It is remarkable when adults find students to be excellent examples to be followed, but when another student finds a peer to be an outstanding role model, that bodes well for any young person’s character. “One of ColorsVA Magazine Scholars, London Paige, actually came to me and told me how deserving Uyen Tran was of being nominated for Scholar of the Month,” said Kathy Sebolt, Roanoke Valley Governor’s School counselor. And Sebolt did not hesitate to make the nomination. In fact, Sebolt could not agree more that Uyen was a “top-notch” nominee.
“Uyen’s just very special. She works hard to give back to her community,” shares Sebolt. “She’s just so kind and intent in greeting everybody. She pleasantly greets everybody when she comes in in the morning.” And that is just for starter. She is a senior at William Fleming High School and attends the Roanoke Valley Governor’s School. Sebolt says Uyen has a personality that fills the room and a grade point average that springboards her out of it. “Uyen’s GPA is 4.43 due to the weighted classes she takes. She would like to go into health care,” adds Sebolt. And there is a reason Uyen’s heart is set on health care.
The backstory spans generations and continents. “I’m an immigrant from Vietnam and I really know the struggles of having a different way of growing up. I really feel like that helped shape how I learned,” says Uyen. She came to America with her family, both parents and four sisters about 13 years ago. She really focused on her education with research leading the way. It is this research she hopes will change lives here in America and in Vietnam.
“Healthcare is important to me because it was really hard growing up. I watched my grandma struggle… she has diabetes and it’s just like the cost of it is crazy,” shares Uyen. “I want to go into the field of dentistry. Dental care is really important — like when your teeth start hurting, it’s really uncomfortable and it takes over you. I would like countries with no access to dental care, toothbrushes, toothpaste, to have the same privileges as we [Americans] do.
Folks describer Uyen as caring with a heart of gold. Those characteristics are evident in the work she does for herself and for her community. “Uyen is continually giving back to others and is well respected by our faculty and her peers,” says Sebolt. Uyen is the NAACP Youth Council second vice president. In the two years she has been dedicated to the NAACP Youth Council, she’s taken on multiple leadership roles, helped organize and promote multiple events and reached out to local news stations on behalf of the organization,” Sebolt shares.
“I want to be a role model in a sense, to be like if I can do it, you can do it too,” Uyen says. “It’s not about where you grew up or how you grew up, it’s about what you make for yourself. That’s kind of what I want to inspire others in the Roanoke community to do.”
Uyen is an accomplished researcher, placing at local, city, regional, state and national science competitions. She recently challenged other students at the National NAACP ACT-SO Competition using her project entitled Atomic Force Microscopy-Based Nano-indentation Technique: A Novel Approach to Determine the Nanoscale Degradation of PET. “I used the atomic force microscope at the governor’s school, which detects things on a nanoscale level, and I used that to look up plastic degradation on that level because of how much plastic is in our water and it’s also found in a lot of beverage products and food products. And that’s really harmful to the environment because it goes out into the ocean and rivers, but mainly because of us,” Uyen explains. And because she thinks of others, that was the driving force behind her research. For everyone’s safety, Uyen wanted to know what type of water degrades plastic fastest. She found that “The salt in ocean water protects and preserves the plastic, while spring water actually makes plastic more susceptible to degradation.” That research won her a gold medal at the National NAACP ACT-SO competition. Roanoke NAACP President Brenda Hale says, “Uyen is a leader. Her peers are in awe of her. They look up to her as their fellow peer. Her peers just admire her. They really do. I think it’s so great with her being so young. Uyen has a magnetic personality. She’s always calm and self-assured.”
While managing school, science competitions and multiple extracurricular activities, she also makes time for the spirit. She spends her free time volunteering with her Buddhist Youth Group and helping prepare for events at her Buddhist Temple. Uyen credits a list of great friends, family, teachers and community leaders for her accomplishment. “Everybody has some sort of positivity in their life. I’m always motivated and looking to better myself,” she says. She’s also found a few words to live by as she navigates to higher heights. “There was a book mark I used to carry with a quote that says, ‘The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams’ by Eleanor Roosevelt,’” she says. “Motivation is self-cultivated. I had to find that motivation myself.”
Uyen Tran plans to head off to college in the fall. She will continue doing science research and in-depth projects. She has been accepted to Virginia Commonwealth University’s Biomedical Engineering School and now waiting on a few other offers before deciding. There is no doubt Uyen is looking to change the world – starting with her community here in Roanoke and where her roots lie in Vietnam.
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