University system’s inspiring students.

At its September board meeting, the CSU Board of Trustees honored Wilmington resident Phoung Nguyen, a California State University, Dominguez Hills alumnae and current graduate student, as the university’s recipient of the William Randolph Heart/CSU Trustee Award for Outstanding Achievement for 2010. The award is given each year to one student from each of the 23 CSU campuses in recognition of their academic success in the face of hardships.

Nguyen’s story is marked by near death as an infant, setbacks to her education due to her limited English skills when she immigrated to the United States at the age of 9, and personal tragedies in recent years that almost caused her to abandon her studies at CSU Dominguez Hills and her dream of becoming a math teacher. But she persevered each time to emerge stronger than ever and determined to achieve her goals.

Nguyen graduated from CSU Dominguez Hills in 2009 with a bachelor’s degree in math education and completed the requirements for her teaching credential last semester. She currently is a full-time teacher at John C. Fremont High School in Los Angeles.

She said that receiving the Hearst Scholar award will help her fulfill another goal, becoming the first in her family to earn a master’s degree. This semester she is enrolled in a master’s in teaching mathematics program through the Department of Mathematics at CSU Dominguez Hills.

“It will bring honor to me and honor to my parents. And I can show off a little to my cousins too,” she said. “They work as accountants, but they don’t have their master’s degrees. I’ll be the first one.”

Along with a $3,000 scholarship award, Hearst Scholars received a technology package from Sony, including a Vaio Notebook, a Bloggie digital camera, and supporting software.  For more information on the William Randolph Hearst/CSU Trustees’ Award for Outstanding Achievement, visit www.calstate.edu/foundation/hearst.

Phoung Nguyen Biography

Born in South Vietnam in 1982, Nguyen nearly died before her first birthday when an outbreak of malaria struck her village of Long Khanh. She was the only infant out of 30 in the village to survive.

Nguyen and her family moved to the United States in 1991, when Nguyen was 9 years old. Her father, a South Vietnamese fighter pilot during the Vietnam War who had been captured after the 1975 Fall of Saigon and spent seven years in a North Vietnamese reeducation camp, qualified the family to emigrate from Vietnam under the late 1980s and early ’90s Orderly Departure Program.

Held back two U.S. grade levels due to her limited English, Nguyen went on graduate in the top 15 at Narbonne High School in Harbor City at the age of 19. She showed an early aptitude for math, and when she was accepted at CSU Dominguez Hills she chose to major in that subject. Nguyen said that at first, her family was skeptical about her pursuing a degree in math, which was traditionally considered a male-dominated field.

“I was slow in learning,” she recalled. “All of my cousins were really fast learners. I wanted to do math… but my family said, ‘You’re not bright.’ The challenge that I had to overcome is that they believed that because I am a female I cannot be a mathematician, but I proved to them that is not true.”

Two personal tragedies in the past four years nearly put a halt to her education, but she said she became determined to attain the dream she’d had since she was young – to become a teacher.

“When I was 6 or 7, I would watch my father every morning writing on the board, so I wanted to be a teacher,” she said of her father who was a teacher in their village after returning from the reeducation camps, and now teaches computer technology at Los Angeles Harbor College. “After he would teach, I would take the chalkboard and teach my imaginary students.”

Today she is teaching real students at John C. Fremont High School after receiving her bachelor’s degree in math education from CSU Dominguez Hills in 2009 completing her credential program this past spring. This semester she began classes toward her master’s degree in teaching mathematics.

Nguyen hopes to give others a chance to reach their dreams. She said she would like to start college scholarships for victims of violent crime and theft, and children of U.S. military personnel who have sustained wartime injuries, and one day establish a school for victims of human trafficking.

“Songs for the Second Half”: One-Act Musical Reveals Humor and Coping in the Golden Years

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Many of the retired or semi-retired members of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at California State University, Dominguez Hills will undoubtedly see themselves reflected in “Songs for the Second Half,” by Barry Bortnick. A performance of the one-act musical will take place on Oct. 10 in the Recital Hall, Rm. A-103, in La Corte Hall.

