CAA Chapter Leader Newsletter

What was your undergraduate life like at Cal? I was the oldest child in a family of four children. My parents were immigrant farmers from the Guangdong province in China. My late father never finished high school and my mother had a 4th grade education. My father immigrated in the 1940's to America as a paper son with false immigration papers like so many Chinese in the early to mid 20th century. He owned a small grocery store with my uncle in San Francisco, and my mother was a maid in a downtown San Francisco motel. I could not afford to live on campus and we knew nothing about financial aid, so I commuted three hours by bus everyday to Cal from San Francisco. I was never in a study group and I had to study on my own because I had to go home right after class. Cal for me was like a continuation of high school because I never got to experience campus life or live in a dorm or apartment. I worked on weekends at a gas station or helped my father at his store. The academic transition to Cal was smooth because I attended Lowell High School, a public academic high school in San Francisco. I was used to academic rigor. In fact, AP calculus BC and AP physics C at Lowell were more difficult than more advanced courses at Berkeley. I was the first member of my family to ever graduate from high school. My 3 younger brothers and my 3 cousins on my father’s side were all 1st generation high school graduates, and we all attended Lowell High School and UC Berkeley.

What life lessons did you learn at Cal that still impact your daily life? I learned that there will always be people who are smarter than you and people who are not as smart as you. No matter whom they are and what their station is in life, we must remember we are all sailing on the same ship called life. We must respect each other and work together to improve all of us. I had a friend and classmate, David Gee, at Cal.  We were both chemistry majors and unsure what to do with our lives. He was from Fresno and a 1st generation college student. He was one of the smartest people I had ever met. He was a year ahead of me in school but we were in the same physics and biology classes. We worked together on labs and problem sets. But we competed on exams. In a friendly competition, we always tried to outscore each other. We were interested in earning a grade of A+ and not merely an A. We lost track of each other after 1975 when I went to UCI for medical school.After losing touch for over 30 years, we met by coincidence at a Cal alumni event about 10 years ago. After graduation from Cal, he attended UCSF medical school and became a cardiologist. We renewed our friendship but we also renewed our competition, but we were too old to compete for grades.  Instead, we competed with donations to Cal to help support our alma mater. We both donated to the College of Chemistry to remodel the undergraduate chemistry labs and make the 50-year-old labs state-of-the-art. The College of Chemistry named 2 seminar rooms in the chemistry library in Hildebrand Hall. The rooms are adjacent to each other and symbolize our friendship. He is a builder of Cal, but I have not quite reached that threshold. When I mentor entering Cal freshmen who are worried about the intense competition at Cal, I tell them this story about Dr. Gee and myself. This is what competition at Cal really means --- working together for the common good. The following message is from a plaque permanently posted in the David and Diana Lieu Seminar Room in Hildebrand Hall. I wrote it to explain what Cal means to me.

How do you tap into your Cal Alumni network? The Cal Alumni Network has helped me keep in touch with Cal externs who have shadowed me in clinic during the Cal externship program. I am helping those who are interested in becoming physicians apply to medical school. There was one recent Cal graduate and former extern who applied to medical school and was not accepted. I reviewed her AMCAS application and set up a new game plan to apply again the following year. The changes I suggested worked and she was accepted to a medical school in California the following year.

I am a member of the San Gabriel Valley Cal Alumni Association. Due to my busy work and lecture schedule, I am active in select events. I attend Cal football viewing, occasional Hungrry Bears dinners, and the Cal summer welcome party (SWP) for new Cal students. For SWP's in the past 10 years, I have annual donated funds for BBQ ribs, chicken tenders, sausages, pasta, etc. to make sure our chapter has the best food. I mentor entering freshmen who are majoring in STEM, pre-med, and Haas. I talk to parents to ease their fear of their children being away from home for the first time. I attend other chapters’ summer welcome parties to mentor freshmen and talk to parents. The parents are often more worried about the academics at Cal than the students. I like to joke that 20% of the entering students are pre-med and 50% of the parents want their children to be pre-med. I tell students that if their parents are so intent on them going to medical school, tell their parents to enroll at Cal and apply to medical school since med schools now accept older students.

