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Libby Vo’s Fulbright
fellowship brings her back to Vietnam for
a project that encompasses the many passions of an extraordinary
young woman.
By Maria Healy
 When
Libby Vo ’04 was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship at the
end of her final year at Holy Cross, the threads of life, education
and faith came together in an extraordinary way. She won the
Fulbright with a proposal to travel back to her native Vietnam
and study the effects of disabled children on Vietnamese families—particularly
the legacy of birth defects left behind by Agent Orange, a
defoliant utilized by the U.S. military during the Vietnam
War.
Vo, one of a 1,000 graduating college students across
the country to win the prestigious grant to study abroad
for the 2004-05 academic year, was born in Vietnam, but
her parents fled the country when she was two years old.
She grew up in Worcester; her two younger brothers were
born in the United States, one of whom had a congenital
heart disease at birth that triggered developmental disabilities.
Vo brings a range of perspectives to the fieldwork and
research she is doing; including a background in psychology,
biology and anthropology—as well as personal experiences
as a sister, a daughter of immigrants, and a Buddhist student
of Jesuits.
“For the Fulbright application I had to draw upon
family experiences and my experiences as a Buddhist at
a Jesuit institution,” says Vo. She praises Escape,
a retreat program for incoming first-year students, for
making her feel welcome.
“At first it was strange,” she says. “I
didn’t know anything about retreats or Catholicism.
But the program’s design was inclusive and emphasized
interfaith, and I felt that I belonged.”
Holy Cross, Vo says, prepared her academically but also
instilled “a certain mindfulness and passion based
largely on the Jesuit ideal of men and women for others.”
Some of the research Vo plans on doing will incorporate
volunteer work at orphanages for disabled children, the
Vietnamese Red Cross and the Friendship Village, a care
facility for orphans, elderly and disabled adults, born
out of an agreement between a U.S. Vietnam war veteran,
George Mizo, and a Vietnamese senior lieutenant general,
Tran Van Quang.
Volunteerism, which has played a significant role in
Vo’s college career, led her to work in the Chaplains’ Office,
coordinating the “Post-Grad Volunteer Fair.” From
her class alone, 46 students have opted to do volunteer
work in a variety of service programs across the country
following graduation. She praises the program for cultivating “this
type of initiative, action and thinking in my generation.”
In her final year on Mount St. James, Vo took part in
the Spiritual Exercises program held in Narragansett, R.I.,
and led by Rev. Michael Ford, S.J. During this time, she
felt the blend of life, scholarship, service and spirituality
came full circle. The focus on meditation allowed her to
see the pattern of the past four years and a direction
for her postgraduate work.
“During this silent retreat, the research proposal
started to form,” says Vo. “My family experiences
in caring for my brother intersected with my academic interests
in psychology and anthropology.”
“I began to gather research literature on Agent
Orange,” she continues, “and I worked it into
my proposal. I decided to concentrate on the mother’s
perspectives and attitudes [toward her child’s disabilities]
, her coping mechanisms, and depression. I became interested
in the bigger context of families as ‘production
units’ and the importance of having children. The
family is such a strong institution in Vietnam because
of the reliance on children and the expectancy that children
will provide for the parents in old age. I wanted to explore
the relationships that occur between parents and their
disabled children within this context.”
For Vo, the “true effect of a liberal arts education” is
distilled in how the College allows students “to
blend a focus on humanities with more technical areas of
study.” In her case, this meant integrating the biological
psychology studies and lab research she loved from her
psychology courses with the thinking and methodology she
learned in anthropology.
“I was a psychology major with a biological psychology
concentration,” says Vo. “But it stunned me
that I could do real, hands-on, hard-core lab research
as an undergraduate at a small liberal arts college. You
can learn in a classroom, but there are professors here
that encourage you to learn outside the classroom.”
It is her range of interests and sophisticated analytical
skills that sets her apart, according to Vo’s professors.
“What’s most impressive about Libby is her
breadth,” says associate professor of psychology
Amy Wolfson, who met Vo in an “Introduction to Psychology” class.
“There’s a gestalt with Libby,” says
Wolfson, “a sincere personal and intellectual curiosity.
There’s a wholeness to her that is very special for
somebody at this point in her life.”
