In 2008, the Vietnamese American community in Austin, along with VAHF, successfully collaborated with the University of Texas at Austin’s Center For Asian American Studies (CAAS) to establish a course on Vietnamese American history and culture, instructed by Ph.D. candidate Linda Ho Peché. Each student was required to complete an oral interview of a self-identified Vietnamese American. These oral histories became part of the 500 Oral History Project initiated by VAHF as its third most urgent collection, since many members of the first genera- tion of Vietnamese Americans are now elderly. With their passing, first-hand accounts of the Vietnamese American immigration experience would be lost.