I have also participated in the San Gabriel Valley Cal Alumni Chapter alumni scholarship interviews as an interviewer. I have even flown up to Berkeley to the CAA office just to interview scholarship applicants. COVID put a damper on in-person interviews, but I hope to participate again once in-person interviews return.

What Lessons have you learned from Alumni Chapters? I have learned how cohesive Cal graduates are as a group. We all had a common experience although separated by time and space. I became a financial backer and executive producer for a film project called “Kat Loves LA” about modern Asian dating in America because the creator and principal actor was a Cal graduate. It is really funny and quite true. This series is available on YouTube. I have met Stanford grads at joint Cal Stanford football viewing parties. They are great people. The put down and insults of each other’s schools are just a game that no one really takes seriously.  Stanford often hires Cal graduates for their faculty and Cal often hires Stanford graduates for their faculty. I was in Peru on vacation last November. Someone (probably a Cal grad) saw my Cal cap and yelled “GO BEARS!” Cal graduates are everywhere.

What else should we know about you?  When my daughter, Debbie Lieu ’13, O.D. ’22, was an undergraduate at Cal, I served as a member of the Cal Parents Board for 4 years. I volunteered at many Cal Parents events while she was a student and after she graduated, including manning the Cal Parents tent on Cal Day, parent speaker at Cal parent’s orientation, representative for Cal Parents on move-in day, and usher at Memorial stadium during the chancellor’s welcoming speech. Who would have imagined the usher had a day job as a physician?

I have created and sponsored multiple networking/mentoring events for up to 50 premed students and about a dozen physician mentors per event over dinner at UCI, UCB, or a local restaurant. After dinner, students rotate in a set pattern that is timed to each table to talk to mentors for networking and to receive advice. These events have been held in the student center at UCI, local restaurants near UCI, local restaurants in Monterey Park (for Cal pre-meds), and the faculty club at UC Berkeley. I give a welcoming speech and act as the MC. After a hiatus due to COVID, some of the events have restarted.

In 2015, I received a Certificate of Recognition from Congress for my work helping Berkeley pre-med students get into medical school. In 2016, I received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the UCI School of Medicine. In 2019, I received the Yolanda Oertel Interventional Cytopathologist Award from the Papanicolaou Society of Cytopathology.  In 2022, I received the Outstanding Educator Award from the College of American Pathologists.

Fifteen years ago, I created and endowed the David and Diana Lieu Science Endowment Fund at Lowell High School in San Francisco.  At the time, it was the largest donation the Lowell Alumni Association ever received from a living donor.  Half of the earnings from the endowment were designated to help disadvantaged students attend summer enrichment courses and programs in STEM.  Part of the earnings from the endowment was allocated for Lowell Science teachers to attend courses or programs to enhance their teaching. This was called the Peter Dahl Honorary Award for Excellence in Science Teaching. The late Mr. Peter Dahl was my AP chemistry teacher and science department head at Lowell and a Cal graduate in chemistry.  So, Cal graduates teach future Cal graduates.

For 12 years, I was a CIF (high school level) football official in Southern California. I rose from an official who no one wanted on their crew (I never played football) and by hard work, volunteering for unpaid extra work, and attending clinics taught by Pac-10 and NFL officials became one of the highest rated officials in my local association, a playoff-eligible official working multiple playoff games, and an instructor in football officiating. There was no relationship between my day job and football officiating but I learned to work under extreme pressure and verbal abuse. Work hard, study hard, and put in the time just like at Cal!

I have helped produce movies and have been an actor in a couple of movies!  I was an associate producer and the com officer on the USS Archer in Star Trek Renegades. You can see it on YouTube. I was a producer of Renegades Requiem, Star Trek Wars, Ash’s Homecoming, Kat Loves L.A. seasons 1 and 2, and When the Train Stops.

I have performed as an artist singing solo in talent shows on cruise ships and at UC Berkeley (during my MBA program at the International House) in front of hundreds of people. I have no formal training in singing and certainly don’t have a lot of talent but it helped me become a better public speaker and overcome fear of public speaking.