Vo’s interest in laboratory work began with Wolfson,
when she assisted in piloting Wolfson’s research
project on healthy sleep/wake schedules for Worcester middle
school students. Wolfson then put Vo in contact with a
colleague who runs a child adolescence sleep center at
Brown University. The summer before her fourth year, Vo
gained an apprenticeship to do work in the lab at Brown,
furthering her interest and skills in hands-on research.
She kept in contact with Wolfson, who sees Vo’s Fulbright
proposal as “a coming together.”
“I always felt there was a wish to blend her personal
life experiences with her academic and intellectual interests,” says
Wolfson, “which is what happened in her choosing
to minor in anthropology, to connect with Professor (Susan)
Rodgers and to begin to bring these things together.”
Rodgers, an anthropology professor and director of Asian
studies, noticed something special about the way Vo tackled
the ethnographic fieldwork project required of all anthropology
students. Influenced by her psychology work, Vo was drawn
to a project focused on two students who had been diagnosed
with serious manic depression—how these students
dealt with the illness and eventually overcame it.
Rodgers was impressed with the spectrum of Vo’s
approach, which, she says, included “not just the
standard interviews and commentary—Libby included
pictures that one of the students drew and literature important
to her. They went to a movie together, and Libby included
their mutual commentary. It was a very holistic approach,
very comprehensive and sympathetic.”
Discovering she could do field work as well as research,
Vo didn’t want the course to end, and Rodgers encouraged
her to do a tutorial the following semester, “a reading
course on depression seen cross-culturally—medical-anthro
literature with a big emphasis on Asia and the Pacific,” says
Rodgers. “In that framework I encouraged her to apply
for a post-graduation national grant.”
The proposal developed over the course of her fourth
year, with Rodgers guiding Vo by way of the reading course,
which was tailored to prepare for application for the Fulbright
grant.
“To make (a proposal) really work, it has to come
from you,” says Rodgers. “And here was a lab-trained
scientist type of student who, at the same time, is from
Vietnam, speaks Vietnamese and grew up in a family with
a developmentally-delayed brother. (In addition) she has
the holistic liberal arts approach to all the questions
and problems she looks at.”
Encouraged by Rodgers and Wolfson to pursue a proposal
based in Vietnam, Libby sought to broaden her scholarship
on the country with another directed reading course during
the spring semester of her final year with Ann Marie Leshkowich―an
associate professor of anthropology and Vietnam expert,
who does research on women and economic development in
the country. Vo and Leshkowich designed “a contemporary
ethnography of Vietnam,” says Leshkowich. “Although
the legacy of war is a part of those studies, we chose
current scholarship on the social and cultural dilemmas
Vietnam is facing.”
Impressing Leshkowich with her motivation, Vo came to
the sessions “with pages and pages of notes. Not
just summary but critical dialogue. I didn’t need
an arsenal of questions. Libby raised interesting, complex
responses.”
Though Leshkowich’s focus was a scholarly perspective,
she witnessed the integration of Vo’s academic pursuits
and personal life.
“Because of her background in psychology she was
drawn to books that dealt with emotion,” says Leshkowich. “How
women experience the world through their family lives.
Part of her proposal has to do with disabilities most likely
caused by the aftereffects of Agent Orange, but she’s
looking at it from the perspective of family.”
“It’s all intertwined,” says Vo. “The
academic preparation, the personal and religious preparation.
The research will use Agent Orange as a lens through which
to ask questions about the agrarian society, family life,
Vietnam’s position in the global market economy,
even issues of forgiveness on the part of Vietnamese for
the effects of the herbicide on the country, individuals
and family life.”
The Fulbright does not require volunteer work, but Vo
intends to give back to Vietnam while she is there in the
orphanages and the Friendship Village, both as part of
her mission and as a means to explore “notions of
peace and reconciliation and how the Vietnamese deal with
wartime memories.”
“That is the Holy Cross influence,” she says―”the
volunteer component and an inquisitive research component.
Holy Cross fosters an interest in the humanities with the
Jesuit mission attached.”
Wishing to encourage purpose and change for others, Vo
sums up her ultimate intention for the Fulbright, quoting
Pedro Arrupe, 28th Superior General of the Society of Jesus,
1965:
“Use your education to help others.”
Maria Healy is a freelance writer
from Northampton, Mass.
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