Computers a Lifelong Passion for Trustees' Award Winner

Computers a Lifelong Passion for Trustees' Award Winner

By Brian Hiro

Minh Tran, a fourth-year computer science major, is CSUSM's winner of the 2024 CSU Trustees' Award for student achievement. Photo by Kirra Robusto

In 2009, Minh Tran's family moved to Escondido from Vietnam, the only home that he, his parents and his two older siblings had ever known.

Tran was only 7 years old, and while his father and mother were busy navigating their new lives in a foreign land and his brother and sister were busy with teenage pursuits, he was often left alone to entertain himself.

Tran did have a companion, however: a small laptop that his dad gave to him. He would spend hours exploring every nook and cranny of the device, and eventually many corners of the internet as well. With the help of his siblings, he began to use the computer to learn the bedeviling language of English.

It probably wasn't a coincidence that, when Tran enrolled at Cal State San Marcos in 2021, he chose computer science as his major. Now he's being recognized for excellence in the discipline.

Tran, a fourth-year student who's on track to graduate in May 2025, was honored Tuesday as CSUSM's recipient of the 2024 CSU Trustees' Award for Outstanding Achievement, the California State University's highest recognition of student accomplishment.

Students are selected based on academic achievements, financial need, excellence in community service and personal hardship. Awardees have all demonstrated inspirational resolve along the path to college success, and many are the first in their families to attend college.

The CSU recognizes 23 students every year - one from each campus - with the Trustees' Award. Tran received his award in person during a ceremony as part of the CSU Board of Trusteesmeeting in Long Beach on Sept. 24

"I'm very surprised I won," Tran said. "Maybe it's my imposter syndrome that made me think perhaps I don't deserve it. But I try to ignore that because I've worked very hard, put in a lot of hours and effort, to get to where I am."

Tran has started his final year at CSUSM after a summer in which he participated in CSUSM's venerable Summer Scholars Program. Under the guidance of software engineering professor Yongjie Zheng, he worked on an artificial intelligence-themed project titled "Empowering AI-Based Source Code Plagiarism Checking With Prompt Engineering."

Zheng, who has served as Tran's faculty mentor since January, was one of multiple CSUSM representatives to write a letter recommending him for the Trustees' Award.

"From my interactions with Minh, I can tell that he is innovative, independent and open-minded," Zheng said. "He has the potential to be a great student researcher. I'm particularly impressed by his strong and broad interest in many computer science topics, such as AI, cybersecurity and software reliability."

The previous summer, in 2023, Tran was accepted into the Research Experiences for Undergraduates(REU) program, which helps students gain research experience in any of the areas funded by the National Science Foundation. Spending nine weeks at the University of Nebraska Omaha, he completed a project that addressed the security of Internet of Thingsdevices, then presented his results a few months later at a computer science conference in Washington.

Those trips marked the first and second times he had left California since settling here as an immigrant boy.

"I definitely enjoyed it," Tran said of his time in Omaha with 10 other students from across the nation. "It was a new experience, making new friends, meeting new mentors and having fun memories."

Besides professors like Zheng, Tran attributes much of his success at CSUSM to the TRIO Student Support Servicesprogram, and specifically to its director, Heather Northway. Tran began regular visits with Northway as a freshman, and he says she has helped him in numerous ways, from referring him to Student Health & Counseling Services when he was struggling mentally and emotionally, to recommending him for the REU program, to informing him of campus resources like Summer Scholars and the Faculty Mentoring Program.

"She's one of the most wonderful people I've met," he said. "She's a big part of the reason why I've been able to make it to my senior year. I would have had a lot more trouble otherwise."

Tran would like to apply his computer science degree to a career in AI or cybersecurity, though he's not sure whether he first wants to pursue an advanced degree.

"I find these cutting-edge fields to be very intriguing," Tran said, "and I'm excited to see what's next."

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