Dr. Nguyen Hop Minh and Dr. Ian Kalman have joined the Founding Faculty of Fulbright University Vietnam.
Dr. Nguyen Hop Minh lived in the Old Quarter of Hanoi until he moved with his family to Ho Chi Minh City and completed his first degree in Civil Engineering from the Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology in 2002. After some industry experiences, he embarked on a rather unexpected long journey overseas 15 years ago.
After completing the Masters program at the Asian Institute of Technology in Thailand, he realized there is much more to learn and he continued with a PhD at Saitama University in Japan, which he followed with a research and teaching fellowship at the University College London (UCL) in the United Kingdom.
His work at UCL led him to another opportunity to join Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan as a founding faculty in one of the most ambitious international university development projects in recent years.
“During my 15 years of studying and teaching in different countries, I have been comparing the educational models in Vietnam and in other countries and it is my observation that while Vietnamese students are usually hard-working and eager to learn, we may lack training in critical thinking and are not used to thinking independently as active learners.
What the Vietnamese students need is a cultivating environment where students are encouraged to learn deeply for themselves and know how to plan, evaluate, and improve their performance as a routine process not just in the university but also in whatever endeavours they pursue,” Dr. Nguyen Minh shared.
“With this ideal education environment in mind, I find the establishment of the Fulbright University Vietnam with its liberal arts education model an excellent opportunity to develop an innovative learning environment where Vietnamese students will be able to work together and educate themselves to become effective professionals and more importantly to become independent thinkers and free persons.
I consider myself so lucky when I was offered a dream job to be part of the FUV team, and I am so excited looking forward to working with the staff and students who share the same vision and commitment to the higher education in Vietnam.
Ian Kalman comes to FUV from the Department of Political Science at Western University, where he holds a postdoctoral fellowship in Indigenous-Local Intergovernmental Relations.
He has a PhD in Anthropology from McGill University and is an affiliated member of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology’s Department of Law and Anthropology.
Ian’s work looks at interactions between state officers and indigenous peoples, with special attention to law, governance, and borders. He is especially interested in the ways in which law and rights are experienced and framed in face to face interactions.
Prior to his post-graduate studies, Ian earned a BA in Anthropology from the University of Chicago and has worked as a Peace Corps Volunteer and English teacher in China, Ukraine, and Turkey.
