While each new school year brings its challenges and new experiences, for Dr. Benjamin N. Muego, a
Bowling Green State University professor of political science and Asian studies, fall 2009 promises to
be especially remarkable. He will be traveling to Vietnam as the first U.S. faculty member to teach at
the Hanoi University of Education.
Through the end of January 2010, Muego will teach American government, international relations, and
methodology, as well as conduct a seminar for HUE faculty and staff on the concept of shared governance
in American higher education. It will be a learning experience for him as well, in which he will study
the Vietnamese language along with pursuing his own research on military and security issues in the
region.
It is not the first time Muego has made a groundbreaking trip to the Southeast Asian nation. In 1993, he
was part of a People to People Citizen Ambassador Program delegation to Vietnam-the first visit by
American academics allowed by the Vietnamese government after the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. The
group of 35 international-relations faculty from around the United States met with officials at seven
institutions, including HUE, which was then called Hanoi National Pedagogical University.
Muego stayed in close communication over the years with the former director of HUE’s Office of
International Relations, Dr. Vu Van Thanh, and the dean of the geography college, Dr. Nguyen Viet Thinh,
who is now the president of HUE and a member of Vietnam’s National Assembly. During that first visit,
Thanh suggested that to really develop a true and meaningful understanding of the country, Muego should
organize a field study with students and other faculty.
"Bowling Green thus became the first American university to have an organized and structured
relationship with a Vietnamese university," Muego said. The trips, begun in 1995, have been
conducted five times and averaged from 10-15 graduate and undergraduate students from leading
institutions all over the United States.
A number of HUE administrators and faculty have visited BGSU since 2000. "Four years ago, a group
from HUE and the Vietnamese Ministry of Education and Training met with former president Sidney Ribeau
and other BGSU officials to learn about the financial structure of Bowling Green," Muego said.
"BGSU represented all U.S. universities to them as they are moving away from the Soviet to the
American model of higher education. It’s a great opportunity for Bowling Green to make an impact
there."
In welcoming Muego to HUE, Thinh wrote, "We do hope that this exchange will be the continuation of
the relationship between our two universities. There has been a growing need for institutions with
common interests to share their expertise, particularly with regard to bridging the gap between theory
and practice."
The author of three books and numerous articles on security and political issues in Southeast Asia, Muego
is also an adjunct professor of Southeast Asia Studies at Ohio University’s Center for Southeast Asian
Studies; an adjunct professor of Southeast Asia Studies at the School of Professional and Area Studies
of the U.S. Foreign Service Institute (which recognized him with its Distinguished Adjunct Faculty Award
in 1997-98), and an adjunct professor of security assistance management at the U.S. Defense Institute of
Security Assistance Management. He was an East-West Center Fellow in 1990-91 and is the current
president of the Fulbright Association of Northeast Ohio.