“’Songs for the Second Half’ deals with themes that OLLI members will find familiar, especially as they look at retirement, other transitions in their lives and the goals they want to set for the ‘second half,’” says Jim Bouchard, coordinator of OLLI at CSUDH. “The musical has a very positive message about being productive and happy in the second half of life.”

Bortnick is the founding program director for OLLI at UCLA and supervised its humanities programs for 22 years. He began writing “Songs” five years ago based on his own attitudes toward aging and his observations of what others were encountering in their own “second half.”

“This may not be true of everybody but for the people I [portrayed] in writing this, the second half is an awareness of time, getting in touch with a sense of conscious living, the importance of choices, working on relationships with other people, or healing the past–above all, making this a time to pay attention to the meaning and quality of one’s experience,” Bortnick says.

Sharon Newman teaches in the Program for Older Adults and the English as a Second Language program for the Los Angeles Unified School District and has directed “Songs” with Bortnick for the last two years. She is also an acting instructor and talent manager for senior actors. She says that the ability and desire to examine one’s life often surfaces later in life because “many people are living their lives focused on the immediate: on career, finance, family, and solving day-to-day problems. They don’t have time or make time to be reflective.”

Bortnick, who wrote the music, lyrics, and “book” of the musical, describes the “oldest” character in “Songs,” a man named Paul who has recently retired from an executive position and is now faced with finding out who he is without the identity of his career.

“People in their second half are no longer just thinking about the next challenge around the corner tomorrow, but rather what the quality of their life needs to be,” says Bortnick. “Many of them become aware of legacy or what they want to leave of themselves to others. Paul goes on a journey of [finding out] ‘Who am I?,’ from defining himself only by his job to defining himself by the meaningful relationships he has with his wife, his son, and his grandson. There is meaning in [knowing] you have affected important people in your life in a positive way.”

Newman says that audiences are deeply affected by the experience, as are the actors who audition for “Songs.”

“When we audition performers in their 40s, 50s, 60s, and beyond, they walk out of the audition telling us how much they connect to the story and how much it means to read for characters that are their life’s journey,” Newman says. “The audiences don’t leave the theater when the performance is over. They want to talk about how it’s touched them, and where else we could [present] the show.”

“They become real fans,” says Bortnick, who is also the production’s musical director. “They laugh at all the right places and are moved by the more touching moments.”

According to Newman and Bortnick, the humorous aspects of “Songs for the Second Half” are its mainstay and part of its appeal to audiences of all ages. Newman says that coping with aging includes “the fact that we can look at our lives and laugh at ourselves, laugh at our behavior, mistakes, and choices.”

Bortnick, who will be teaching seniors how to write their autobiographies this fall through UCLA Extension says that the motif of lifelong learning is evident in “Songs,” with twists such as the protagonist and his wife, who discover unexpected quirks in their 45 year marriage while taking a course on using email.

“There’s humor in that because they have to go a long way to really understanding each other,” says Bortnick. “They do a [lesson] on dating and find they like each other better online.”

“Songs” has been performed at the Skirball Cultural Center, CSU Los Angeles, and for both UCLA Extension’s OLLI and an intergenerational audience of UCLA students, parents, grandparents, and community leaders. Cast members have included actor Barry Gordon, a Tony Award nominee and former president of the Screen Actors Guild, and Emmy winning actress Barbara Keegan.

“Songs for the Second Half” is presented with funding from OLLI at CSU Dominguez Hills. To enroll and attend the performance, OLLI members and non-members can call Extended Registration at (310) 243-3741. Tickets are $10.

Space is limited at this venue, so advanced reservations are recommended. Any remaining seats at the time of performance will be available on a first-come, first-serve basis. Following the performance will be a discussion with the cast and director.

OLLI at CSU Dominguez Hills is an educational membership organization for ages 50 and older that promotes lifelong learning, acquisition of new skills, and cultural enrichment courses and activities. Members can enroll in a variety of courses led by CSU Dominguez Hills faculty or experts in a variety of fields – including fellow OLLI members. Activities include discussion groups, special lecture series, and field trips to museums and other cultural and historical destinations in the local South Bay and Los Angeles area.

For more information about OLLI at CSU Dominguez Hills, click here or contact (310) 243-3208.

