HoC: Professor Ava Nguyen
Humans of Chaffey
Photo of: Professor Ava Nguyen
Professor Ava Nguyen has been teaching at Chaffey for five years in the communications department at the Fontana location. She is originally from Saigon, Vietnam and immigrated here as a child. Growing up, she lived in various areas of Los Angeles and Orange County; she soon picked up Spanish as a second language and English as a third language. She is very fond of her work in family communications as it connects: culture, languages and identity. Before she landed on wanting to be a family communications teacher, she dipped her toes into many different fields.
Ava Nguyen explains that her high school experience was a quiet one and mainly focused on taking AP classes. Growing up, she lived in a single-mother household and did not have much money during her childhood. So, she was always worried about affording college and in order to help her future self, she started taking AP classes to obtain college credit. This helped her push through college when the time came. She stated:
“Spending more time on my AP classes meant spending less money in college."
When she graduated, she received a full ride to the California State University of Long Beach and graduated when she was only 20 years-old with her first Bachelor of Arts degree. She states that she enjoyed her time at California State University Long Beach because of the culture and the classroom setting. Her favorite aspect being the small classrooms and the chance to know her professors and know that they would have time for her. She explains:
“I felt like I was getting my bang for my buck because of these personal classroom settings where my largest class would be 40 people at most.”
Her first degree was based in journalism and got work right out of college at KTLA Channel 5 morning news. She discovered that she hated her job and the position she was in and described it as one of the worst times in her life. Nguyen knew she liked communication, but she did not like being the one to do the communicating. She left KTLA, and luckily enough she still had her scholarship and did the one thing she knew to do in her current situation: go back to school. For her second round of college, she received her Bachelor of Arts degree in communications and once she graduated, she tried getting into business but soon figured that she hated it. Ava Nyguen states:
“I did not know what to do. So, I went to grad school.”
During her time in grad school, she learned more about herself and what she wanted to do. Her professors in grad school helped her realize that she loved teaching, and not only did they help her realize she loved teaching; but they also helped her realize the type of teacher she wanted to be. Ava Nguyen says these professors were her models on how to build relationships with her future students and humanize a classroom. She goes on to tell that this was the first time in a long time where she felt that she actually learned something and where everything just stuck with her.
After finding her way at grad school, Professor Ava Nguyen started teaching between California State University Long Beach and the University of California Los Angeles before getting hired full time at Chaffey. Nguyen enjoyed her time at these universities but knew she wanted more of a personal connection with her students. She knew she could not find that at the University of California Los Angeles because of the large classroom setting. During her time at Chaffey, she has never taught online until the COVID-19 pandemic hit. She states it took time to get adjusted because she truly enjoyed the face to face she gets to have with her students. She goes on to tell how she has felt at a standstill with her career because of the pandemic saying that she is a part of a lot of communities and within her communities, she would attend conferences to continue to learn and grow as not only a teacher but person. Due to the cancellation of these types of events, she advises her future self to continue to learn and form different ways to grow no matter what the restraints are. Nguyen calls herself a hyperactive person, so the pandemic has caused her to feel like she hasn’t been doing enough, but this did not stop her from learning and coming up with new ways to be a better teacher. She has been able to use YouTube and learn from different people online how to better herself and her teaching style.
Closing off the interview, she tells what type of advice she would give her younger self, she states:
“Trust what your instincts are and not your gut. I say instincts because I feel like gut is more emotional and instincts are built-in.”
She says this would have saved her a lot of time and would have made her not go into business or journalism because she knew then that she did not like it but it made money so that is why she chose it.
Nguyen says she is happy that she got to jump around from job to job and explore the different fields that she did because then she would have not learned that teaching was the job for her. She says that Millennials and Gen Z get a lot of criticism for job-hopping but she says to ignore it because if we do not explore our interests and skills, we may be stuck somewhere we hate and will eventually take a toll on our mental health. Try new things and do not let yourself talk your way out of things because you never know where it may lead you, she says as we wrap up the interview.
Professor Ava Nguyen is a prime example of what makes Chaffey great. She is a hardworking individual who loves to connect with her students and understands the struggles that is faced in everyday lives. She comes from a diverse upbringing and uses that to help her students interact in the classroom whether that be online or in-person. Family communications brings that together and creates an environment for not only her to thrive in, but also her students. By doing what she loves and by being a great professor, she shows what it means to be a true Panther.