Nga Nguyễn, a retired lecturer of the Vietnamese Language at the University of Michigan, passed away on Tuesday, October 25, 2022, at the age of 88. She was born in Haiphong, Vietnam, on May 25, 1934.
Uprooted by the civil war in 1954, she moved to southern Vietnam with her family to Saigon (now present-day Ho Chi Minh City), where she began a career in Finance after obtaining a law degree and a master's in economics. In the early 1980s, as a refugee from the war, she immigrated first to Geneva, Switzerland, then subsequently moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she found her new vocation as an educator, becoming the first Vietnamese language instructor at the University of Michigan in 1992. She retired from U-M in 2007 after 15 years of service.
Cô Nga Nguyễn was one of the founding members of GUAVA (Group of Universities for the Advancement of Vietnamese Abroad) since 1991. While she was a lecturer of the Vietnamese language at the University of Michigan, she also served as the chair of the selection committee of the Vietnamese Advanced Summer Institute (VASI) program hosted by GUAVA to select qualified students from universities in the United States to study advanced Vietnamese language in Vietnam during the summers. She also served as the Field Director of VASI to lead several groups of students during the VASI program in the summers.
She is survived by her sisters, Nguyen Thi My of Ann Arbor and Nguyen Kim Dung of Livonia, by her brother, Nguyen Duc Nghia of Lausanne, Switzerland, along with many nieces and nephews.
A memorial service will be held on Saturday, November 19, 2022, at 4:00 PM at the Robison-Bahnmiller Funeral Home in Saline, with Pastor Drex Morton officiating. Friends may join the family for a time of visitation from 2:00 PM until the time of service at 4:00 PM
