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Cal State Fullerton Vibe Event Appealing to Local Vietnamese

Orange County’s Vietnamese community is getting good vibes from California State University, Fullerton.

This weekend, the university plans to host a three-day business and cultural event dubbed Vibe, for Vietnamese International Bridging Expo, as part of Cal State Fullerton’s 50-year anniversary celebration.

Vibe is the university’s latest bid to garner support from fast-growing ethnic communities by bolstering its image as a culturally diverse school.

Cal State Fullerton and corporate sponsors such as Bank of America Corp., Viet Bao Daily News, Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and Southern California Edison are spending roughly $100,000 on the event, which will include business networking, an awards gala, entertainment, food and transportation from Little Saigon to CSUF. It’s free to the public.

To attract Vietnamese business owners, community leaders and others, CSUF spent the past few months promoting Vibe through Vietnamese-language television, radio and newspapers. The university even placed a billboard on the corner of Bolsa Avenue and Brookhurst Street, the busiest intersection in Little Saigon, to raise awareness for the program.

“We’re trying to get the word out about this event,” said Tracy Pham, event director. “Cal State Fullerton has always reached out to the local Vietnamese community but this will be the first time the university has ever done anything on this scale.”

Vibe is part of the efforts that CSUF has made in recent years to reach out to the local Vietnamese community, which totaled almost 200,000 people in the 2000 Census. Much of that population lives or owns businesses in Little Saigon, which straddles Westminster, Garden Grove, Fountain Valley, Santa Ana and Huntington Beach.

That makes the area a natural target for the university’s outreach and fundraising efforts, said Tam Nguyen, vice president of membership and marketing for CSUF’s alumni association and chief executive of Advance Beauty College Inc., a nail, cosmetology and massage therapy school in Garden Grove.

In addition to raising awareness among businesses, Nguyen said CSUF is garnering more Vietnamese students who are attracted to the university because it’s local and affordable.

“The university is already on their radar but Vibe will definitely help make that relationship stronger,” Nguyen said.

There are about 2,150 Vietnamese students currently enrolled at CSUF. That’s about 1% of the school’s 35,000 or so students. About 42% of Vietnamese students are business majors there.

Vibe and other events geared toward the Vietnamese community should also help the university attract donations from Little Saigon’s 3,500 or so Vietnamese-owned businesses as it tries to grow its meager endowment fund, Nguyen said.

The endowment fund is more than $18 million, much lower than neighboring universities. The school’s most recent donations include $4.5 million from Steven Mihaylo for the College of Business and Economics’ new business school building and $4.5 million from Dan Black for the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics.

The school’s 50th anniversary celebration is a marketing strategy to attract more donations and to show how far along the university has come.

“Cal State Fullerton recognizes that it’s important to grow by reaching out to local groups and that includes our ethnic communities,” Nguyen said. “That includes the Vietnamese community, which has a very large economic impact.”

The university’s involvement with the Asian group stretches back to the 1960s before the fall of Saigon, according to Paula Selleck, news director for CSUF’s public affairs.

CSUF hosted South Vietnamese students under the auspices of the State Department’s Agency for International Development.

Then in 1967, the campus launched a leadership scholarship program for Vietnamese students who lived in student dormitories and majored in economics, engineering, geography, chemistry or sociology.

In 2005, CSUF was the organizer of a California State University system forum in Garden Grove with Vietnamese-American business and civic leaders and educators to discuss how the university system could further meet the needs of this population.

Most recently, the university sponsored the launch of a Smithsonian exhibit called “Exit Saigon, Enter Little Saigon” at the VietArt Center in Garden Grove. The exhibit, which chronicles the Vietnamese-American experience since 1975, is on display through Dec. 2.

CSUF offers six courses in Vietnamese language and culture at the university’s main campus and its satellite campus in Garden Grove.

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