Alumn Profiles

My goal to pursue the Interdisciplinary Studies Field major at UC Berkeley resulted from my interest to better understand public health issues through an interdisciplinary angle. As a community college transfer student, I initially had the intention to declare myself a sociology major, but ultimately felt that taking courses in only one department while being at such a great university would be too limiting. In my junior year at UC Berkeley, therefore, I joined the ISF major, which in retrospective has served me very well in the pursuit of my career goals.

I titled my area of concentration “Health and Illness in the Contemporary World”, and focused on public health, nutritional sciences and ethnic studies. My thesis dealt with infant mortality in the United States, looking at its occurrence among different ethnic groups. I defined infant mortality, collected relevant data, and made recommendations on how to improve the US health care system to more effectively fight infant mortality. My research substantially benefited from insights that I gained when completing, prior to my senior year at Cal, a summer internship at the Henry Ford Health System-Department of Emergency in Detroit. As an intern, I attended various health trainings that dealt with infant mortality in the Flint and Detroit areas.

After graduation, my senior thesis project helped me obtain a position as Health Educator in the Maternal Child and Adolescent Health Department at the Stanislaus County Health Services Agency. When I joined the agency, its Department of Public Health was undertaking a local study to better understand infant mortality. I became actively involved in this project by leading focus groups and assisting with the research. My thesis gave me the confidence and knowledge needed to thrive in this position. It also helped me to get into graduate school.

Currently, I am a second semester student in the MBA program in Health Administration and Pharmaceutical Management at the University of Colorado, Denver. My career goal is to become a hospital administrator. My ISF degree taught me to value interdisciplinary thinking, which in turn has given me a comparative advantage as I strive to excel in the ever-changing field of health care.

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As an aspiring writer entering UC Berkeley in 1996, my diverse set of interests did not neatly fall into any one department.

Although literature seemed the logical choice, I could not commit to the English major. The study of literature for the sake of studying literature, i.e. academic study of a novel’s structure, did not appeal to me. Nor was I interested in strictly studying the Western Canon. Then I took an African American Studies course with the late VéVé Clark, whose work on diasporic consciousness proved influential. Through her, I was able to see literature as a means to understand the various mechanisms of colonialism and imperialism. Hooked, I took relevant courses wherever I could find them—in AAS, Women’s Studies, Comparative Literature, French and Film. I decided to major in ISF, designing a concentration on Diaspora and National Identity.

As a first-generation Cambodian American, I also had a personal stake in this subject. I was well aware of the effects and instability that French colonialism and US military intervention brought directly to my parents’ lives. Their generation’s profound dislocation propelled me as a teenager to critique American history and culture via stories of injustice in the US, as well as abroad. The 1992 Los Angeles riots, the first Gulf War, and the passing of anti-immigration laws in California were among the events galvanized my anger against institutional racism. Majoring in ISF allowed me to return to the issues of otherness and exploitation through a rigorous structural inquiry.

My thesis explored the themes of education and exile in late twentieth century Caribbean and Caribbean American literature. I was intrigued by the idea of the body as a metaphor for domination, a container of memory and history, objectified and overseen by institutions vis-à-vis the notion of an ideal national citizen.

Since graduation, I have developed a writing practice of non-academic work concerned with the issues explored in my studies: race and class; political inscription on intimate space; the impact of macro (historical/global) events on micro (everyday/domestic) space; and global movements of people and resources. My poems and essays have been published in various magazines and anthologies, including From Totems to Hip-Hop, Asian American X, and Oakland’s Neighborhoods. My videos and installations have been shown internationally.

For the last 3 years, I have been living and writing in a village on the west coast of Ireland, where I have been privileged to witness the immense societal and cultural changes Ireland is undergoing in the wake of an economic boom known as the Celtic Tiger. Currently, I am writing my first novel while also applying for Graduate School to obtain a Masters degree in diaspora studies.