[Vacets] Questions for Candidates

[Hung Nguyen]

All,

Because attachment is not allowed, I have copied and pasted anh Dat's
response in this email.

Hung
------------------------
Harvard Medical School

DEPARTMENT OF GENETICS

77 Avenue Louis Pasteur

Boston, Massachusetts 02115

Dat William H. Nguyen, Ph.D.

Tel: (617)-432-6512

Fax: (617)-432-6513

Email: dnguyen at hms.harvard.edu

or nguyend at sigmaxi.org

http://arep.med.harvard.edu/~dnguyen

September 2, 2005

Dear VACETS members,

Thank you for asking many important questions regarding the future of
VACETS. We

need to find answers for them with diligent thoughts. My philosophy is that
we need to

solve problems related to the organization at the fundamental level, rather
than dealing

with them one at a time. In other words, you can think of the organization
as a balloon, if

we try to solve one particular problem by pushing the balloon on one side,
we may create

a new and undesirable problem on the other side.

In my view, VACETS should pursue two short term objectives. The first
objective is to

restructure the organization in order to make it more modular,
self-sustained, efficient, and

useful to its members. The second objective, which is somewhat related to
the first, is to

establish a strong, united network of active members, while re-energizing
the spirit of

volunteerism among existing members in order to demonstrate that VACETS is a

prestigious and valuable organization, and its members will benefit from
being a part of it.

A. Organization restructuring

I would suggest that VACETS is restructured into two levels: the National
(or

International) and local chapter levels. At the National (or International)
level, VACETS

consists of a president, the board of directors, and an executive committee
just as what

VACETS is currently organized. The role of the National (or International)
level

organization is to oversee the whole organization, set policy, coordinate
local chapters and

establish new ones, organize annual conference/retreat, raise fund, and
communicate with

both American and Vietnamese public. In addition, I would suggest that
VACETS

should also establish the so-called the "advisory council" or whatever name
one may wish

to call, consisting of experts in a broad field of science and technology,
who play a key

role in both academic and industrial worlds (e.g. professors, managers,
directors, advisors,

bankers, etc.). The role of this council is to provide members of VACETS
with useful

advises and/or social/economical/political connections that can help advance
their careers

such as admission to graduate/professional schools, job finding, and
fellowships, etc.

The local chapter level can be a college chapter, or an industrial chapter.
Each local

chapter is headed by the "chapter president", who is locally elected and is
responsible for

organizing the election of the next "chapter president". This way of
organizational

structure will help encourage young people to participate in the process of
running

VACETS, develop leadership skills, and while at the same time strengthen
their resume.

Furthermore, I believe that accountability for the leadership is also
critically important for

the viability of the organization. We therefore should develop and put in
place the policy

for evaluating the leadership. Such policy should include, but not limited
to, the number

of new members the president and each chapter president can bring to the
organization

during his/her tenure, and the level of organization's or chapter's activity
s/he helps

organize. For those chapter presidents, who lead their local chapter with
distinction, the

board of directors and the president of the VACETS will recognize them with
an

appropriate letter of reference so that they can use it for purposes such as
admission to

professional/graduate schools, employments, etc. To initiate the
establishment of local

chapters, let's begin with schools and companies with large number of
Vietnamese people

(e.g. San Jose State University).

B. Establishing a strong, united network of active members

We must start out with what we currently have in order to establish local
chapters

and the "advisory council" as mentioned above. From my observation of the
VTIC'05, I

believe that we have enough able people with good heart to serve on the
advisory council

and to help establish new local chapters across universities (e.g. SJSU) and
companies

(e.g. CISCO). The most important objective of VACETS in the near term, in my
view, is

to demonstrate and convince existing as well as prospective members that,
via the work of

the advisory council, VACETS is so beneficial to them, and only members of
VACETS

can have access to the organization. We will have to establish an impression
and a culture

that being a part of VACETS is honorable, or perhaps better it is an
honorable

contribution to the organization if one member can help other members. To
achieve this,

we will have to have the mechanism in place to recognize honorable
contributions from

members appropriately. Lastly, we should make VACETS a little bit exclusive
to begin

with in order to make it prestigious, although this point can be debatable.

