Phỏng vấn giáo sư tiến sĩ P.V.

 Chúng tôi nhận được bài phỏng vấn này từ Diễn đàn điện tử 'Hàng Không Dân Sự 75'. Bà P.V.(người được phỏng vấn) là một phụ nữ Việt ở trên đất Mỹ, tuổi ngoài tam thập, nhưng đã đạt được sự thành công cả hai mặt: học vấn và nghề nghiệp. Nội dung của bài phỏng vấn dưới đây nói lên tâm trạng bức xúc của một phụ nữ trí thức về sự nhận diện 'bản lai' của chính mình, cùng với những kinh nghiệm đã đóng góp cho đất nước. Giao Ðiểm hân hoan giới thiệu bà PV. đến các bạn trẻ trong nước cũng như ở hải ngoại. [Chúng tôi tôn trọng yêu cầu của tác giả là không tiết lộ danh tánh.]

 

Introduction:

Ms. P.V. is the eldest daughter of a family of four children (one boy and three girls). Her father is a retired engineer and her mother a retired math teacher. After graduating from Merritt Island High School, she received scholarship from Harvard University to study Applied Math. Following Harvard, she attended Stanford university with a scholarship from AT&T. She received a Ph.D. in Operations Research from Stanford. Ms. P.V. has taught at MIT and Columbia University. While at MIT, she travalled to Hanoi to teach at the Hanoi School of Business in a program organized by Darmouth College. Currently, she is working in Information Technology at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter. Her husband is an American investment banker. They have an eighteen-month old son. Ms. P.V. and her family live in New York City.

 

Question1: As an outstanding student, you could have been admitted to any discipline at Harvard University. Why did you choose Mathematics ? Branch of Mathematics did you study ?

-- When I went to Harvard I did not have in mind that I would study Math. I had planned to study EE (Electrical Engineering), which seem to me a very practical field that had the promise of steady employment. During my first year at Harvard, however, I heard from everyone… the president of Harvard, the proctor in my freshman dorm, even older students… that what I really should be doing at Harvard was to search out for the thing really 'turns me on'. A Harvard graduate, I was told, could always find a job.

I had a sort of epiphany in my sophomore year math class. It was the typical course in real analysis. But for the first time, I began to understand the 'why's of math, not just the 'how's'. I began to see even the most complicated theorem was simply the result of simpler results and fundamental truths, and that all of mathematics was really a beautiful ediffice that had been constructed by the collective human mind across the centuries. I guess you could say that my first love was mathematics. At that point, it seem that I had no choice but to study math.

Actually, I chose applied math, rather than pure math, for two reasons: First, I didn't think I was smart enough to be a math major at Harvard. Second, I was still worried about getting a job after graduation, so I thought a degree containing the word 'aplied' would be more marketable. I chose a concentration within applied mathematics called ' Decision and Control', which a combination of decision science, management science and control theory. The reason I chose it was simple: It required highest number of pure math classes among all concentrations in applied mathematics.

It turned out that I continued to study in this field in graduate school. I got a PhD. in Operations Research , which is really another name for 'Decision and Control'. My area of expertise was applied probability. If you are familiar with the study of probability, you would recognize that it uses very heavily the tools of mathematics, particularly the results of real analysis. And as you recall, real analysis was how I started my love affair with mathematics !

 

Question 2: How did you come to teach in Vietnam ?

-- In 1996, I was teaching at the Sloan School of Management (the business school at MIT). A colleague at Tuck Business School (the business school at Dartmouth College) called me to say that Tuck had received a grant from United States government to help develop a business school in Vietnam. She asked if I would like to participate in the Tuck program and help teach a few classes in Operations. At that time I had not been back to Vietnam and I was wildly excited at this opportunity.

 

Question 3: What did you teach ? At what school ? And what language you use in teaching ?

-- The Tuck program was essentially a two-week advanced managemnet course for executives. The program was organized jointly between Tuck and the Hanoi School of Business (HSB), a department in the University of Hanoi (Ðại Học Quốc Gia). We also used the program as an opportunity for 'knowledge transfer; teaching the teachers of HSB how to put together a business curriculum.

The program included all the core courses of a business program: accounting, finance, marketing, strategy, and, of course, operations. Many of these subjects were difficult to teach; marketing in particular, to be an irrelevant concept in the centrally planned economy. (There word for marketing in Vietnamese !)

