As Vietnam's workforce needs evolve, graduates must collaborate and problem-solve through ever more complex engineering challenges. With traditional curricula leaving students unprepared for dynamic teamwork, Dr. Pham Tran Bich Thuan, Deputy Head of Academic Affairs, and Dr. Nguyen Huy Phuc, Head of Testing and Quality Assurance at the Industrial University of Ho Chi Minh City (IUH), took ownership of a BUILD-IT-initiated faculty development program and trained forty master teachers within two months. Through their tireless efforts, Drs. Thuan and Phuc are rapidly building their peers' capacity to infuse soft skills learning components and modern teaching methodology into their curricula and prepare graduates for collaborative careers.
As former HEEAP participants, Drs.Thuan and Phuc have long been interested in bringing new teaching methods to their students. In 2016, They traveled to Arizona State University for a six-week seminar on integrating the latest active learning pedagogies into their courses. After intensive discussions, projects, and critiques, they returned to Vietnam motivated to localize and share the modern teaching pedagogies they learned at ASU. Soon they joined the Certified Facilitator and Master Teacher Training Program (CFT/MTT) to develop a faculty training program that guides their peers to design lessons that build students' knowledge and capabilites through an active, problem-based learning appraoch and hone workforce ready skills.