people

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layout: about title: about permalink: / subtitle: Build once, run anywhere, learn everywhere.

profile: align: right image: ngo-2024.jpg image_circular: false # crops the image to make it circular more_info: > <p>#138</p> <p>25 University Avenue</p> <p>West Chester, PA, 19380</p>

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I am a computer science professor at West Chester University, where I teach systems, cloud computing, software engineering, and other courses that tend to involve students building things that may or may not work on the first try.

Much of my work sits somewhere between computing education, research computing, and experiential learning. I am interested in how students grow into capable practitioners by learning to make decisions when the instructions are incomplete, the system behaves strangely, or the tools have to be learned on the job. This has pushed me toward project-based courses where students build the application and also stand up the infrastructure it runs on.

I also work closely with undergraduate researchers. I enjoy taking students who are curious but not yet certain what they are capable of and giving them enough room to find out. Some go on to graduate school, some into industry, some build things I would not have thought of myself. That is probably the part of academia I value most.

My interests have gradually expanded beyond computer science into aspects of higher education such as advising, liberal education, and what universities are actually supposed to develop in students. I am skeptical that education can be reduced to content delivery. Finding information used to be the hard part; now it arrives faster than anyone can absorb it. The harder problem is deciding what is useful, what is trustworthy, and what is worth retaining.

Outside the university, I am a husband, father, amateur pianist, and increasingly enthusiastic rock climber. I started climbing in my forties, which has been an excellent way to discover both new muscles and new definitions of humility. One year in, I have started climbing V3s, so I now possess exactly enough competence to become dangerous to myself.

I grew up in Vietnam and have spent much of my adult life in the United States. Moving between cultures, disciplines, institutions, and technical worlds has shaped my approach to most things: understand the system, respect what works, question what does not, and leave room for surprises.

This site is where I keep some of that thinking: teaching notes, technical work, research projects, institutional ideas, and occasional reflections that did not fit neatly anywhere else.

---

layout: about title: about permalink: / subtitle: Build once, run anywhere, learn everywhere.

profile: align: right image: ngo-2024.jpg image_circular: false # crops the image to make it circular more_info: > <p>#138</p> <p>25 University Avenue</p> <p>West Chester, PA, 19380</p>

selected_papers: false # includes a list of papers marked as “selected={true}” social: true # includes social icons at the bottom of the page

announcements: enabled: false # includes a list of news items scrollable: true # adds a vertical scroll bar if there are more than 3 news items limit: 5 # leave blank to include all the news in the _news folder

latest_posts: enabled: true scrollable: true # adds a vertical scroll bar if there are more than 3 new posts items limit: 3 # leave blank to include all the blog posts —

I am a computer science professor at West Chester University, where I teach systems, cloud computing, software engineering, and other courses that tend to involve students building things that may or may not work on the first try.

Much of my work sits somewhere between computing education, research computing, and experiential learning. I am interested in how students grow into capable practitioners by learning to make decisions when the instructions are incomplete, the system behaves strangely, or the tools have to be learned on the job. This has pushed me toward project-based courses where students build the application and also stand up the infrastructure it runs on.

I also work closely with undergraduate researchers. I enjoy taking students who are curious but not yet certain what they are capable of and giving them enough room to find out. Some go on to graduate school, some into industry, some build things I would not have thought of myself. That is probably the part of academia I value most.

My interests have gradually expanded beyond computer science into aspects of higher education such as advising, liberal education, and what universities are actually supposed to develop in students. I am skeptical that education can be reduced to content delivery. Finding information used to be the hard part; now it arrives faster than anyone can absorb it. The harder problem is deciding what is useful, what is trustworthy, and what is worth retaining.

Outside the university, I am a husband, father, amateur pianist, and increasingly enthusiastic rock climber. I started climbing in my forties, which has been an excellent way to discover both new muscles and new definitions of humility. One year in, I have started climbing V3s, so I now possess exactly enough competence to become dangerous to myself.

I grew up in Vietnam and have spent much of my adult life in the United States. Moving between cultures, disciplines, institutions, and technical worlds has shaped my approach to most things: understand the system, respect what works, question what does not, and leave room for surprises.

This site is where I keep some of that thinking: teaching notes, technical work, research projects, institutional ideas, and occasional reflections that did not fit neatly anywhere else.