On December 31st, Mr. Le Cong Co, DTU President and Provost, became one of twenty leading citizens of Danang to be honoured in commemoration of its 20th anniversary as a centrally-governed city. The awards were in recognition of the remarkable achievements these individuals have accomplished in the rapid development of Danang over the past twenty years.
Hero of Labor, Distinguished Teacher Le Cong Co
During wartime, Le Phuong Thao, which was Le Cong Co’s alias, was a brave and fearless revolutionary. He fought the enemy officially and otherwise in many ways and took part in the foundation of the revolutionary movement. He was a unique leader and, at the same time, an exemplary intellectual member of the patriotic youth and student organization that helped liberate Thua Thien-Hue in the battle of March 25th 1975.
Dr. Le Nguyen Bao, DTU Vice-Provost, with Distinguished Teacher Le Cong Co
Just after liberation, the concept of establishing a private university was not well received, as the Vietnamese economy was only just recovering. With great determination and daring, Mr. Co mortgaged his house to raise the capital to build Duy Tan University, which then became the first private university in Central Vietnam.
Over the past twenty-two years, DTU, led by Mr. Co, has made impressive progress and now has close relationships with many well-known universities worldwide, such as Carnegie Mellon University, Pennsylvania State University, California State University (CSU) in Fullerton, Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo and others, who now share their internationally standardized curricula with DTU. The DTU choice of degrees and diplomas is diversified, providing students with many study options. The university has also made impressive achievements in research, with 328 international papers published, including 315 in ISI-indexed journals. In 2016 alone, the university had 214 international publications, with 205 in ISI-indexed journals, which was double the number in 2015, with 105 papers, including 101 in ISI-indexed journals.
DTU students have won several awards, including first and second prizes in the 2013 CDIO Cup, hosted at Harvard University and MIT, and the Asia-Pacific IDEERS Championship in 2014 in Taiwan, and some have actually found jobs before graduation. Over 90% of graduates are employed within 6 months of graduation and have accepted remunerative jobs at prestigious companies such as Enclave, Work West, LogiGear, IBM, Microsoft Vietnam, Gameloft, Samsung, the VPBank, the Vietnam AVN Auditing Limited Company (AVN Vietnam), the Vietnam Association of Certified Public Accountants (VACPA), and at the Nam Hai, the InterContinental Danang Sun Peninsula, the Furama and Hyatt resorts.
As a result of their achievements, on March 18th 2016, Distinguished Teacher Le Cong Co received the title of Hero of Labor for his role in rebuilding Vietnam. He has received numerous titles and awards, including the Second-Class Independence Medal, the First-Class Resistance War Medal and others from the Party and State, the Ministry of Education and Training and the Danang People’s Committee. His latest December award will encourage Mr. Co to continue making sustained efforts to contribute to the steady development of education in our country.
(Media Center)