In 2008, Huyen Chau was among the top performing graduates from the very first Bachelor of Commerce offered at RMIT Vietnam’s Hanoi campus.
Supporting individual development
In primary school, she had been a painfully shy girl and did nothing but study, continuing this habit into her senior years.
After Chau finished high school, her family knew it was important to enrol her in an international environment, in the hope that it would encourage her to become more open-minded, confident, and sociable.
At RMIT Vietnam, where everyone’s perspectives are equally heard, and lecturers are open to all opinions, Chau had the opportunity to change her mindset.
Reflecting back on one particular lecture, Chau recalls being too shy to ask a question, preferring to raise it with the lecturer in private. On receiving her question the lecturer asked her one of his own: “Your question is very interesting; why didn’t you ask it during the class?”
“I was afraid of asking a stupid question,” was Chau’s response.
“School is the only place where you can make mistakes and then fix them”, the lecturer replied. “So make as many mistakes as you can now and learn as much as you can.”
It was an exchange that changed Chau’s university experience forever. From that moment she became motivated to do whatever she wanted, and argue for whatever she believed in.
It was an improved attitude that brought her immediate success. In December 2006, Chau won the Student Leadership Award at RMIT Vietnam, and following this, some years later, Chau and her team won the Judges' Award for Outstanding Achievement in an RMIT Business Plan Competition in Melbourne in October 2011.