Faculty member runs for office in November

By Molly Haupt
Online Forty-Niner
Contributing Writer

Cal State Long Beach's Dr. Kim Oanh Nguyen-Lam is hoping to add another accomplishment to her resume as she campaigns for a position with the Garden Grove Unified School District Board of Education on the Nov. 2 election.

The board is a five member panel with only three available positions and eight candidates running.

Nguyen-Lam's education background consists of a B.A. in psychology from CSULB, 1980, a M.A. in education psychology from the United States International University, 1983, a M.A. in education administration from Pepperdine University, 1990 and a Ph.D. in transformative learning from the California Institute of Integral Studies, 2002, according to her campaign Web site.

She has been with the Center for Language Minority Education and Research (CLMER) at CSULB since 1993 and currently serves as its interim executive director.

The CLMER center promotes professional and leadership development and education equality for minorities and immigrant students and families.

The center is involved with many services, projects and research initiatives to promote excellence and justice in schools and society, with a focus on underprivileged and underrepresented children, families and communities.

Dr. Nguyen-Lam is also the project director for many other local developments that are impacting language and administrative education such as the Highly Qualified Minority Teacher Preparation Project, which she has directed since 2002.

She is an active community volunteer who works with all ages, presiding over the La Quinta High School Parent-Teacher-Staff-Student-Organization, and has been an organizer and instructor for adult ESL classes, as well as pre-school classes for Holy Spirit Church in Fountain Valley.

"Since I moved here from Vietnam as a child, Dr. Nguyen-Lam has been my teacher and has made a wonderful impact,"  said Kelly Loan, a CSULB graduate and current grad student with the BLAD credential program on campus. "She has related to me on a personal level from grade school up to graduate school.  She knows how to identify with all ages and is an excellent candidate for this position."

Aside from her extensive educational background, professional and administrative experience and a community activist, Nguyen-Lam has communicative competence in English, Spanish and Vietnamese.

"I see my role as an educator like a bridge to connect students, families, schools and communities together to create improvement and equality," Nguyen-Lam said.

She is an Orange County resident with children who attended schools in the district, and she hopes to become a part of the board to improve the areas that she sees problems, such as discrimination and the schools and communities lack of connection.

"That disconnection is my motivation," she said.

If elected, Nguyen-Lam will pursue educational achievement to excel beyond raising standardized test scores and provide students with opportunities to further develop their communicative and competency skills, as noted on her Web site.

"The school board position requires knowledge of education in a broad perspective," said Duc Nguyen, a graduate of CSULB, and Nguyen-Lam's volunteer campaign manager. "Dr. Nguyen-Lam has been involved with education for 25 years and also acts as an advisor to the state education.   She has shown that she has the ability to break language barriers to work with other communities.  Putting these all together is proof that Kim Oanh Nguyen-Lam is the right person for the job."