Hi, my name is Chi Nguyen. I'm an international student from Vietnam. I'm currently a first year student in the department of management of Spears business school, at Oklahoma State University. 

My experience has been amazing and I could not imagine being in another program honestly. The faculty has been very helpful and engaging in framing and helping me define my research ideas and my research interests. As well as, give me the opportunities to work on projects and publish with them. So as first year student, we are assigned to have projects with advisors so it's either we work on a project that they already have or we can come up with ideas along with them to create projects that are publishable for future years. 

I'm currently working with Dr. Lex Washington and Dr. Yurianna Kimmons. They both have different expertise so Lex is a expert in diversity equity and inclusion, while Yurianna works on voice and because of that, we have projects that integrate the two aspects of diversity and voice. Also, from a first year project as we talk and develop our ideas, it's actually become two separate projects right now, which is very beneficial for you as a student because you have more projects to start off which have high potential for publishing. 

We also have a lot of activities like the lunch and learn so we have grad students present our ideas to the faculty and the faculty will give us feedback or like ask clarifying questions that help us fine-tune our projects. We also have research chats which are more like a social aspect. We will meet twice a month and then the faculty would be able to talk with us about what they work on. We are able to get their feedback on like a more social and you know less serious setting. Also we have the lunch and learn where we can really have a presentation style, getting like their um feedback that way as well. So we have a lot of opportunities to be engaged in research and also from their developing ideas and projects to have publishable projects in the future.

What I really like about our program is that the professors work together and they have a wide range of expertise in different areas. Like, Dr. Anna Lennard, she works on justice and we have Dr. Jeanine Porck who works in teams and middle management. So a wide range of research with different interests will really help you define your own interests or like finding the faculties that can help you with your research interests.

We also have faculties who publish in top journals in the field, like an academic management journal (AMJ) or Journal of Applied Psychologies and publishing in those big journals have a lot of benefits to you as you go into the job market, after you're finishing the PhD program and I think the faculty has been helping me not just be a name on the paper, but actually develop my competence to contribute meaningfully to their projects. 

I can see it like after I finish this program, I can become a competent researcher. I can't publish on my own and I really like that. The professors are very personal here and I know me and my advisor, Lex, has been talking about oh maybe we can do like a trip to Tulsa, because I'm international student. I'm so new to Oklahoma and they're very excited like oh maybe we should go to Tulsa. Maybe we should go to like OKC to do things together, also we have professors who like to invite us over for dinner and we play board games there. It's not just the relationship of like they are high, you know more superior than us but really try to develop us to become their future colleagues. So, very personal and very welcoming in that sense.