Brandilynn Villarreal: Alumna Finds Path to Doctorate By Mentoring McNair Scholars

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When Brandilynn Villarreal (Class of ’09, M.A., clinical psychology) took a job as a grad assistant for the McNair Scholars Program at California State University, Dominguez Hills, she had thought the responsibility of helping underrepresented, first-generation college students prepare for advanced degrees was interesting. So much so, that as a doctoral candidate in social and personality psychology at the University of California, Irvine she decided to analyze how that same student population copes with graduate school.

“I had to come here and see that I was really interested in doing that,” says Villarreal, who had earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology at UCLA with a focus on social stigma and devalued identities.

Brandilynn Villarreal
Brandilynn Villarreal

In her work as a graduate student at CSU Dominguez Hills, Villarreal branched out into research on preventions of sexual risk taking behavior among underrepresented populations at CSU Dominguez Hills, working with her professors Dr. Karen Mason and Dr. Keisha Paxton, associate professors of psychology. Michelle Waiters, director of the McNair Program, says that Villarreal’s reputation as “a research star” was instrumental in supporting McNair Scholars in their research as undergraduates.

“[The students] really looked up to her in that area because that’s what they were aspiring to,” says Waiters. “Technically, she’s only a few years ahead of them but she was where they needed to be [as researchers], and she could get them there.”

Villarreal’s responsibilities in the McNair Scholar’s program, first as a grad assistant and then as program coordinator, included everything from extensive editing of the students’ writing, assistance with graduate school applications, and providing a lot of moral support. A student herself, Villarreal found that she enjoyed being a coach and role model.

“I always knew I liked teaching, but the concept of being a mentor was something new to me,” she says.

Villarreal says that along with the technical end of helping students with research papers and presentations the most important thing is “to be constantly in contact with the students.”

“If you’re not inquiring about them and caring about them, I feel it doesn’t work as well,” she says. “You’re preparing them for the next stage [of their education]. That’s where my training in clinical psychology comes in. I’m a listener and nurturer so I try to be there for them, whether it’s about school or not.”

For Villarreal, the result of her efforts is that the students are “an inspiration for me.”

“There are so many genius students in McNair, they amaze me,” she says. “They all have their own unique story; a lot of them have had many obstacles. They have shown me for my own research their challenges and success stories.”

For more information about the McNair Scholars Program, click here.

Susan Needham: Partnership with CSU Long Beach Continues With Cambodian History Project

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For the last two years, students at California State University, Dominguez Hills and CSU Long Beach have been participating in a unique opportunity to gain field work experience through community-based service learning and hands-on research. The institutions, who signed a memo of understanding in 2008, have been creating the Cambodian Community History and Archive Project (CamCHAP). The project is directed by Susan Needham, professor and chair of anthropology at CSU Dominguez Hills, and Karen Quintiliani, assistant professor of anthropology at CSU Long Beach, with support from the Historical Society of Long Beach (HSLB), which has provided space in their offices for the physical archive and technical assistance for the online archive.

Susan Needham
Susan Needham

Last month, administrators from the participating institutions were given a tour of HSLB’s offices in Long Beach’s Bixby Knolls neighborhood in preparation of renewing the MOU and launching the completed online archive in spring of 2011. HSLB’s contributions to the project include housing the CamCHAP archive and technical assistance. The project was funded in part with a $20,000 grant from the California Council for the Humanities and $40,000 from the Long Beach Community Foundation.

University President Mildred García says that she would like to see the university become engaged in more projects like CamCHAP that collaborate with sister institutions and with local community.

“That’s really been one of our focuses at Dominguez Hills,” she says. “Sue is a role model to help others know that. The community is engaged in building, archiving, and bringing out their own histories in their own ways. When you engage community that way, they see the university as their university.”

“This project provides an enormous opportunity for Dominguez Hills… as a model for studies of other communities and how an archive can be implemented to provide valuable information to the community and scholars,” says Laura Robles, interim dean of the College of Natural and Behavioral Sciences.

