Lisa Nguyen
  • May 18, 2026

  • First-generation college student and double major Lisa Nguyen's UC Irvine journey won't end with undergrad

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While applying to four-year universities, Lisa Nguyen found that few schools offered majors that aligned with her interdisciplinary interests. Then she discovered UC Irvine's Social Policy and Public Service (SPPS) program in the School of Social Sciences which brought together courses from anthropology to education to cognitive sciences, political science and more. It was a match.

Originally from Montreal, Nguyen moved to California a decade ago with her parents, who left Vietnam in the late '80s. She began her higher education career with a stint in community college in San Mateo, on the San Francisco Peninsula, before ultimately transferring to UCI in 2023.

"Being at UCI was an adjustment," she says. But the challenge was a good one. "I really learned the feeling of grit," she says, thinking back on her year-long stats course where she learned statistical methods for research. "Everyone here held me to a higher standard. So it motivated me to hold myself to a higher standard."

At UCI, she found her footing, opting to double major in African American studies in the School of Humanities, which gave her deeper context on race and gender for conducting social science research. The prospect of pursuing face-to-face research with living subjects is what drew her to the social sciences in the first place. "I was interested in the examination of people, in a holistic sense," she says. "There might be historical student movements, or historical things that have happened before us, and we read about them through archives. But as a social scientist, with social science methods, you're taught how to interview student activists themselves." Through this, she's found that she's able to bridge history with the present.

Tiffany Willoughby-Herard, global and international studies professor, introduced Nguyen to the African student movements of the 1980s. "She taught me so much when I took her African feminism class two years ago, and she opened up a whole world of what Black feminism could mean in global  contexts," says Nguyen. Nguyen has incorporated much of what she learned from her quarter as a research assistant to Willoughby-Herard into her own fourth-year senior capstone, a year-long field placement that's required for SPPS majors.

Ngyuen elected to focus on the education track and do her field studies course under Jeanett Castellanos, social sciences associate dean of undergraduate studies and professor of teaching. "I was really interested in writing and researching on BIPOC student activism, student organizing practices, and how they sustain themselves," she says. "I was really impacted by the 2024 encampments, so I was interested in exploring the psychological, social, and cultural motivations that students had, given that student movements have been integral to the university since the '60s."

Those interviews and other work turned into a paper that's about 60 pages long. "It's my first time doing research to that scale," says Nguyen. "I was really nurtured during the entire year."

Both Castellanos, for whom she is currently a course assistant, and Willoughby-Herard have become mentors to Nguyen. "Those women are just so powerful and very galvanizing," she says. In particular, Castellanos was integral to Nguyen's journey toward continued education. "She's taught me so much about what it means to be an educator and an educator, specifically, for students of color," she says.

"Dr. C. really enumerated the possibilities of being a researcher using different methods and really supported me in that, which is why I got into a Ph.D.," says Nguyen, who next academic year will be starting the Culture and Theory graduate program in UCI's School of Humanities.

"UCI is taking all my twenties," she joked.

The faculty in the School of Social Sciences "really set the horizon for me to be able to gain a Ph.D.," Nguyen emphasized. "That was not part of my plans. I didn't have plans, necessarily. I didn't think higher academia was for me."

Nguyen credits the community at UCI, and especially Castellanos, with keeping her in school. "I'm very excited to see her this spring when I walk," says Nguyen. "She knows your potential.”

After her Ph.D. program, Nguyen hopes to become an educator herself. She says that her professors at UCI were supportive not just in an academic setting but beyond, in terms of her personal wellbeing and the political empowerment of students themselves. "I hope to emulate that, to give it forward to students, and be that space for students to not only be critical thinkers in their classrooms but also in their engagement with the broader world."

-Alison Van Houten for UCI Social Sciences
-pictured: Lisa Nguyen standing in the Social & Behavioral Sciences Gateway atrium. Courtesy of Luis Fonseca, UCI Social Sciences.

 

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