Country: Vietnam

Dr. Quan Le, Associate Professor of Economics and Director of the International Business Program at Seattle University, served as a Fulbright Specialist at Dalat University in Vietnam for six weeks in the summer of 2017. The primary focus of his visit was to advise faculty who are preparing Dalat University’s international business program to meet requirements for accreditation from the ASEAN University Network. In addition, Dr. Le helped his host institution launch an entrepreneurial center and create enduring ties with his university in the U.S. We recently caught up with the Fulbright Specialist to hear more about his assignment, what he achieved, and how the visit opened new entrepreneurial and learning opportunities for his students in Seattle.

What was the primary goal of the host institution you worked with as a Fulbright Specialist?

My main focus was to help Dalat University’s Faculty of Business Administration gain accreditation from the ASEAN University Network (AUN). I assisted them in developing the curriculum and reviewed the syllabi of all courses to make sure they met the requirements of the AUN.

How were you able to use your professional expertise to help Dalat University improve the quality of their business program to advance the accreditation process?

I have teaching experience in Vietnam and know what the curriculum should look like. I am familiar with the AUN accreditation process. We reviewed all the programs in the Faculty of Business Administration, and I helped them develop the new international business program. They already had something to begin with. I looked at the international business program at Seattle University, where I teach and serve as program director, and helped them set up a similar program. I helped them select the courses from a list of courses they already had and helped them develop the syllabi.

Can you tell me more about the Entrepreneurship Facilitator Center, which you helped establish while you were a Fulbright Specialist?

They were in the process of launching when I was a Fulbright Specialist at Dalat University. I worked with the director of the center and introduced her to my colleague, Amelia Marckworth, assistant director of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center at Seattle University. I supported the launch of the center while I was a Fulbright Specialist.

How did being a Fulbright Specialist in Vietnam enrich your professional life? What impact has it had on your work/classes at Seattle University?

After the Fulbright Specialist Program, I returned to Seattle University and last year I received a different grant for another working visit. My colleague and I took six students from Seattle University to Vietnam this past summer to work with students at Dalat University. We were there for three weeks.

Through Dalat University’s Entrepreneurship Facilitator Center, we worked on a sustainable coffee project. The university is in a region that grows high quality coffee. I got interested in coffee while I was a Fulbright Specialist in Dalat. They agreed to host my students while we worked closely with the Entrepreneurship Facilitator Center.

What came out of the follow-on student research trip? Any new ventures?

Seattle University’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center has an incubator where students run a coffee project working with Central American farmers to import the coffee to Seattle and sell it on campus. This group wanted to expand the project to Vietnam. We met with farmers in the Dalat area and signed a contract for this coming coffee harvest. The students ordered 1,000 pounds of coffee to ship over. This is our second brand. It will arrive around February.

Why was the Fulbright Specialist experience important to you?

I was born in Vietnam. I came to the U.S. when I was 12 years old, so it was important for me to return and help the country. What I learned as a Fulbright Specialist I was able to bring back to my current job in the U.S. and help my students in Seattle get real-world entrepreneurial experience through my contacts at Dalat University.

It sounds like your Fulbright Specialist experience was the beginning of a relationship between Seattle University and Dalat University’s Entrepreneurship Program that will continue on.

Yes, they modeled after us with similar activities such as incubators, coaching, and business plan competitions. Now that we have a connection I would like to do more with them. For example, at Seattle University, the students participate in the annual business plan competition. I would like our students to work with students at Dalat University on projects to compete in the event in the future. We have experience working with a university in India on an international business plan competition. I would like to replicate that with Dalat University. Dalat University also wants more of their students to interact with our students. I will work with them in December when I return to Dalat. We’ve established a relationship and I would like to continue it.

Liberal education has a strong and dedicated proponent in Clark University’s Mary-Ellen Boyle. For decades, the associate management professor has taught and advocated for liberal education, which she believes prepares students for the real world by helping them develop communication and critical thinking skills, the ability to problem-solve, and a basic understanding of ethics and social responsibility.

Boyle wanted to test her beliefs in another culture.

She applied to the Fulbright Specialist Program, and after being approved to join the Fulbright Specialist Roster, was matched with a project at Hoa Sen University in Vietnam to provide technical assistance to faculty.

“I’ve always been interested in Vietnam,” says Boyle, adding that she was the third Fulbright Specialist invited to the university and was keen to build on the work of her predecessors.

Located in Ho Chi Minh City, Hoa Sen University concentrates on science, technology, and business, training students to work in these rapidly growing fields. There are few classes exploring humanities or the social sciences, hallmarks of a liberal arts education in the U.S.

One of Boyle’s challenges was to impress upon the faculty, staff, and students that a liberal education is compatible with specialization and can actually enhance professional training.

“I don’t think it should be either/or,” says Boyle, who as Associate Provost and Dean of the College at Clark University was instrumental in facilitating the integration of LEEP (Liberal Education and Effective Practice) into the university’s undergraduate curriculum. The pioneering program links liberal education with practice through internships, study abroad experience and projects.

Boyle also served as the faculty director of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Department and a professor at the Graduate School of Management where she teaches Business in Society, Entrepreneurship-Social Impact, Global Business Seminar, and Applying the Art & Science of Management.

In Vietnam, her role was to show how liberal education’s values and ways of thinking could be incorporated into instruction to better equip students to manage the complexity and rapid changes in an emerging economy.

“It was a brand new idea for some of the faculty,” admits Boyle.

She didn’t lecture. Instead, Boyle offered 15 three-hour workshops for faculty and professional staff. She introduced tools, ideas, and techniques to support more active learning as opposed to trying to promote large-scale curriculum reform.

For instance, Boyle modeled an interactive teaching style and facilitated discussions which she hoped instructors would emulate in their classrooms in place of the strictly passive learning style that currently dominates.

Typically, instructors lecture to students taking notes, who then commit the information to memory and show their mastery of it by repeating it back on exams, a common education practice throughout much of Asia.

The university’s provost, Loc Pham Quoc, supports the initiative to emphasize critical thinking skills and a more active approach to teaching. He was introduced to the American philosophy of liberal education during his time as a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where he earned his Ph.D.

Although she spent most of her waking hours working, Boyle says her Fulbright Specialist experience recharged her batteries.

“There are so many benefits. [The experience] can reenergize you in ways that you didn’t know you needed,” she says.

Adding, “It made me rethink the purpose of higher education.”

The Fulbright Specialist Program was established in 2001 by the U.S. Department of State and the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) to enable U.S. professionals and scholars to work on short-term projects overseas in conjunction with local host institutions.

For more information about the Fulbright Specialist Program or to apply, please go to: https://fulbrightspecialist.worldlearning.org/the-fulbright-specialist-program/