Cal State Fullerton’s College of Business and Economics has led the way this spring in solidifying international partnerships by sending a high-level delegation including Dean Sri Sundaram and the OCIE SBDC Network Regional Director Mike Daniel to Vietnam for meetings with business and educational leaders, factory tours, and cultural experiences. The visit was made possible by OCIE SBDC and through the support of Tam Nguyen ’05 and his sister, Linh Nguyen ’98 ’17, who are among the college’s strongest links to the Orange County Vietnamese community.

“The College of Business and Economics has a mission to create a positive societal impact in the region,” said Dean Sundaram. “This trade mission to Vietnam is a great example of how we do it. Tam was an integral part of coordinating the on-ground logistics and making possible local connections such as the visit to the Foreign Trade University.”

The tour began in Ho Chi Minh City, where the dean and members of the trade mission, took part in an exclusive market trends briefing by the U.S. Commercial Service at the American Center – Diamond Plaza. The group also saw Vietnamese manufacturing innovation and supply chain firsthand by visiting LOTA, which manufacturers plumbing products.

Traveling about 1,000 miles to the south, the Cal State Fullerton group then visited Hanoi. Highlights there included exploring FPT Corporation, the country’s largest IT services company, and FPT University’s Hanoi campus. In the future, Cal State Fullerton hopes to expand reciprocal ties with academic counterparts in Vietnam, including study abroad opportunities, exchange students and collaborative faculty research.

ASSA ABLOY, the locks and digital security products company where Dean’s Advisory Board chair Tim Goff ’93 is a senior vice president, has a manufacturing plant in Vietnam. Goff led his fellow Business Titans on a tour of the plant, providing a visual understanding of the close ties between Southern California and economies across the Pacific Rim.

It wasn’t all business for the Titans who visited Vietnam in March. Cultural experiences included exploring Hanoi’s Old Quarter, which includes local markets, delicious traditional cuisine, and a history from ancient kingdoms to French colonial rule to the Vietnam War and after. The final leg of the trip was a boat tour on Ha Long Bay, a UNESCO World Heritage Site acclaimed for rain forest-topped towering limestone islands.

The visit to Vietnam achieved several major goals for Cal State Fullerton and its business college. First, it enabled the SBDC, one of the college’s major community-focused small business units, to better understand the economic potential and trade opportunities in Southeast Asia, thus facilitating more globally focused advising for business concepts incubated in Orange County. Second, members of the trade mission gained a broader worldview of how geopolitics influences businesses globally. And thirdly, the visit further solidified the college’s stature as the business education hub of the West Coast, with a vision that extends far beyond Orange County to the far reaches of the world.

“The trade mission to Vietnam was an amazing opportunity for our local Orange County businesses to understand how they can be more competitive across the world,” said Mike Daniel ’99, head of the CSUF chapter of the SBDC. “We formed such strong relationships with each member of this delegation, not only professionally, but personally as well.”

For more on the impact that the College of Business and Economics is having, both in Orange County and around the world, read more of our articles on community engagement.