Professor of anthropology Susan Needham (at far left) is spearheading a collaboration with CSU Long Beach and its local community to create an archive of the history of Cambodians in the United States. L-R, seated: Needham, Dr. Mildred García, president, CSU Dominguez Hills L-R, standing: Richer San (Class of '91, B.S., business administration), Cambodia Town, Inc.; Karen Quintiliani, assistant professor of anthropology, CSU Long Beach; and Evan Braude, board of directors, Historical Society of Long Beach.
Professor of anthropology Susan Needham (at far left) is spearheading a collaboration with CSU Long Beach and its local community to create an archive of the history of Cambodians in the United States. L-R, seated: Needham, Dr. Mildred García, president, CSU Dominguez Hills L-R, standing: Richer San (Class of ’91, B.S., business administration), Cambodia Town, Inc.; Karen Quintiliani, assistant professor of anthropology, CSU Long Beach; and Evan Braude, board of directors, Historical Society of Long Beach.

For the last two years, students have participated in research, documentation, and presentation of the culture and experiences of war refugees who have made the Long Beach community of Cambodia Town, Inc. the largest enclave of Cambodians outside Southeast Asia. The next phase of CamCHAP is to launch an interactive website that has been created with the help of CSU Dominguez Hills undergraduate student Elsie Heredia and CSULB graduate students Sarah Cote, Adriana Vigil, and Julia Wignall. The online archive will feature more than 2,000 photographs and more than 1,500 documents in Khmer and English, including newspapers and unpublished manuscripts and reports from researchers, community members, and various organizations that are led by or serve the Cambodian community. Visitors to the site will be able to learn about myriad aspects of Cambodian culture and history, including the arts, business, demographic surveys, education, health, homeland relations, politics, religion, and events.

Needham and Quintiliani have been conducting ethnographic and linguistic research in Long Beach’s Cambodian community since 1988. They are currently completing a book on the establishment of Cambodia Town. Needham, whose students visit community members to scan their personal photos for CamCHAP’s archives, underscores the need to tell the story of Cambodians who fled to the United States in the wake of the Khmer Rouge regime of the 1970s.

“Most Cambodians who lived through the Khmer Rouge do not talk about what happened with their children,” says Needham. “Children, sensing the stress and emotional pain associated with that time, are reluctant to ask their parents about it. This means most children in the new generation don’t know what their parents lived through or why they left Cambodia. In short, they don’t know how they fit into either Cambodian or U.S. history. This part of U.S. history isn’t covered well in our schools and there are relatively few sources for this new generation to go to for information.”

Needham says that the CamCHAP project fills the information gap for both the older and younger generations. According to Quintiliani, this is the first time that the history of the Khmer Rouge will be available on the Internet. She says that many members of the community had connections to either one or both of the universities, a fact that helped CamCHAP gain trust and momentum.

“We didn’t want to create an archive project or an ethnohistorical representation of Cambodians without looking at what was already established in the community and what expertise we can build on… and create a stronger sense of community here in Long Beach based on the history of the Cambodians,” Quintiliani says.

Needham says that in establishing CamCHAP, she and Quintiliani have had to build not only a relationship with Cambodian residents of Long Beach, but also with the HSLB, city officials, nonprofit organizations, and local business stakeholders. She says that these efforts prove how educators can continue to give their students the best possible experience despite today’s financial challenges to education.

“All educators face the challenge of providing our students with an engaging and challenging learning environment with fewer and fewer resources,” says Needham. “Karen and I have found that collaboration with people committed to research and student learning through community engagement not only helps us accomplish this goal, it is extremely rewarding work. We are happy to share what we’ve learned with other researchers who are working in local ethnic communities and invite them to visit us at the [Long Beach] Historical Society to see what we’re doing there.”

Needham says that the experience that students gain by working with communities through projects like CamCHAP help them to “learn that communities are not homogenous, but are composed of people who, although they identify as part of the community, have differing perspectives on what is best for the group.

“They learn how to value and seek out all points of view and how to integrate these varying views into a more holistic and complex –and I think more interesting–understanding of people, their needs, and how to address these needs.”

For more information on the anthropology department at CSU Dominguez Hills, click here.

Chicana/Chicano Studies Department’s 40th Anniversary Recognized by City of Carson

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In 1970, an interdisciplinary program called Mexican American studies was offered at California State University, Dominguez Hills. In 1994, it was designated as a stand-alone program and the Chicana/Chicano studies department was established. On Sept. 1, Irene Vasquez, chair and professor of Chicana/Chicano studies was recognized with her students at a meeting of the Carson City Council in celebration of the 40th anniversary of the discipline at CSU Dominguez Hills and in conjunction with Hispanic Heritage Month.

