Adrienne Nguyen came to campus in 2009 with plans to pursue a degree in history, but it was during completion of a general education requirement that she discovered her love for anthropology.

“I remember sitting in Anthropology 2A and learning about different cultures and how they cannot be compared to one another; all are different, all have their internal systems of understanding, and that ultimately makes our world a better place,” says Nguyen. “I had always thought about and been interested in thinking about culture like this, but I’d never been able to articulate it in such a way.”

Through research, the third-year honors student has found a way to combine her interests; her senior thesis focuses on how the Vietnam War impacted production of history and memory of second generation Vietnamese-Americans.

Her work has been funded in part by the Thomas J. Watson Memorial Scholarship Fund and will be further supported in 2012 with the Reza Zarif and Rufina Paniego School of Social Sciences Undergraduate Award for Excellence in Anthropology.

Nguyen spent summer 2011 studying abroad at the University of Cambridge. She has been a member of the UCI a cappella group Vermillion Vocalists since fall 2009, and she plans to pursue a graduate degree on completion of her bachelor’s in 2013.