Tien Nguyen

Tien Nguyen currently teaches part time at the University of Ottawa, alongside his professional interests as a lifestyle-management counsellor and trainer.

"It was the numerous half-hour presentations working with people associated with the government and private industry that led to my teaching career. After finishing my graduate studies, I started teaching right away when I got an opportunity and that’s been going on for the past 13 years.

I still professionally engage in the relevant topics of healthy living, nutrition, and stress management, but it’s also a lot of counselling work. At the end of the day, I think there is value you can add by the things you say, the experiences you share, and suggestions you can make.

I think of many instances where I received some very valuable and humbling feedback from the people that I’ve worked with, and I think that the universal theme within all these instances was that there was a greater sense of awareness among these people, whether or not it led to them having more immediate change in their lifestyle, or a greater sense of understanding of where they are in their current state of health.

From this point on, I’d like to stay in teaching until I felt I wasn’t relevant anymore and better refine my skills. As long as I get a platform to connect with students, whether inside or outside academic environments, I think that’s basically what I can aspire to project in the next several years.

We are pretty fortunate to be able to compare ourselves to other countries in the world; we do have a lot more provisions. That being said, I reflect upon what we can do better in terms of being healthcare practitioners and specialists, and people meant to help other people.

I think the idea is if we are able to directly affect a person’s motivation, that would be pretty much it for me; at that point, the person becomes their own advocate even if they can’t find the answers to their situation, or greater motivation. If we can somehow get access to people's personal motivation, that would be the end, the ‘be-all-end-all’ type of success."