Chicano Studies students receive award from Carson City Council
Professor Irene Vasquez (fifth from left) and students in Chicana/Chicano studies, are recognized by the Carson city council for the department’s 40th anniversary at CSU Dominguez Hills. L-R: Alejandra Hernandez (Class of ’09, B.A., Chicana/Chicano studies); Angelica Jimenez, junior; Councilmember Mike Gipson; Councilmember Julie Ruiz Raber; Irene Vasquez, professor of Chicana/Chicano studies; Mayor Jim Dear; Councilmember Elito Santarina; Councilmember Lula Davis Holmes; and Moises Santos, senior. Front row: Lauren Romero, senior, and Daniel

Vasquez, who arrived at the university in 2005, said that she was attracted to teaching Chicana/Chicano studies at CSU Dominguez Hills because of the student demographics and its connection to her research in the foundational influences that indigenous, African, and mixed-descent populations had on the development of Latino societies and cultures. She says that learning about these histories is important for all students, particularly in the Los Angeles area and the Southwest in the face of new immigration laws.

“The history of Native American, African and mixed-descent peoples is as basic to U.S. history as that of Europeans,” she said. “Peoples from what is [now] Mexico settled major areas of the U.S. In California, people of Mexican descent helped shape the state governmental framework. [They] donated the land on which California state colleges and universities, including CSU Dominguez Hills, stand. Now more than ever, especially with what is going on in Arizona, we need to support a balanced and accurate telling of the past and the present, so that we don’t purposely or inadvertently promote ignorance and misrepresentation.”

Senior Lauren Romero was happy that the city of Carson, which was founded on part of lands once owned by Manuel Dominguez, a Californio statesman and cattle rancher, recognized the Chicana/Chicano studies department at CSU Dominguez Hills on its 40th anniversary, which coincides with 40th anniversaries of Chicano studies at a number of institutions nationwide.

“Every city should do it,” she said.

Romero said that when she entered CSU Dominguez Hills as a freshman, she did not know what major to choose but “saw Chicano studies as an open window to do anything.” She is now choosing between entering either the teaching credential program or master’s of social work program at the university when she graduates next spring.

“I am so proud to have had opportunities to work with diverse student scholars who have completed or are enrolled in master’s and doctorate programs in various disciplines,” said Vasquez. “They are in law degree programs, in social work, and teaching programs. A good majority of our students want to become professors, teachers, principles, lawyers, social workers, probation officers, program managers, case workers and counselors.”

Studying a field with such deep connections to social justice has affected the career choices of many Chicana/Chicano studies majors. Freshman Daniel Coronado looks forward to a career in law enforcement. He hopes to use his knowledge of a largely untold history to help incarcerated youth in the way it has helped him.

“I wanted to learn more about my history, a history I never learned before,” he said. “It got me more in touch with myself.”

Alumna Alejandra Hernandez (Class of ’09, B.A., Chicana/Chicano studies) is in the process of entering a master’s program at the University of Southern California for a credential to teach social science.

“Chicano history is so deeply rooted in Los Angeles and all the areas of the Southwest,” said Hernandez, a Los Angeles native. “It is [unfathomable] for one to live here and not know about the people and their accomplishments.”

Senior Richard Gutierrez said that the discipline of Chicano studies informs students of Mexican, Latino, and mixed-descent populations with “information that would usually be lost to us.”

“Typically throughout K-12, we are so focused on Anglo contributions to the world that we are left to wonder what Latinos have brought to the world,” said Gutierrez. “Chicano studies brings pride to [those of] Hispanic heritage that would go unheard of if not for Chicano studies.”

A presentation and discussion by two founders of the Chicano studies discipline will take place on Oct. 7, sponsored by Chicana/Chicano studies at CSU Dominguez Hills. Juan Gomez-Quinones, professor of history at UCLA and Gracia Molina de Pick, professor of Chicano studies at Mesa College will speak at the Loker Student Union. For more information, contact Dr. Vasquez at (310) 243-3070.

For more information on Chicana/Chicano studies at CSU Dominguez Hills, click here.