Mary Le Scholarship Endowment

The Mary Le scholarship is open to all economically disadvantaged female students and US legal residents who demonstrate strong interest in physics, chemistry, biology, or engineering.

Born in Vietnam, Son arrived in America in the early 60's to pursue his studies and to build his career. After earning his B.A. in Political Philosophy at Fordham College in New York City, he went on to complete his post-graduate studies in Educational Philosophy in Ohio (M.A., Antioch College, Yellow Springs and Ph.D., The Ohio State University, Columbus). After a stint in research at Ohio State in Ohio and at USC Med Center in Southern California, Dr. Son M. Le accepted a teaching appointment from The Joint West Valley Community College District, whose Governing Board had authorized the planning and construction of a second college to be named "Mission."

In 1975, Dr. Son M. Le began his career as a founding faculty member, splitting his teaching load in philosophy between interim Mission College on Monroe Street in Santa Clara and West Valley College in Saratoga. Dr. Le chaired the Faculty Committee that debated and drafted the original Mission College Philosophy Statement, which emphasized that Mission College's commitment to multiple teaching strategies and student-centered learning, anchoring on personal responsibility and self-paced study. The Board of Trustees unanimously accepted the original Philosophy Statement.

Following the Board mandate, Dr. Le started building the philosophy department curriculum and making connections with other disciplines. His early instructional modules in logic, among the first in California Community Colleges, served as models for other academic disciplines. He was a pioneer in programming a self-paced logic course for the Apple II years before the appearance of the IBM Junior PC. Outside of philosophy, Dr. Le organized and team-taught - with colleagues from math, English, and art history - Mission College's first humanities course. After developing the first course in philosophy and management, he also developed and taught medical ethics, and worked with colleagues from other disciplines to develop and teach the first course of the Global Education Program.

In class, Dr. Le tried to instill the habit of critical thinking, hoping that his students would catch the same "Philosophy Bug" that forever changed him when, as a teenager, he read for the first time Bertrand Russell's Sceptical Essays. In one class, he would start by asking students who knew with certainty their birthdays to raise their hands. In another class, he would look for students who were confident about who their parents were. In either case, through a series of questions and answers, he led them to see that their claim to self-knowledge was based mostly on hearsay. Using his text, Elements of Critical Thinking and Writing, Dr. Le challenged students to examine their core beliefs and their underlying assumptions, stressing the pervasive value dimension of human life.

Outside the classroom, Dr. Le brought philosophy to bear on the college community. For the first several years, he introduced his students and colleagues to lively debates on timeless problems at the Annual Mission College Forum. Sensing the steady decline of trust between faculty and administration, a symptom of differentiation without integration, Dr. Le invited key administrators and senior faculty to the Mission College Academic Forum to meet one another as colleagues on a common mission: the education of young adults and working students. With like-minded colleagues, he supported policies and practices that strengthen the College's academic programs and the educational mission of the District Foundation. It was at Mission College that Dr. Le found home. Dr. Le cherished the bonds he forged with colleagues, particularly with Mission College's Founding President, and the fond memories he shared with colleagues throughout the College District. He was moved to learn of the number of colleagues in the Mission family who stood by him and his young family throughout the hard times, especially when his wife tragically took her own life, just over three months after Mission College's first commencement in 1977. Most of all, he felt blessed to tie the knot in 1980 with Marilyn Jean, a fourth-generation Californian, who devoted her life to the love and care of their young family.

In 2009, Dr. Le retired as Founding Chair of the Philosophy Department and was awarded Emeritus Standing by the Board of Trustees. Dr. Le set up the Mary Le Scholarship to honor his late wife's passion for science as a college student and her wish that more female students would study science. This scholarship is open to all economically disadvantaged female students and US legal residents who demonstrate a strong interest in physics, chemistry, biology, or engineering.