(VOVworld) – Vietnamese French Professor Le Van Cuong turned down many offers to teach in the UK and Japan in order to return to Vietnam to establish the Vietnam Center of Research in Economics, Management and Environment (VCREME) in 2010. The achievements of his first students abroad have given evidence of Cuong’s efforts to train Vietnamese economists. Thuy Van reports:

Cuong is former Research Director of the French National Scientific Research Center and has been lecturing at many famous universities in the UK, the US, France, and Japan. Dozens of his research projects have been published in renowned scientific journals. Cuong is a prestigious expert among his friends and colleagues, many of whom are well-known professors. 2 years ago many professors from the US, Canada and Europe gathered at a ceremony in Paris to honor him. Cuong has inspired his students with his faith that Vietnamese education will train a great number of excellent economists. Cuong said: “I think the time has come. We have established a group of 157 economists, many of whom are doing their doctorates and the profiles of approximately 60 of them are very good. If these economists return to Vietnam even for part time work, we will be more than able to establish 2 high-quality economics schools in Vietnam. I dared not dreaming about this 10 years ago, but now it’s absolutely realizable.”

Cuong established his Vietnam Center of Research in Economics, Management and Environment (VCREME) to realize his dream of “Vietnamese people training their own economists”. He called on his colleagues and former Vietnamese students, who are teaching at many famous universities, to come to Vietnam and teach at his center. The idea is to equip Vietnamese students with necessary knowledge before they go abroad to study for an MA or a doctoral degree. The center now has more than 20 professors and lecturers from the US, the UK, France, Singapore, and Australia, half of whom are Vietnamese. After the students graduate from the center, Professor Cuong will use his reputation to introduce them to universities he has connections with. He shows each student their strong and weak points and gives them advice for proper training. Cuong said: “Based on their scores I will advise them which school they should apply to. In my letter of recommendation, I will say what each student is good at and what they still need to focus on. Some schools just need my letter of recommendation; others ask me to evaluate the recommended student based on certain criteria.”

Cuong said if Vietnamese students receive proper training they will succeed in their study abroad. Cuong’s center has sent approximately 30 students to study at high-quality universities in the US, the UK, Italy, and France. Some of them have graduated and returned to help Cuong at his center. Cuong hopes that his center will have a number of research projects reported in famous science journals and that it will be a meeting place for Vietnamese and foreign economists. Many of Cuong’s students said they were lucky to meet him and that he had changed their lives by showing them a brighter future.