So, what can the VACETS advisory council do in order to be beneficial to

VACETS members? As I mentioned above, the VACETS advisory council consists
of

professors, advisors, managers, and supervisors, etc. who play a significant
role in their

respective institutions. To this end, they can help members of VACETS with
many issues

related to their careers advancement such as job finding, admission,
fellowships, etc. by

making potential opportunities known to members or providing them with
advises or

social/economical/political connections.

To form an even stronger interconnected network of members, we should also

have a unique VACETS' email address for each active member (i.e.

MrOrMrs.abcd at vacets.org) in order to make members feel that they belong to a
real

organization, rather than a virtual internet one. This is also to promote
communications

between the organization and its members. Note that we do not need
significant resources

such as an email server to do this, but rather the above email service can
be a forwarding

email account. In other words, each member will need a real email address so
that

whatever emails sent to their VACETS' email will be forwarded to their real
email

address. This can only be a good thing, since people may change their jobs
or institution

they associated with, but their email address is permanent, and therefore
they are more

likely to be a part of the VACETS.

Finally, we must make our organization's activities and objectives known to

Vietnamese community via both electronic (e.g. emails, web) and paper
(publications)

means and to promote scholarly achievements accomplished by Vietnamese
scientists,

engineers, and professionals. I realize that this can be costly, but we can
have bi-monthly

or quarterly VACETS publication (e.g. Vietnamese Scientists, Engineers, and

Professionals), whose cost can be defrayed by advertising, just like the
journals of Nature

or Science.

How can this organization structure help VACETS?

The key to my above suggestions is that: VACETS is an active and a very
useful

organization for Vietnamese scientists, engineers, and professionals, and
technical

workers if and only if you are a part of the organization. Your contribution
to VACETS

to any considerable extent will be recognized by the president and the board
of directors;

and such recognition will definitely help your career advancement
significantly. In this

way, we encourage participation and contribution of existing members, and
potentially we

can attract a fresh influx of new memberships.

Once we have an executive plan for the future of VACETS in place, we are

executing it with all energy and enthusiasm, and the VACETS grows to a
reasonable size,

money in the forms of donation will come. People often donate their money
(1) for noble

causes and (2) to only viable organization that will recognize their
contribution publicly.

Therefore, in order to solve the financial problem, we must make VACETS a
viable and

active organization, whose name will be known to most Vietnamese people.
With respect

to membership dues, I do think that mandatory fee at this stage of the
organization will

serve no purpose, but will send VACETS back to its infancy (or possibly
beyond that),

simply because why people have to pay for something in order to get nothing
back from

VACETS at this stage. We can certainly institute voluntary membership dues,
and to

campaign to have people/business to sponsor for new memberships; and their
sponsorship

will be recognized appropriately by the organization. We can also campaign
to have

people/business to sponsor for the establishment of new local chapters.

These are my thoughts for making VACETS a better, self-sustained, and useful

organization to you, the members of the organization. Please do let me know
if you have

any more questions regarding the future of VACETS.

Sincerely yours

Dat William H. Nguyen

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dat H. Nguyen" <dnguyen at genetics.med.harvard.edu>
To: <hunguyen57 at cox.net>; <vacets at vacets.org>; "Cao, Chanh"
<ccao at ciena.com>; "Dat H. Nguyen" <dnguyen at hms.harvard.edu>
Sent: Monday, September 05, 2005 10:26 PM
Subject: Re: [Vacets] Questions for Candidates


> Dear anh Chanh, anh Luc and members of VACETS,
>
> Thank you for asking many question regarding the future of VACETS.
> Please find enclosed my letter with answers in responding to your
> questions in the pdf file format.  Thank you.
>
> Sincerely,
> --Dat
>
>
> Dat William H. Nguyen, Ph.D.
> Department of Genetics
> Harvard Medical School
> 77 Avenue Louis Pasteur
> Boston, MA 02115
> Tel: (617)-432-6512
> Email: dnguyen at hms.harvard.edu
> http://arep.med.harvard.edu/~dnguyen
>
>
>