I taught a few sessions on operations management. I had worked very hard to translate my lecture notes into Vietnamese, and I even spent several days memorizing new vocabulary words for some of the technical terms. However, I found it extremely difficult to teach in Vietnamese, particularly in the field such as operations management, where even the concepts, not to mention vocabulary, are foreign to the Vietnamese language. I prefer the Socratic style of teaching, which relies on question and answer rather than scripted lecture. But it was very difficult for me to talk in Vietnamese about highly technical subject that I had studied entirely in English. I very quickly switched to lecturing in English and relied on the interpreter do the translation.

 

Question 4: How did the students in Vietnam compare to your student the US ?

-- The students I had in Viet Nam were very different from the type of students I had in the United States. In the US, I had experienced teaching at universities such as MIT, Stanford and Columbia, where the students generally were well prepared and highly motivated. In contrast, the students sent to the Tuck/HSB program were senior level management in various industries. And as you are well aware, in communist government such as Viet Nam's, one does not obtain these positions by excelling academically. Overall, I were very disappointed with the experience, the level of education of participants as well as their level of interest in learning.

 

Question 5: Would you like to return to Viet Nam to teach again ? Are you planning to travel to Viet Nam with your husband some day ?

-- It seems to me that these are two unrelated questions, but the answer both is yes. It is a dream of mine to go back to Viet Nam and teach university on a visiting basis. The most important ingredient in a satisfying teaching experience is student motivation. And I expected motivation would be very high in the university student population.

Regarding second question, my husband and I very much want to visit Viet Nam together. We were planning to go this year, but the arrival our son has delayed that plan. We will go back when our son (and possibly his younger siblings !) are old enough to take the trip.

 

Question 6: You are un educated and successful career woman, but you are still taking good care of your husband and son. You received tremendously help from your parents during the first weeks after you had your baby. Is American husband appreciative of having a Vietnamese wife like you ?

-- I am not sure this is the right way to think about the issue, but I try to give an answer. First, my husband is very appreciative of all that my parents (particularly my mother) have done for our son. The love she has shown our son surpassed my husband's expectations.

But I don't like to think of my role as the dutiful Vietnamese wife who cooks and cleans for my husband. In fact, he does much of the cooking and cleaning ! I think it is important to set good examples for our children. I would like to think that I am helping to raise a generation of sons who understand what it means to support their wives, in deed as well as in words; and a generation of daughters who believe that there is a place for ambition as well as family responsibilty in their lives.

 

Question 7: Do you think of yourself as a Vietnamese woman, or an American woman ?

-- This is an interesting question. The label that is given to me and others like me is "Vietnamese-American', which implies aperson who is part Vietnamese and part American. But I like to think of myself as 'Vietnamese and American'. First, I am Vietnamese, by blood and by upbringing. But I am also an American; I feel that I belong in this country of the United States of America. Some people seem to think that by being 'more American' one becomes 'less Vietnamese'. I don't agree with this notion. If I am able to speak English well, does that necessarily mean that I cannot speak Vietnmese well ?

I was educated in American schools and influenced by American friends during my formative teen-age years. I could see parts of myself in the friends around me, so I use to assume that my character was American. But as I grew older and got to know my relatives, who was scattered across United States and the world, I began to see many more parts of myself in my grandmother, my parents, my aunts and uncles… even my aunt in Hanoi whom I met for the first time in 1996. I like the feeling that I have two homes, that I can be equally comfortable in New York as I am in Hanoi.

I love the idea of languages. I think that if you really understand the nuance of a language then you can understand the real essence of the culture behind that language. Vietnamese, in particular, is a language with so many layers of nuance. Each time I learn a new poem, a new 'ca dao', or even a new word, I feel like I understand a little more about Viet Nam. I do not have a scholar's vocabulary in Vietnamese, nor am I well read in Vietnamese literature. But I understand enough Vietnamese to be able to read literature and feel moved by a poem. I speak to my son in Vietnamese, with the hope that when he grows up, he, too, will be able to feel moved when he read poems written by his mother's ancestors, and if the mood strikes him, he would be able to read Chuyen Kieu in its original language. In this way, I feel that I am helping to preserve the culture of Viet Nam.