From a girl not interested in science to an IT doctor

Nguyen Thanh Tam (born in 1987) chose natural sciences on the advice of his sister, and many years later gave up his career in Australia to return home to become a lecturer at FPT University.

After graduating with a bachelor's degree in Information Technology from Hanoi University, Ms. Tam continued her master's degree at James Cook University (Singapore) and her doctorate at Monash University (Australia). In early 2022, she returned to Vietnam and began her teaching career in Vietnam at FPT University.

The female doctor recounted that when she graduated from high school, she was quite confused, not knowing what major to study. At that time, her sister advised her about information technology with the belief that this industry had great potential, and could be applied in many other areas of life.

Listening to her sister, from a girl who was not too interested in natural sciences, the female student at that time began to develop a passion for information technology. Ms. Tam shared that at that time, information technology was not popular, and the people studying and working there were mainly men. However, her personality is quite strong, so when she came into contact with a profession that was mostly men like that, she was not afraid.

"Many people often call women the 'weaker sex', but for me, no one should be put in a weak position from the start. When you have passion and ability, no one is weak, everyone is equally strong," she affirmed.

After graduating, despite being married and having children, she was still determined to pursue her studies. She studied abroad in Singapore and Australia alone and seized every opportunity that came her way. With the doctoral program, Dr. Tam received a full scholarship, including tuition and living expenses, when she achieved excellent results in her master's degree.

According to Ms. Thanh Tam, the most difficult thing about studying abroad is being away from family, having to take care of everything on your own and the culture shock.

"However, family is not a barrier but a motivation for me to try. I asked myself, if I only had the ability and average income, could I help my children get into good schools? It's the same everywhere, when they have higher degrees and better jobs, parents can take better care of their children's future," she added.

Dr. Nguyen Thanh Tam studied for his master's and doctorate degrees in Singapore and Australia. Photo: Provided by the character — Dr. Nguyen Thanh Tam studied for his master's and doctorate degrees in Singapore and Australia. Photo: *Provided by the character*

The first years of her PhD coincided with the global outbreak of Covid-19. Everything was online. Having already been interested in learner data, she took advantage of this context and conducted many research projects to increase connectivity in the education sector.

To date, she has participated in three research topics and many articles published in international scientific journals, mainly on the application of information technology in educational development.

In addition to her research work, the female doctor born in 1987 started working as a teaching assistant at Monash University from her second year of her PhD to gain more experience and accumulate skills. From here, she discovered her passion for education.

After four years of teaching at Monash University, Dr. Tam decided to return to Vietnam to be closer to her family and to apply what she had learned to develop education in the country. When she first returned home, she considered working between two units and decided to choose FPT University. Because, before studying abroad, she had worked for a member company of FPT Corporation and found the environment dynamic and creative.

After a period of working with FPT University, she decided to stay with the school when she realized that her colleagues were friendly, always ready to help each other, the environment was open, fostered creativity, and encouraged personal development. At the same time, the school is located in the ecosystem of a technology corporation. The female doctor can take advantage of this to continue to develop herself.

Dr. Thanh Tam shared that FPT University has many support policies for PhDs to promote scientific research. The unit has support and reward mechanisms for lecturers, lecturers - researchers with outstanding scientific research achievements. The school also provides funding of up to 100 million VND for each school-level research topic; rewards of 20-100 million VND for each research work published in scientific journals in the ISI/Scopus category...

Besides, she was also impressed with FPT students. Most of them are active and open-minded. The female doctor shared that during her teaching in Australia, she also encountered some situations of gender bias. Students tend to trust male lecturers more because, perhaps because their experience in the industry is not large enough, they often have a general perspective that this industry is mostly worked by men.

Meanwhile, FPT University promotes creativity so that each lecturer can maximize their personal potential in the teaching process. Each person can apply their own teaching methods. Therefore, during class, FPT students are willing to share and discuss so that lecturers can evaluate the effectiveness of their proposed methods.

In the near future, Dr. Thanh Tam's short-term goal is to improve and update her knowledge more to be able to teach in many subject groups. After having a more solid foundation, she wants to do parallel teaching and research on new technologies in the field of education.

"I always focus on the goal of improving the learning experience for students. FPT has many learning support systems. From there, I can collect a lot of student learning data, use it and adjust it. This greatly serves my research goals," she added about her long-term goal.

Nhat Le

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