Bobby Fong Wins Award, Plans Big for Ursinus

new president, Dr. Bobby Fong, has been awarded the OCA’s prestigious . He accepted the award in New York City on Aug. 6 and has since returned to Ursinus and continued to settle in on campus, preparing for the arrival of his new students.

The OCA started as the Organization for Chinese Americans in 1973 and remains in establishment today as an advocacy group for Asian Pacific Islanders. The Pioneer Award was given to Dr. Fong to recognize his “family’s immigration history, growing up in Oakland and never forgetting [his] roots, and making a mark in higher education as one of our nation’s few Asian American Higher Education leaders,” said OCA National President Ken Lee.

Dr. Fong said the award is to “recognize people who have achieved prominence in a particular field. Inside our culture, we refer to [this prominence] as breaking the bamboo ceiling.”
He went on to explain how his accomplishments qualified him for the recognition.

His achievements at Butler are numerous and magnanimous, but his outstanding work as a president at the institution is not the only remarkable thing about his holding the position.

“In higher education, Asians are actually the best-represented group of color,” Fong explained.

He said that, though Asians constitute 4 percent of the country’s population, there is a 7 percent Asian faculty rate in colleges and universities across America.

“Unfortunately, that doesn’t work through to executive positions like presidents and chancellors,” he said. He demonstrated this noteworthy distinction by explaining less than 1 percent of executive positions in colleges and universities are held by Asians today.

“I try not to think that what I do is more than what the duty and responsibility calls for, but as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that, like it or not, people do see me as representing a particular cultural constituency, a group of color in the United States.”

As the numbers show, Fong’s holding one of these executive positions is a hefty accomplishment, indeed, and the encouragement he received from the OCA further clarifies the leaps he had made in the field.

“That’s part of what the award is all about," he said. "We want to be able to continue making strides in leadership in higher education.”

Fong was notified of his nomination for the award in late spring, while he still sat as president at Butler University. “I felt a great deal of gratitude. [It was] a surprise.”

The surprises didn’t stop with a notification letter, though. When Fong arrived at the event in New York in early August, he was happy to find himself seated at a table with Master of Ceremonies David Henry Hwang, playwright most commonly known for his work "M. Butterfly." Fong, in his early days of teaching, taught Hwang’s works, but had never met the writer. It was a night full of memorable experiences.

Fong praised the playwright for his masterpieces and noted Hwang’s new Broadway show, "Chinglish," will be opening in October. Fong is part of the Lingnan Foundation and the members of the group are hoping to travel to see the show together.

“We’re a small enough community in the arts and education, we can kind of bump into each and realize, ‘Hey, I know you.’”

Though he does stay in touch with these teacher roots, Fong is enjoying being a part of the administration team at Ursinus and is looking forward to the years ahead.

“It’s a return to roots,” he said of the residential, liberal arts education Ursinus offers.

Though it was an “ethos” he was able to bring to Butler and a way to organize Butler “at a time when it wasn’t quite sure what its identity ought to be,” he is excited to return to a place in which he can know his faculty and students on a more personal level.

“The Ursinus opportunity [is] a chance to be able to do for another institution what I was able to do at Butler – pull focus and sharpen the sense of mission.”

His plans for Ursinus are widespread and exciting and can be reviewed in detail in his State of the College Address.
Fong said, “While we will seek some new initiatives, much of our work is in better coordinating and highlighting what we already do well.”

He also commented his plans, though varied, are all aimed at keeping the focus on “transforming lives.”

Though you can read his biography on the college's website, there are some personal fun facts about Fong that not many Ursinus students or community members wouldn't have yet found on the message boards.

Fong’s parents were married in 1937 and he has an older sister, who was born in 1938. His father traveled to the United States in 1938 with a visitor’s visa, but was separated from his family until 1948 because he could not return home due to the Japanese incursion of the Chinese mainland. He was born in 1950 shortly after his parents reunited and a younger sister followed in 1952.

Though he lost his father in 1952 and his mother just before he left for Harvard, Fong remained close with his sisters. One now teaches at the only elementary school in Los Angeles’ Chinatown and the other is a retired hospital seamstress and translator.

Fong has two sons, Jonathan, 27, who is a forensic videographer for the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, and Colin, 21, who will be a senior at Bolton College this fall. Colin is currently following in his father’s footsteps with an education track, traveling around China teaching the Spanish language to students there.

The proud father refers to his wife as “the most wonderful woman in the world.” Suzanne Fong is an attorney by training and an advocate for immigrant education and protection. According to her husband, she served as the “first lady” to the Butler community and “is a remarkable person.”

Outside of spending time with his family, Fong is an avid baseball fan. With his move to Philly, the question is obvious. How do you feel about the Phillies?
Though Fong swears by his Yankee fan heritage, he said, “I can root for the Phillies with a clean conscience because they’re in the other league. So long as the two teams don’t meet in the World Series, I can be a Phillies fan. I am very impressed with what the Phillies have done in the 21st century.”