Elisabeth Hughes When Khoi Dinh To, a native of Vietnam, decided to study in the U.S. he had no contacts here, so he looked at the U.S. News and World Report’s annual rankings and applied to several universities. UGA was the first to offer him a place in its doctoral program and he took it. He believed that, “not only would a degree from the IHE afford me great job opportunities, but I could work with Drs. Sheila Slaughter and Jim Hearn on NSF projects, and the weather was similar to that of Saigon!” Khoi earned a B.A. in international business from the Foreign Trade University in Saigon, and a dual MBA from the Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok, Thailand and L’Ecole Superieure de Commerce de Paris, France. In addition, he went through a training program at the Korea Stock Exchange in Seoul sponsored by the Korea International Cooperation Agency and the State Securities Commission of Vietnam. Khoi also spent four years as the finance controller at the Fulbright Economics Teaching Program in Saigon, which is funded by the U.S. Department of State through the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He enjoyed the size of the IHE’s program, which “guarantees a lot of individual attention from faculty and staff and plenty of interaction outside the classroom”. Khoi wanted to “live as a native” and tried every kind of American food, while staying true to his roots and traveling frequently to Atlanta’s Vietnamese restaurants. Khoi’s graduate assistantships at the IHE were spent conducting data analysis on various NSF projects. His dissertation, directed by Dr. James Hearn, was on how faculty’s compensation, research expenditures, and time allocations influence the degree production processes of universities at the STEM field level and the departmental level. Khoi demonstrated the same diligence when applying for jobs that he had practiced when looking for higher education programs. It paid off, and he is currently an institutional research analyst in the Office of Institutional Research and Assessment at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa. Type of News/Audience: Alumni 2011 IHE Report
