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Vietnam’s president thanks the School of Business and Leadership professor

McCullough to retire from University of Puget Sound and continue work in Asia


TACOMA, Wash. – Professor Jim McCullough was recently thanked in person by President of Vietnam Truong Tan Sang for his contributions to education and business in the Southeast Asian republic.

It all began this summer when McCullough learned that after nearly 20 years of training small businesses and entrepreneurs in Vietnam, he was to be presented with the Medal for Lifetime Contribution to Education by Vietnam’s minister of education at a November ceremony in Hanoi.

The Jewett Distinguished Professor of International Business at University of Puget Sound flew to Vietnam and on November 19, a national holiday known as Teachers’ Day in Vietnam, McCullough was presented with the medal. The ceremony was attended by representatives from the Ministry of Education, American Embassy, and The National Economics University of Hanoi (NEU), where McCullough has taught.

A day later he met Vietnam’s President Truong Tan Sang on the NEU campus and was thanked for all the work he had done to build links between America and Vietnam, and to help local students and entrepreneurs adapt to a changing world.

“It was a fantastic honor and a very moving experience,” said McCullough. “I was notified by the NEU that I would receive the medal, but it was not until the last moment that I learned I would meet the president. He was an impressive, but unassuming guy, who used to teach at a college himself. Puget Sound was named too, and, of course, I had to tell them how to pronounce ‘Puget.’”

McCullough first started working in Hanoi in 1992, training small businesses and entrepreneurs with the support of the Thai government. At the time there was very limited international cooperation between Vietnamese and American universities, and there were no English-language programs at Vietnam’s universities.

In 1997 McCullough led the creation of a joint Master of Business Administration degree offered by Washington State University and NEU. By 2005 the program had trained more than 40 Vietnamese business leaders who studied in the United States, and more than 100 others who studied in Vietnam.

In 2009 and 2010 McCullough took groups of Puget Sound students to work with the NEU students as part of a study tour. McCullough teaches regularly in the international bachelor’s degree program at NEU’s International School of Management and Economics, and in 2010 he spent six months on sabbatical there. He also teaches global marketing and international business in NEU’s English-language business programs.

McCullough will retire from Puget Sound on Dec. 31, 2011. He will move to Tucson, Ariz., and fly regularly to Southeast Asia to continue teaching graduate students at Silpakorn University and Prince of Songkla University in Bangkok, Thailand, as well as business students at NEU in Hanoi.

“I enjoy having graduate students,” McCullough said. “My closest collaborator in these activities at NEU is Professor Phan Thuy Chi, who is the mother of Puget Sound economics graduate Linh Hoang ’07. So Puget Sound is never far from my mind. And though I will miss the school, my ties here, through my former students and colleagues, will continue for a long time to come.”

To read Jim McCullough’s comments about Teachers Day on a Vietnamese website: http://www.vietnamica.net/dr-j-mcculloughs-words-about-vietnamese-students/

Photos on page: Top right: The Bangkok ceremony awarding medals of education on Teachers' Day. Above left: President of Vietnam Truong Tan Sang; Above right: Jim McCullough giving a talk on Teachers' Day in Bangkok.

Photos of Jim McCullough  can be downloaded from: www.pugetsound.edu/pressphotos

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