Teachers played an important role in shaping a Vietnamese refugee’s life. Now, the CSU Monterey Bay professor hopes to pay it forward.

AS A STUDENT MAJORING in Ethnic Studies at UC San Diego in the 1990s, Phuong Nguyen’s professors noted he had a knack for education, and saw that he could use that passion to teach others in the future.

They encouraged him to apply for grad school, so he took their advice. He later earned his PhD in American Studies and Ethnicity from the University of Southern California, and now, for the past eight years, teaches U.S. and Asian American history at CSU Monterey Bay, where he is also the chair of the Humanities and Communication department.

“I had professors who were very nurturing, very good at mentoring,” Nguyen says. “I want to pay it forward to the next generation. I’m lucky to be able to do it in the community I grew up in.”

Without the actions of his family, who risked everything and uprooted their lives, Nguyen never would have been in this position. In fact, he likely wouldn’t have made it to his third birthday.

Nguyen was born in Vietnam in 1975, soon after the war ended. Two years later, he had gotten ill with a lung infection, and doctors said they didn’t have the medication to treat him.

At the time, large numbers of people were fleeing Vietnam by boat to escape the new regime. Nguyen’s parents and sister took one of his uncle’s fishing boats and left the country in search of not only a better life, but also treatment for his infection.

The treacherous journey saw the boat nearly capsize, and the Nguyen family was eventually transported by a Taiwanese boat to Okinawa, Japan, where they were granted asylum.

“That’s where I received medical treatment and got better,” he says. “I’m alive because of that.”

Later resettling in New York, Nguyen’s father learned about a California program where he could work and go to school at the same time. Once in California, he found a job as a fisherman in Monterey, where the family put down roots, with Nguyen later graduating from Monterey High School.

“For me, growing up extremely poor and having to depend on public services and public education, I’ve always felt strongly that education is the great equalizer,” Nguyen says.

Now living in Marina with his wife and two young children, Nguyen finds time to be active in both the campus and Marina community. He is a board member for Asian Communities of Marina, which advocates for Asian representation in civic life and other community projects, and helps out with the Coalition for Asian Justice, which works to eliminate structural racism.

He was a guest speaker at the Martin Luther King Jr. event in Marina in January, touching on the “values of community, love and solidarity from the Civil Rights movement,” things that he says are needed again today as “a new wave of xenophobia and nativism” grips the country.

At CSUMB, Nguyen was involved in the launch of the new Asian Pacific Islander Desi American Center, which celebrated its opening earlier this year. The center aims to provide leadership development, mentoring and other services, as well as a space for students to just hang out and connect with each other.

“I’ve always been passionate about community building,” Nguyen says. “If we’re able to connect our students to other people on campus and in the community, we can help our students succeed.”