(TVU) – Since the successful implementation of the Vietnam – Canada Community College Project (2001 – 2006), Tra Vinh University (TVU) has continued to pursue the mission of “Bringing quality learning opportunities to community”, acting according to the core values of “Devotion – Transparency – Creativity – Friendliness” towards a smart green campus in the Mekong region.
To provide quality human resources for the development of the Mekong Delta and Vietnam, Tra Vinh University (TVU) provides diverse programs and disciplines aiming to support the business community and contribute to the socio-economic development in the region.
Up to the present time in 2022, TVU offers 51 undergraduate programs, 27 master programs, 10 doctoral programs, and 05 specialist level 1 programs including Internal Medicine, Surgery, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Pediatrics, and Odonto-Stomatology.
TVU offers programs in the fields of agriculture and aquaculture; engineering and technology; economics and law; the health sciences; foreign languages; southern Khmer language, culture and arts; applied chemistry; education; public management and office administration; tourism and restaurants and hotel management; biotechnology -and the environment; and basic sciences.
Tra Vinh university pays special attention to improving international integration by pursuing research and international cooperation activities and by meeting quality assurance requirements of international organizations for standardization of training programs.
Up to now, TVU has proven to be one of the top universities in the Mekong Delta by achieving accreditation from international standards organizations like AUN-QA, FIBAA, and ABET. 13 programs have been accredited in total. 05 programs accredited by AUN-QA include agriculture, aquaculture, animal husbandry; nursing, and Khmer language. In addition, 07 programs have achieved FIBAA accreditation, including Business Administration, Economics, Law, Accounting, Finance-Banking, Masters of Business Administration, and Masters of Economic Management. The Information Technology program within the School of Engineering and Technology has also been accredited by ABET standards. TVU’s goal is to continue to achieve relevant international accreditation for all its programs.
Since 2006, TVU is the first unit in the province to use the ISO 9001-2000 quality inspection system as a tool for quality management, and it has since undergone the ISO 9001-2008 and ISO 9001-2015 versions. In 2013, TVU was the first in the country to sign the Talloires Declaration, which committed to creating a sustainable green university. The UI GreenMetric has consistently ranked among the top 200 sustainable, environmentally friendly green universities. The World’s Universities with Real Impacts (WURI) has announced that Tra Vinh University was ranked 62nd in the Top 100 of the WURI Ranking 2022 compared to 2021). In addition, TVU was ranked 15th in the Top 50 for the value of entrepreneurship and innovation, 47th for cooperation and international student exchange, and opportunities for student exchange between foreign educational institutions, and was ranked 22nd out of 50 in the world for open connectivity, digital transformation, and integrated applications.
TVU has expanded its collaboration with over 90 international partners, institutes, and schools in the areas of training cooperation, student exchange, lecturer exchange, volunteering, and collaboration in the implementation of sponsored projects, applied research, and scholarship funding. TVU is a member of the CDIO (Conceive – Design – Implement – Operate), which promotes an educational framework to improve the quality of education in engineering universities around the world. TVU is also the 151st member of the Community Colleges Association of Canada, now known as the Association of Colleges and Institutes of Canada (CICan), and a founding member of the Vietnam Association of Community Colleges (VACC).
TVU is also a place for forming new ideas in scientific research and business start-ups. It is a place for connecting students with enterprises. And it is a place for opening up employment opportunities for students. TVU has many spaces that foster creativity and innovation among students and lecturers, including maker-spaces, workshops, and an incubation center for small- and medium-sized businesses. It also supports many research and professional groups, including an IEEE Student Chapter at TVU, student farmer associations, language clubs and an environmental club. Such spaces and groups help to transfer scientific research and technology into communities, and they help students further apply their knowledge and skills in authentic contexts outside of the classroom.
TVU has hundreds of scientific research topics, among which are of great international significance, such as compiling and using 84,000-word bilingual dictionaries in Vietnamese and Khmer. The first and only Vietnamese-Khmer and Khmer-Vietnamese bilingualism in Vietnam is highly valued and holds special significance in the friendship relationship between Vietnam and Cambodia. Many national and ministerial-level topics have been discussed, including culture in sustainable development in the Southwest region, conservation and promotion of Khmer folk music cultural values, and basic and urgent community issues. Currently, the Khmer ethnic community in Vietnam is helping to build and propose policies to promote sustainable development for the Mekong Delta’s ethnic communities.
TVU soon expanded its start-up fund, scientific research fund, and students and lecturers to develop ideas and research to create good community-oriented products such as successfully raising disease-free broodstock black tiger shrimp and culturing; wax coconut embryos – continuing to research waxy coconut tissue; successfully culturing cordyceps; developing drought-resistant rice varieties; manufacturing equipment to determine the percentage of wax in coconuts; manufacturing automatic body temperature measurement machine, 3D printer, electric motorcycle, CNC milling machine; applying IoT technology to rice fields, etc.
TVU has developed a model of a pedagogical practice school in a university with multiple levels of education from Kindergarten to Primary School, Middle School to High School, and the School of Southern Khmer Language, Culture, and Arts, with numerous policies aimed at learners, training human resources for the development of ethnic communities.
TVU also has infrastructure that supports learners, including an always open learning resource center that has spacious, clean, cool, and comfortable spaces and computers for students to use. The Learning Resource Center keeps stores many educational resources including digitalized books and magazines and is equipped with Internet-connected computer systems, which are completely free of charge for learners. Finally, TVU has a green, clean, beautiful, comfortable, and safe dormitory located on the campus that can house 3,500 students where students can live, study, and relax in their shared accommodations.
TVU continues to implement many policies and practices to support students. For example, this includes 100% tuition fee waivers for students who study education and traditional music. It includes incentive scholarships for female students who study engineering and technology that amount to 50% of tuition fees for the whole program. And it includes scholarship awards from Tra Vinh University and external donors for students who have financial issues and good GPAs. Apart from this, students are given support from loans as well as preferential policies for poor, ethnic minorities, and disadvantaged students.
More than 20 years of advancing the mission with the ambition to achieve miracles, contributing to the development of the province, the Mekong Delta, and the country as a whole. Now, a new chapter in TVU’s development history has been beginning, with the desire to reach out to the world, with the goal of becoming a smart green university in the Mekong region, while integrating international training quality, connecting and sharing more values on the journey to pursue the mission of “Bringing quality learning opportunities to community” in the next era”. – shared Assoc. Prof. Dr. Pham Tiet Khanh, Chairman of the TVU Council.
By TD
